Fantastic riding on the coast, 4/21

Had a great sleep, finally adjusting to the time zone, it's still nice and cool especially at night. Standard breakfast then we headed out north on the coast. We wanted to get an early start before the traffic started. The map indicated a crazy twisted road from Tossa to Sant Feliu de Guixols, maybe 3-4x longer than the distance as the crow flies. We started out climbing right away, but the grade was reasonable. This was going to be a big test for April's knee, she got a cortisone shot in her knee right before we left.

The road was beautiful. Great surface, amazing views up and down the coast. Incredibly blue water. Gorgeous coves. This area reminds us of the Amalfi coast, but it's less developed here. Turns out there weren't a lot of cars, the road is too slow for them. In fact we saw more bikers than cars! How great is that? And we were able to move along at a good clip; our aerobics and legs are fine. Emma and Chris might have some problems keeping up with us when they get here! Hahaha. Anyway this was a fantastic stretch, as nice as anything we've ever ridden.

Then we hit some more developed areas and towns. But we have this 1:50000 scale map that shows designated bike roads/paths, and this guided us thru the towns pretty well. Then we hit the board walk before Palamos and the Bike Gods were throwing fairy dust on us. First we had an awesome lunch on the board walk, grilled lamb and frites, salad with tuna, then the wind was behind us as we cycled north along the wide boardwalk. Great people watching, passed a mini fair, there was a spinning class on the boardwalk, and the path went all away around the peninsula and we got to avoid the traffic in the main town. So sweet!

After Palamos April wanted to head down to some secluded undeveloped beach, and we sort of got lost finding the dirt paths down it. And these two young punks started following us on their bikes. So we find ourselves deeper and deeper in the woods on these sketchy paths. Classic April adventure. But finally we came upon some bike signs, and wound out way down to this beach, had to walk the bikes in a few spots. We lost the punks. The beach was fine, but nothing we hadn't seen before. And we managed to find a shortcut out back to the main paths.

The riding here was great too cause there are no cars on these back roads. We meandered our way over to Palafrugell then headed down to the coast to Calella de Palafrugell, the beach town.

As we pulled into Calella, we realized we didn't know the name of the place we had reserved. We had done some research in Tossa, and April reserved us two nights at the B+B run by some Brit expats. But we hadn't written the name down, just knew it from the web. Wanksters. We just knew there was a hill with a 10% grade right past the house. So we're riding into town, we pass a house with some name on it, I ask if that's the house, sure enough we see the 10% grade sign, so voila we happened right upon it. better to be lucky than good. Then being Brits the woman offered us hot tea and cookies. April was so thrilled, she loves the Brit stuff. She was close to asking for overly crunchy white bread toast with orange marmalade but managed to restrain herself. Haha.

We got a tower room, which was a round room in a tower kind of structure. April had a nice hot shower and used all the hot water. No skills. I pouted a little cause this place had like 25 five-star reviews on tripadvisor and I had no freakin hot water. We walked the five minutes down the 10% hill down to the beach to a recommended tapas joint. Great cheap little place. We bought 8 different tapas, wine, dessert, and the bill came to about $35E. Not bad.

One important note, Real Madrid was playing Barcelona for some championship game on tv, and everyone but us was super focused on the game. I happened to be seated away from the tv, it was behind me, and everyone else in the place was facing me and the tv. We left before it was done, I think they thought we were crazy for leaving.

Talked to Dan and Jayne on their mobile Skype and Dan recommended this iPad app. Nice work Danny boy.

And tomorrow we're taking the day off from riding and planning on a two hour hike along the coast to the tiny village of Timariu.


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