First day in Seville 23/1

It was great sleeping in a bed with a roof over my head after having camped for the last two and a bit weeks. I was famished after my run and scoffed down seven bread rolls at breakfast, getting my money's worth.

A shower was my next priority, but searching through my panniers, I discovered that everything was either dirty or damp and smelly. Picking out the least pongy options, I had my first shower in more than a week and then embarked on a slightly OCD cleaning frenzy. Everything went into the shower and got a good rinse before being handwashed. Not just the clothes either, I squirted down my panniers, which had built up a thick layer of grime over the last five weeks. It was really quite hard work, I can see now how the term 'washboard abs' originated.

When I was just about finished, a Japanese guy came in, and I chatted to him for a bit before he went sight seeing, thankful for the rest from the hard labour! I had draped stuff all over the shower to dry, which was a bit presumptuous of me (I've gotten used to living by myself I think), but he told me he didn't mind as long as I took it down by tomorrow morning so he could have a shower.

I finished off the rest of the washing and then feeling pretty drained, collapsed onto the bed and played on the computer for a bit. After forking out three euros for internet credits, I discovered that the connection was pretty rubbish, but I still managed to answer a few emails and relieve any fears anyone might have been having about my wellbeing.

The to do list was staring me in the face, so I got my act together and patched up all my tubes so that I could go for a bit of a ride around and hopefully find the train station and a bike shop. It was really nice riding around without panniers for a change and I was in a very good mood. Sevilla has an excellent network of bike paths and a bike hire system similar to what they have in Paris (you pay an annual subscription and can then hop on a bike at one of the many stations for a nominal hourly fee). There didn't seem to be any bike shops though. I ended up at a motorbike repair joint, where the guy professed to know nothing about bicycles, but still managed to do an excellent job of repairing my pannier rack (it's now in better shape than it's ever been in).

The station wasn't much further and after lining up in the wrong queue for ages, I managed to enquire about going to Madrid. It was going to be sixty seven euros or something like that, and I wasn't feeling in a fit state to make that kind of decision, so I decided to stay another night at the hostel and go back the next day. Lining up in the queue, I'd suddenly felt a wall of fatigue hit me, and on the way back I felt quite queasy. Unfortunately it looks like I've given myself a case of food poisoning again. I ate a jar of chickpeas for lunch, on which I spooned some pasta sauce that I'd opened two days earlier. It was pretty stupid considering that I've done a food safety course and know very well that tomato saucey kind of things are one of the 'danger foods'. Hopefully it won't be as bad as the episode I had in Valencia.

Coming back into the hostel after a shaky run, I asked the receptionist for the key and was a bit confused when he wordlessly picked it up and walked me up to the room. Opening the door, he gestured to the clothes I had hung up everywhere, the bags lying in the shower and the way I had completely monopolised the storage facilities, smiled a little grimly and told me that the Japanese guy had asked to move to another room because of my expansiveness. I apologised, but didn't feel guilty about it because after all I had asked my room-mate if he minded if it stayed like this until morning. If he'd had a problem, I would have moved it straight away.

Sneakily, I decided to leave everything the way it was until morning at least. A Chilean guy called Jose came in at 12:30, very tired, and agreed with my plan.