Day 1: Malaga – Lobres

90ish km (watch died so not sure exactly)

Defining feature of today was rain. Lots of it. Kinda surreal that it’s actually stopped now. I thought I was going to have to build an arc and grow a beard and call myself Noah. Never seen so much rain.

The costa del sol didn’t quite live up to it’s name. I imagine it’s lovely coastline on a sunny day! Again a mix of lovely cycle paths and busyish roads. This is one of the dedicated cycle/pedestrian tunnels we went through!

Tried to record my ride but watch died. Realised I hadn’t brought a plug so spent a wet afternoon searching for one (success!).

Ended up in Lobres as the rain stopped so decided to stop for tea. I think I was a point of interest/ridicule in the village with many a person walking past again and again staring. The best was a woman who came up to me selling socks – clearly I looked homeless so she just gave me a pair. Nearly cried, the look of pity in her eye was almost comical. I felt a bit of a fraud but didn’t have the Spanish to decline the socks!

☝️dinner spot.

Didn’t do to well at finding a wild camp spot… ended up under a motorway bridge. Not the most peaceful night of my life.

Day 0: Airport – Malaga.

9.5miles

This was meant to be the easy day. Besides the 4am start the rest was meant to be a breeze. In typical Meg style I made a meal out of it.

Or maybe I can blame Malaga airport for not catering for cyclists? My general angst wasn’t helped by finding Olive in a heap on the floor. Clearly they’d tried to put her trough with the normal baggage – she must have fit up the belt into the building but then as soon as it turned the corner she’d been deposited unceremoniously. Who could have predicted that? Poor Olive.

I managed to put her back together – no harm done. Only took me 2hours…

Anyway, they definitely don’t expect people to cycle to the airport. The exit is motorway only. Did my best to avoid it but no chance. A spot of motorway dashing later and I made it onto a backroad in one piece. After that it was plain sailing – tailwind into town!

I’m reserving judgement on cycling infrastructure. It went from beautiful segregated cycleway (see below) to dual carriage way intermittently. I’m sure one day, once it’s all joined up, it’ll be lovely.Obligatory dip in the sea (it’s cold) and we headed in search of bed. Found it but willed myself out to find food, gas, etc. first.

Lovely friendly airbnb host to top it off 😁

You know what my favourite thing is: leaving packing to the last minute… not.

You know my second favourite thing: when I have bike issues to solve the day before a long ride… not.

The last few days have revolved around pannier racks. The outcome of the trial run the other day was that it turns out the rack should never have even been on my bike. Makes sense once you actually engage your brain (Or ask a handy engineer, AKA Ollie) – trying to fit a 200mm frame to a 150mm frame probably won’t work perfectly.

So this week involved:

• Trying myself to come up with a solution – much thought involved but no productive outcome.
• Unproductive fretting
• Bodging the residual parts together to allow me to ride it to Ollie’s work.
• Hearing a suspicious rattle on the way to Ollie’s work – having a look and seeing the other side had broken too! Rattling the rest of the way there
• More unproductive fretting
• Jumping for joy when Ollie returns with Olive until he came out with the phrase “it wasn’t that simple, let me explain…”
• Having to do a last minute search for a new rack. Adrian to the rescue offered to lend me his but luckily a new one arrived in time
• Successfully fitted the new rack all by myself. Obviously Joe then took it apart to readjust but I tried my best!
• Spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening watch clever bike people change my gear cables because they were corroding too. Thanks to Ella’s dad and Joe!

In the interim, whilst clever people were fixing up Olive I had packed and unpacked my panniers a number of times.

This is what 4months of kit looks like:

Looks simultaneously like far too much and not enough. Only way to know which is to try it out!

Off we go 🛫

It’s a sign you’re starting to get excited when you wake up at 5.30 on a Saturday.

Today’s task: trial ride.

So I made myself a wee packed lunch and loaded up the panniers. According to the scales I’ve only 10kg of kit. Who knows whether that’s enough to last you months on a bike?

Anyway, off I set into the hazy morning. Merrily waving to the early morning dog walkers (yes most of them ignored me, but it’s going to take more than that to knock my mood!). Pootling along the quiet country lanes we go, Olive singing to the birds in the hedgerows. Me trying to ignore my heavy breathing… it felt like quite a bit more than 10kilograms!

Just as I’m rolling down a hill enjoying the silence, my mudguard starts rubbing. “Strange”, I think. That should be on securely. I reach the bottom of the hill and decide to take a look.

Darn… the pannier rack has broken! Or at least, the bolt mounting it onto the frame has sheared. Out come the tools (handily packed right at the bottom of the pannier!), followed by some humming and harring. I have literally no idea how I’m going to fix this one.

So I call up the emergency response team (I.e. Joe and Ollie). No solutions available over the phone so they deploy the recovery vehicle.

Who’d say no to a recovery crew like that? They even put on matching kit! What hero’s.

Mission abandoned for today but at least it happened now and not in a weeks time!

Normally when I set off on an adventure I’ve planned every meal, every camp, every minute… this is different. How do you prepare to dive into the unknown? I’ve spent months dreaming about this adventure, now it’s just around the corner.

I’m not sure what emotions I should be feeling but I’m definitely feeling them all, all at once. It’s nauseating.

Today was meant to be spent out in the sunshine with Olive, enjoying the start of British spring, rolling along country lanes with the wind on our backs.

Before I set off I thought I’d practice packing my bike into a box for the flight. It started off well – I decided on my plan of attack and was busy being a successful bike dismantling expert. I’d got everything off and ready except the pedals. Turns out maybe I should have done them first… Turns out I’m not a bike dismantling expert. I tried everything: sitting on the spanner, feet in the air, tennis grunting, the lot.

After much struggling I decided to abandon. So now I have a nicely reassembled Olive. It’s like nothing even happened!

Total time wasted: 2.5hours.

There is one productive thing that came out of the experiment – I now have functioning lights! These lights have been a long time coming. I think we started planning how to build a dynamo wheel in October. Aidan and family have been trialling different set ups and sampling the market for years, without even realising that the culmination of their efforts would be a perfect design for Olive and I. Aidan would clearly have thought once the wheel was built the rest should be easy… I managed to make a meal out of every subsequent step:

• Bought the wrong front light
• Spent a while emailing the company complaining only to find out my mistake and have to return it
• Spent ages researching which light was the right one and how to get it (turns out most bike things are only made in Germany and getting them in Britain is a faff)
• Realised my fork bolt was too short to mount the light on. Went to the bike shop and pulled my confused face and watched them save the day, as per usual, by revealing the perfect bolt they just happened to have lying around.

• Mounted front light and got it working!
• Attempted to use usb charger and realised I didn’t have the right cable. Spent a while working out what I needed and ordering it… from Germany.
• Attempted to connect up the back light. Realised I’d bought the wrong light. Bought a new light… from Germany.
• Spent a long time working out how to mount the back light on the pannier rack. Including pulling the confused face at the bike shop, buying a mount, having to hacksaw the mount down to size, etc.
• Getting Ollie to make the cabling all connect up by taking the back light to work and building in new connectors and souldering stuff. Also known as doing electrical magic
• Finally put it all on the bike.
• Just need to go for a test ride…

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton