My romantic vision of the bike ride from Valencia to Barcelona was of bike lanes through cute coastal towns, interspersed with sections through quiet rural farmland. The reality of the ride so far has been about 10% cute coastal towns with bike lanes filled with pedestrians and rollerbladers plus kilometer after kilometer of mind-numbing highway with constant traffic (nice wide shoulders though, so it’s quite safe). I think a lot of people are returning home from their Easter holiday today, so traffic was 10x what we’ve seen over the past week.
The highway riding and slight tailwind did increase our average speed quite a bit, and so we chose to push on and do our longest day today, a crazy and grumpy-inducing 152km, so that we have a shorter day tomorrow and more time to spend in Sitges. We are glad to be in our next rest stop, a hotel in the Catalunyan beach town of Capellans, a suburb of Tarragona. The hotel was cheaper than our patch of gravel last night, and we’ve got a kitchenette and patio and private bathroom to boot!
Woke up this morning to this little guy. Couldn’t get rid of him, he found his way back to the tent three times. I finally had to carry him to the next camping plot.
Going to find a bite to eat and rest our legs…