Cycling in Spain, Pyrenees 28 Sep - 12 Oct 2004
From Amsterdam we took a Easy Jet flight to Barcelona. For Easy Jet a box is not required, therefore for the return trip we bought a bicycle bag at the Decathlon inn the center of Barcelona (recommended). Cycling from the airport is quite a hassle. The roads to/from the airport are motorways, and to get to the southbound road, the turnoff for Barcelona need to be crossed and this is rather difficult. To the airport we took the train from Barcelona (aloud outside traffic hours). From Huesca we also took a train, bicycles are aloud in local trains and outside traffic hours.
The roads are fine, good asphalt. We took some minor road where the asphalt stopped and turned into gravel. The average roads we cycled had a 6% gradient with a maximum of 10%. For a mountainous are we found it rather 'easy'.
In Spain not a problem. For lunch a 8 euro 3-course meal including a bottle of wine was rather standard (not clever if you have to cycle another 3 hours). Dinner time is around 21:00 or later, therefore we skipped dining out in a restaurant and prepared our own meals ion the camping.
We used campings along the road. Sufficient camping can be found, but make sure you know in which places they are. Prices of the camp sides were low season, and around 8-12 euro. Once we paid 16 euro in the middle of nowhere, the person thought that we had no other way to go within 20km anyway.
The nights were cool, and the humidity made you go to bed early as well. In the morning we had some difficulties packing the tent as it was wet and cold. A cup of coffee after packing your tent was a must. During the day it was rather pleasant, but cool if you cycled in the shade.
The photo's
