All those months ago, when we were starting to scope out this trip and put together ideas of what it might look like, starting off by following the sun south through Europe seemed like a sensible idea. Ted and I don’t often do sensible, but on this occasion I’m really glad we did. We’ve now (rather unbelievably!) reached Madrid, marking the end of our two months in Europe. The next leg of the trip – in South America – starts tomorrow.

Since our last post, our route has taken us from Teruel to Cuenca, and then on to Madrid. It’s been a mix of road, dirt road and cycle path so we sadly only have minor off-road shenanigans to report. We’ve had a week of feeling the pressure to cover the distance to make it to Madrid, so rather than off-road silliness we have often chosen the quickest option when it’s come to route choices, but we’ve not been disappointed (rave review!).

For the first few days the scenery, autumn colours, geology and hills continued to be incredible. Leaving Teruel through canyons of red rock and approaching Cuenca from Palomera under overhanging cliffs were both pretty special. We only had time for a few hours in Cuenca (in the freezing rain!) so really didn’t get chance to explore much of the city which seemingly has carved many of the ancient churches and historical buildings out of the rock face – even a car park made use of a huge underground cave.

Leaving Cuenca the landscape has generally become much flatter (although still at a relatively high altitude for a few days). It made for some more magical star filled clear skies, but that combined with the autumnal temperatures also created lots of fog.  Freezing fog – the kind that lands on your nose and eyelashes – giving us some pretty cold mornings and some everything-wet-living-in-a-cloud type camping experiences. It’s just meant we’ve had to remember to dry the tent out the moment the sun has shown its face. Of course there were days when we forgot, but climbing into a soggy tent at the end of the day quickly teaches you not to forget again.

The off-road riding we have done was mainly on dirt track, which given the intermittent rain, was a perfect sticky consistency. Plastering everything in thick red clay and turning my chunky tyres into slicks. Lots of slip-sliding, a bit of moderated frustration and a muddy puddle later, I managed to wash the worst of it off and the trail thankfully became more rocky after that so we could continue at more than a glacial pace.

The closer we got to Madrid the more run down and empty the small villages and towns have become. Rolling into town you could predict that you’d see more cats than humans wondering through the shut up streets. It felt like being ‘the strangers that come to town’ in other people’s stories, passing through ghost town after ghost town, no interaction or life. All a bit eerie. Ted finding it a little tiresome, town after town, all with a silimilar, slightly draining emptiness.

But before we knew it, we were in the suburbs of Madrid heading for a post office to collect a parcel of bike bits for Ted. We haven’t mentioned it before, but over the last couple of weeks we’ve been trying to arrange for a new saddle and new tyre for Ted to be delivered to us – A series of events that has fondly become known to us as the ‘Saddle Saga’. It sounds like a simple concept – order some parts online, predict where we will be in the time it takes to be delivered and put a post office or host address in that area as the delivery address – but the reality has been somewhat more messy. Ted ordered the parts three weeks ago, but due to delays with delivery, and our deadline to get to Madrid meaning we couldn’t wait around for the parcel that said it had been delivered but hadn’t been, we had given up on ever receiving it. Thankfully we were saved by yet another incredible WarmShowers host who forwarded the parcel on to us closer to Madrid – huge thanks to Xavier! So Ted now has two saddles and three tyres – everyone loves a spare, right!? And hopefully here endeth the Saddle Saga and hours and hours of talking about Ted’s sore bum!

Our final approach to Madrid left a lot to be desired. We had been recommended a particular cycle route into Madrid, in order to avoid cycling through some supposedly dodgy areas. So towards the end of a long day, we joined the cycle route with 30km to go to Madrid. The route was an eclectic mix of barbwire fences through the Spanish Ministry for the Interior, muddy festering puddles with a yellow tinge, a dead horse (legs in the air!), lots of red kites/ bird of prey, construction traffic, churned up mud, a heronry, numerous motorway underpasses, lots of electricity pylons and a river suffering the horrific after effects of a huge sewerage overflow but the sun was setting, bathing it all in a musty, dusty golden glow and we put on Springsteen – You can never be in a bad mood with Bruce blaring out of your phone speakers – so we rolled into Madrid smiles on our faces.

We’ve loved our time in Madrid, a suprise given we were anxious about heading into our first big city. It has a great laid-back vibe, they understand what a vegetarian is and have ice cream bars open until late (our kind of bars!). We also managed to get the bikes washed by a very bemused hand carwash guy, source bike boxes for our flight from Rotorua bikes ( https://rotoruabike.com/ ) with minimal fuss and were given lots of helpful and friendly assistance from Jason at 3ike  (https://www.3ike.es/) with sourcing and fitting some new parts. But we are most blown away by bumping into an absolute trail angel – Borja, a fellow cyclist who we got talking to outside a bike shop, and offered to take the bike boxes in his car to the airport for us – incredible, what a hero! Also huge thanks to Andrea our WarmShowers host for a warm welcome, wonderful conversation and chilled out stay.

I can’t quite believe that our time in Europe has already come to an end. Two months have flown by so quickly. We joked before we set off that Europe would be the warm-up for our trip, and in some ways it has been (global warming warm). Cycling through countries and experiencing cultures we’ve been lucky enough to have visited before, has meant there have been elements of familiarity about our trip so far. But there has also been a lot of new, a lot of learning, especially living on the bikes and going beyond the concept of our usual adventure holidays, and being together, just the two of us, 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

It’s already been such an amazing experience – everyday on the bikes, living outside, relying only on your minimal kit and your wit! There has been so much we have already seen, learnt and experienced, it’s hard to process it all. We are both excited and nervous about the next leg of our journey in South America so wish us luck with the infamous Patagonia headwinds and the snow that’s currently still falling in the South due to a delayed spring.

Hasta luego amigos xxx