I was quite glad to leave the hostel. The smoke from the bar seemed to filter its way up to our room on the second floor, and after a night of that, my lungs were not feeling too fantastic. Coughing and spluttering, I got together my cold-weather gear and advised Luke to do the same. Doubling up was the idea: two thermal tops, two pairs of tights, two pairs of socks, two jackets and later, two pairs of gloves. Plus I put on my balaclava and my overshoes, so I was well and truly ready for the worst Spain could throw at me.
My strategy worked well, and I wasn't cold at all when we started riding. Visibility was an issue though. I couldn't see more than about 50m in front of me, and it appeared that people in cars were having the same problem, because we got beeped at quite a few times. I did switch my lights on to help them see us, but I don't think it really helped. You need big fog-lights to penetrate through the kind of miasma we were faced with, and ours just didn't cut it. Everyone was being sensible and not driving too fast though, so we weren't in any real danger.
After 20km, we stopped at a town for breakfast, having only had nuts to snack on back at the hostel. I went into a small corner store and stood around waiting for about five minutes, while the owner had a nice old chinwag with the other customers. It's very amiable in the small towns, I quite like it. Luke probably didn't enjoy it as much as me, waiting out in the cold:P
We polished off a box of Special K (which I realised was non-vegan halfway through the first bowl, oops), a litre of juice, most of a loaf of bread and some fruit before getting back on the NA-131... At least after a slight misadventure down the wrong road.
The next thirty kms were pretty uneventful. The fog obscured most of the scenery, so it was just a matter of grinding away at the pedals. We were expecting to see a turn-off onto another road the whole time, and only realised it was waay back when it was too far to bother, so the route was summarily changed from ending up in a small country town to finishing in Leida – a big city 160km away from Barcelona.
Speaking of Barcelona – we've decided we'd really like to make it there for Christmas and have a nice break there for a day or two. So that means we're gonna push pretty hard over the next two days to get there on Christmas eve. I've emailed a few people on the 'WarmShowers.org' list (comprised of touring cyclists prepared to accommodate other touring cyclists for free), so hopefully we'll be able to stay with someone there.
Anyway, we kept on going along the A-131 until it finished at Fraga. We decided to take the N-11, a red road (high traffic, but you're still allowed to take bikes on it), because it looked like the least complicated way to get to Leida. Turns out what looked simple on the map wasn't simple at all. I'm still not sure where we went wrong, but suddenly the road turned onto the A-2, and you're definitely not allowed to take bikes on that road. I spotted a side road that went alongside the A-2 and headed down there. It was blocked off for construction, so we basically had one huge bike lane:)
I've seen a few side roads like that, labelled 'Urbanicazion'. It's quite funny really. All the infrastructure is there – roads, lights, electricity, and I presume gas and sewage – but no-one seems to want to build a house there! There are signs up advertising what I'm sure are amazing prices for house and land packages, but I guess people would rather just rent a small apartment in the already established towns. Good on them, I say, the world doesn't need any more urban sprawl.
The road peetered out after a while, and we were kind of stuck. I say we, but Luke was a long way behind me, really dawdling. It quite annoyed me, we were still 20km away from Leida with darkness fast approaching, but he couldn't seem to be bothered making an effort. I thought he was just convinced the road wasn't going anywhere and we were just going to have to turn back (in which case, he should've gone faster so that we could discover that quickly), but upon querying him, he revealed he was feeling tired and suffering from indigestion, so I felt bad about mentally chastising him. Still, we needed to move faster, so I implored him to dig a bit deeper.
After going past a few industrial facilities and a few 'redneck residences' (one with four aggressive dogs chained up in the yard and a motorcross course out the back), we finally got back on a proper bitumen road that looked like it would lead to a town. It wound its way up a hill past all manner of wrecked and ruined houses with iron crosses in front of them. It had a very eerie, history-laden feeling about it. No plaques, so I'm not sure which conflict was responsible for the devastation.
The actual town arrived after a while, and I asked a few people if there was anywhere to stay, it now being 5:30pm and close to sunset. It was quite a large town, so I was surprised when they said no. We must have really lucked in at Sarinena last night because I hadn't researched to make sure there was somewhere.
“Oh well, next town maybe”. There was a positive response this time, but we couldn't find the place they were talking about and Leida was now only 11km away, so we decided to keep on going. With our slow pace, we didn't end up making it there though. A friendly old woman led us to a Pension, all the time worrying that we must be freezing in what looked to her like very inadequate clothing. After trying in vain at the Pension, we asked a young man, and he was happy to walk us to a hotel. I asked the receptionist how much a night would cost, and was ready to get back on the bikes and keep riding to Leida when he told me 50 euros, but Luke was very keen to stop, so we did.
It exceeds the budget for the day, but we're doing pretty well so far, so it doesn't really matter. Fifty euros is definitely my limit though – it's a heck of a lot of money to pay for two overheated (it's sweltering in here!) beds and a smelly bathroom.
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