Day 3 - Leon first day

DAY 3 - LEON
A day of biking from Bilbao to Leon but, as usual, not really on fast roads although it's difficult not to get coerced onto one if you're not careful. We left at 9ish after a cardboard and plastic-cheese breakfast with tea and UHT milk - actually not so bad but the first breakfast in a bar/cafe in Bilbao when we arrived off the boat of scrummy tortilla and coffee is gonna be hard to beat!
Anyway not too much to report from today except Deb got bitten in the night and Rob woke up next to THIS in the morning (see below). All quite scary but it's now back to normal and we're ready for another night out of delicious food etc etc.

Debbie with insect bite.

So it was round the South side of the Picos de Europa just skirting the lower slopes so we had some good mountain corners. It was cool in the morning and quite cloudy for the morning anyway. Afternoon was really very hot and Rob has a red nose 'cos he forgot to put on sunscreen! We're staying in Leon for two nights which should be good - we'll leave all the gear in the hotel room and then we can go out and be able to leave helmets and jackets when we go in to see whatever we're going to explore.

 We had to stop quite often as the map is really not that clear and it's quite hard to see which road we should go on next and NONE of them are named nor numbered. Once or twice it's been easy but apart from that the scenery has been fab.

Nothing really funny has happened - well except the monster-face first thing in the morning. Last night we went for a beer and glass of vino and met ALL the bar staff in our bar who insisted on speaking english while we replied in spanish. Quite fun really and as the evening unfolded our glasses of vino got bigger and bigger the more friendly we all became.

Lovely swoopy corners just under the Picos mountains

Mountains were spectacular and beautiful even though the temperature for hotter and hotter. Will, and all bikers in fact, would be jealous of the great bends and smooth roads. Hardly any other cars and virtually NO TRUCKERS!

Debbie had a little bit of a problem doing the videos today as she and Rob didn't really connect as to how to start and stop the camera. So she took lots of still nothingness and then the road, or Rob's back or the handlebars.....
We'll do better tomorrow and perhaps post some moving biking!

Straight road leading to Picos de Europa

This pic (on the right) is of a rather boring straight road but the mountains beckoning in the distance was quite cool.

Actually there WAS a funny moment today when we were booking into our lovely hotel. The receptionist had to take our address etc in a very detailed way and IF Rob hadn't spelled every word our address would've been like this..

Mel Ferm Xotahe,
Betfild,
Shropshie (she tried to understand SUFFOLK) but she was looking under 'C' ....Spanish for 'th' so I muth've been 'lithping'....ie..THuffolk...

Funny to spell stuff in Spanish - mixed with Basque! Actually I gave up with the word Cottage (see above) and she had to rely on my spelling of the actual post code and then everything fell into place! and we were allowed to get into our room. She was sweet really and jolly helpful with where to go this evening. More about that tomorrow.

Lake something - crap map so we don't know! Might
Google it later but might just do something else!

We rode for 54 kms around this lake - really beautiful and serene. Average speed probably about 30mph but some corners, especially uphill hairpins were at about 5mph.


A lovely day and we're looking forward to planning our couple of days in and about Leon - it's about halfway along the top of Spain if you want to look on a map. Perhaps someone can find out what lake we went past just NE or Leon (about 25 miles)