May 18th, 2022
For the most part, we enjoyed a good night’s sleep until about 4 am when the wind started. It wasn’t a steady wind, but a gusty one. One second it was calm, the next as if a hurricane blew through, each time accompanied by something around the campsite falling over and occasionally of breaking glass. Due to the hard ground, our tent stakes weren’t placed well and we hadn’t bothered with the guylines, but the tent survived the blasts, and we crawled out of the door a couple of hours later to a still morning.
We hadn’t showered yesterday, so that was the first order of the day. The facilities of the site were old and in a poor state of repair, to the point that there wasn’t a lock on the shower door, which opened out into a shared area. The shower room itself was the size of the shower cubical, so impossible to have clothes inside while showering. Deborah therefore hovered outside, passing clothes and towels back and forth while I showered, before switching positions.
The campsite wasn’t cheap at about €20, and we are now running with the theory the more you pay the less you get, which was certainly the case with this one.
As we packed up, the Danish off-road group headed out, and we got chatting to one of our Dutch neighbours, a fellow ex-IT professional and retiree of three years, just like me.
We cycled out of the site with a goodbye from the other half of the Dutch couple, Diane.
We were a little later getting started due to the shower and chatting, so it was already warming up. It was a day of cycling along the coast road, which was extremely busy at the end of the day yesterday, but didn’t seem too bad this morning.
We slowly fell into a rhythm and took the minor ups and down without any problems as our legs warmed up. At about 7km into the cycle, our new Dutch friends passed us by in their campervan with a wave and toot of their horn, which the two work vans that were following them copied, I guess believing it to be the thing to do when seeing an odd-looking contraption powered by an even odder looking couple.
By the time we hit the day’s big climb, we were in the zone, so while we weren’t fast under the scorching sun, we were doing well. That is until the wind started.
We had experienced a few small gusts during the early part of today’s ride, but as we climbed the hill, we started to get hit by very strong blasts, each of which sent us wobbling off in one direction or another. We could see the water below was experiencing the same, with white caps on the waves and a solitary yacht in the water that was clearly struggling with too much sail up, rounding up at least once while we were watching.
In the final stretch to the top, on a particularly steep section when we were down in third gear, we were hit with a tailwind so strong that it pushed us up the mountain so fast that we couldn’t pedal to keep up with our speed, our legs spinning but not biting the gears. Unfortunately it only lasted about 20 seconds, before switching back to a headwind. Deborah found this both hilarious and frightening at the same time.
We finally made it to the top, where Jochen, a fellow cycle tourer, was already resting. Jochen had spent the last couple of weeks cycling up from Athens, and was now heading home to Germany. He had camped at the same site the night before that we were heading to and did not give it a glowing review, it being expensive and more set up for mobile homes than tents.
As we watched Jochan push on up toward the mountain pass that thankfully we weren’t going over, a gust of wind came through with such strength that it blew our bike over. On the understanding that the bike was on flat solid ground and is stable when on it’s stand, that must have been a very powerful gust to knock over a bike that weighs in at over 60kg. If that had come through when we were cycling we may well have been in trouble.
What goes up must come down, so we enjoyed the 7km free ride down the mountain. The rest of the day was another rollercoaster day of lesser ups and downs, although some were bigger than others, with mountains on our left, turquoise seas on our right and an increasingly persistent wind in our faces, slowing our progress to a crawl on occasion.
Noting Jochan’s campsite review and the €21 we had paid last night, we sat down on a bench at the side of the road to examine our options. After much deliberation, we went with a €27 apartment a further 30 km along the road, which would give us a later than hoped for day, seeing as it was already 3 pm, but at least we wouldn’t need to pitch a tent in these unpredictable wind conditions.
The final 30km of the day was plagued by strong winds, but we finally made it to the accommodation by about 5:30 pm, after a 90 km day with almost 1000m of ascent.
The apartment was amazing for the price, probably the best so far on the trip. We piled the contents of the bike into our room, which was unfortunately on the top floor, stored the bike in the garage, had a shower, then headed out to the town in search of food.
The owner of the apartment easy shared directions to the town centre, which we must have misunderstood when we found ourselves climbing over walls and fences, and walking down a storm drain, but we finally popped out into the car park of a supermarket.
We bought a couple of drinks to keep us going, then headed in search of food. We walked along a minor road adjacent to the beach where, on Google Maps, the majority of the restaurants are located. On this occasion, Google was correct, however, it seems nobody knew the Gullivers were in town as everything appeared closed.
By the time we neared the end of the road our hopes were fading, just as we spotted a pizza being carried across the street. The final restaurant on the road was open, and there was an empty table in a glass pavilion on the other side of the road that we could sit at to enjoy the sunset.
We enjoyed a couple of pizzas, a couple of beers (me) and a hot chocolate, before heading back to the apartment, watching the sun dip over the distant horizon as we did so. The wind was still blowing strong as we closed the blinds on the apartment window and settled down to sleep at around 10 pm.
