Day 13 and it's Friday....

Day 13 - Friday 17/09/2010 - Fuente Palmera to Ronda - 83 Miles

The day started off with celebrations, it was Scott's birthday and some of the team had decided to give him a present by making one or two improvements to his bike, now known as "Badger".

Badger unmasked !!

A beauty to behold when
on the road

I left with Scott and Roger at around 8:30, after about half the group had already departed. We road an easy pace, talking about various things but after a comfort break, Roger asked if we would mind if he pressed on alone - either our conversation or our pace was not enough for him, or maybe both (:O). We were happy for him to go ahead and in a few minutes he was a blip on the horizon, maybe our pace was a bit slow, but we were enjoying passing the time of day, the sun was out, the roads were not too steep, all was good in the world.....

Then we got to the hills, they were not too severe, but in the distance we could see mountains and over the mountains were some dark clouds, but that all looked a long way off as we continued to the first stop. When we were a mile or so out from the stop, I got a call from Hannah to say they had parked the van a bit further on due to road works, we had no trouble finding them but were suprised to discover we were the first there. David had been trying to call the others, but no one other than me had answered, he did finally get through to Mike who said he was in a nearby bar with a number of others.

Scott and I were there, but the rest prefered the cafe !!

Scott and I carried on, we were now getting closer to the mountains and the roads got steeper, there was a long straight climb which took us to the crest of a particular slope and just after it was a play park, were we stopped while Scott did some exercises on the parallel bars and picked some flowers for Hannah and Pam.

Just as we were about to leave, the van turned up offering to top up our water and then Steven, Norm, Pam, Roger and Ian arrived. Scott took the opportunity to present his flowers and we then set off as a bigger group.

Hannah gets her flower

We were now well into the mountains, hitting some steep switchback climbs. Steve is an absolute mountain goat, his bike is probably twice the weight of mine, he has no toe clips, but that does not seem to hold him back at all, he left us all for dust.

We climbed about 650 meters in around 5 miles of hard climbing, getting to the town where the lunch stop was planned, it had just started to rain and many of the roads were blocked with fiesta marquees. We called the van who told us they had had to park outside the town, we then had to navigate through some very treacherous cobbled streets to get back to the main road and found the van.

Quick lunch, Hannah is about to put on her tights it's getting so cold

By now the rain had picked up and there was a cool breeze, we put on rain tops and ate a quick lunch, getting some wonderful views of lightening storms, which  we calculated to be only 3 or 4 miles away, so David made sure we did not stand too near to the van unless we needed to get something.

Not wanting to get too cold, it was a quick stop and we set off down the mountain for the last 22 miles to the hotel.

The first decent was horrible, the rain was pouring down and the temperature had plummeted, it felt like it was freezing !! When you are going downhill there's very little you can do other than point the bike in the right direction, with the wet roads we had to keep speeds down, especially on the corners but the straight parts were the worst as the wind chill really built up and I started shivering, causing the front wheel to wobble, I really had to focus to keep things straight.

We eventually got to the main road, I dug the lights out of my saddle bag as the rain was even heavier and visibility was getting poor. We kept together as a group, fortunately there were more climbs than descents, which allowed us to keep reasonably warm, but we were now plugging away in what have become a battle of attrition. By now I was totally soaked, the only good thing about my super lightweight vented shoes was that the water drained out quickly, although it also had no problem getting in in the first place.

Finally the rain eased off, Scott and I kept up with Steven, who seemed on a mission to get to the hotel as soon as possible, he dragged us along on the flat at 27 or 28 mph until we got into the edge of town, when I took over to exploiting the power of the Garmin satnav, almost immediately I took us on a wrong turn, but we quickly recovered and finally got to the hotel, with Norm, Pam, Derek and Ian turning up a couple of minutes later. We were all soaked and cold, but glad to have got to the hotel in one piece.

Soaked through, but happy

The rest of the soggy gang

Ian worked out we had climbed over a mile today, combined with the weather this was probably the hardest day of the ride.

This evening we went out for a meal as a group, at the end we presented Scott with a birthday cake.

Tomorrow it's Gibraltar and almost the end of our journey, but we still have a few more miles to cover and mountains to climb....