It was raining when I woke up, and I slept in, not caring that I was in the middle of an urban environment where someone might very well frequent on their morning constitutional. Another achingly slow run later, and I ate breakfast while checking the map. Adding up the little numbers next to the lines on the map, I calculated that Sevilla was only sixty km away. I could do that! I could do that and then this torturous exercise (for that is what it had become) would finally be over!
Already feeling the relief that would mark the end, I was in quite good spirits as I changed the tube over in the rain. “Only sixty km to go. I can do it!” I repeated to myself, hoping that this last day would break the trend and let me finish the tour on a high note.
It was raining pretty heavily when I set out, but it wasn't cold, and I stayed dry with my three raincoats zipped up to the hilt. After heading off in the completely wrong direction, I got directions and got onto the route to Sevilla. With the destination stuck so firmly in my mind, I was definitely in the mood for counting down the km, but sadly, like everything seemed to be doing, my speedo gave up the ghost, so I was flying blind.
An hour down the road, I saw my first sign for Sevilla. It was apparently eighty km away, not sixty. “Oh well, that's still doable”. It was actually quite pleasant riding along the nicely maintained road, cutting through the National Park. I could now see what the Italian guy had been talking about. The trees lining the road were really gorgeous and they helped block out the rain a little bit.
My legs were incredibly tight, unused to the kind of punishment they'd been dealt over the last two days, so I was constantly shifting position, trying to find a comfortable spot on the saddle. I didn't even bother pedaling on the downhills, instead just standing up on the pedals to relieve the pressure for a short while. Thankfully, the situation with the gears wasn't as bad as I thought it might be and I didn't have to push my bike up any uphills, able to access some of the lower gears now.
I made up my mind to stop for lunch after sixty km, a milestone I would easily reach by three o'clock. I was two km away when the tyre gods struck a final devastating blow. Within the space of five hundred metres both of my tyres suddenly deflated.
It was too cruel. I had no spare tubes left and it was pelting down with rain, which rapidly made me miserable as soon as I got off the bike. I decided to eat lunch before trying to conduct the patching operation that would have to be done. Hunching under the pitiful shelter that I could find, I ate my chickpeas and bread, trying to keep my spirits up. Just as I'd finished eating, I saw an odd sight. Two helmets (the rest of the scene was obscured by a sign) were going round the roundabout, very slowly. “Who would be out riding in weather like this?”, I wondered. I stood up, and discovered to my astonishment that not only were they cyclists, but they were touring cyclists! Jumping up, I sprinted over, eager just to chat to them.
They were two old codgers from England, riding in the opposite way to me towards Portugal. I didn't get much more out of them because a cafe owner was even more keen to find out where we were all going on our bikes. It's quite funny that the only time I met other cycle tourists mid-ride (I did see two people cycling with touring gear way back when I was with Luke but didn't get a chance to talk to them before they went past) was on the last day of my tour. They were keen to head off, and to be honest I didn't really want to talk to them much anyway (one of them was an arrogant bastard who behaved extremely disdainfully towards the cafe owner), but it did make me feel a bit better.
Ready now to attempt to fix my tyres up, I grabbed two promising looking tubes and a repair kit and went back to the cafe and tried to patch them. It was never going to work in the rain, and I used up six patches just to get one looking ok (and it turned out that the patch didn't hold anyway). Arrghh, this was a mess. Looking over towards my bike, I noticed that a Michelin car tyre shop was open. Perfect!
An hour later, I had two new, fully inflated tubes on my rims, for which I had paid ten euros (an incredible rip off, they're only worth three euros each maximum, but I was hardly going to argue at that point). I headed off, going as fast as I could to try and warm up and also in order to try and outrun the Tyre gremlins, which were surely baying at my heels.
There were twenty seven km until Sevilla according to the signs, and I made it in just over an hour, just wanting to get it over with. That makes it sound like it ended there though and I wouldn't want to give that impression. I was close to Sevilla, that was true, but I wasn't truly 'there'. The signs didn't give me any clues on how to get into the city centre, and the people I asked just confused me.
By the time night fell, I'd moved a little closer, but was still stuck in the outskirts of the city. My compass let me down, leading me towards a false North that constantly changed orientation. Sick of riding, I started just asking people if there was a youth hostel nearby. Surprisingly, people seemed to think there was, and an old man led me to a doorway, which turned out to be a homeless shelter. Yeah..not quite the kind of youth hostel I wanted, thank you very much.
Trying again to make it to Sevilla, I rode in another direction and was almost there when I struck an autovia. I wasn't keen on riding on it at night time, so I tried to find a back road and wound up in yet another town on the outskirts. Bah! I turned on all my lights, hopped on the autovia, and hurrah made it there!
Now to find a youth hostel...I hadn't had a chance to research whether there actually was one, but there'd have to be right? In the past, I've always just taken my laptop out and tried to find a wireless network to hijack, but I didn't really feel like doing that and just asked people instead.
Surprisingly, everyone I asked seemed to know where one was. The problem was, their definition of a youth hostel didn't match mine. Twice I was directed to dormitories for students, where I was rebuffed.
Tempted by these mirages, I bounced around the city like a pinball. At about eleven o'clock, I was starting to get really tired and it was then that the tyre gremlins struck, pipping me one last time on the front tyre. Little bastards! I pushed my bike back towards a soccer stadium, where a young couple had just told me there was one. That was the third time I'd been told to go there, but each time I'd looked, people nearby hadn't been any help and I'd veered off elsewhere. After being directed back to one of the university residences, I finally found my saviour in the form of a slightly inebriated English speaking Spaniard who walked me most of the way to the hostel.
It was an epic journey, but I'd finally made it. The tour was over!
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