A broad abroad.

My life took a few unexpected turns last year and as a result I suddenly found myself in a position where I was able to decide:

1. Where exactly in Europe I wanted to live (yay to remote work!).
2. Exactly how I wanted to get there.

I didn't umm and ahhh for very long before concluding that Valencia, Spain was the place I wanted to call home- too many reasons to mention here but TL;DR: it's pretty swell.

It also just so happens that one of my passions is long distance cycling, and being as I was able to take the almost three weeks off work that it would require to haul my ass, motor-less, across two countries, two wheels seemed like the most enticing option (yay to working for a company where holiday is encouraged not begrudged!). For reference I spent nearly 20 years working in hospitality, where by and large, "pulling" as many shifts as you can, and taking as little holiday as possible, is something you're expected not merely to endure, but to wear as a badge of honour:

YES. Srsly.

Before I get started, I should make it clear: when I say that one of my passions is long distance cycling, you’re probably visualising somebody with a shed load of fancy gear, Navy Seal-level navigational skills and at the very least, a working knowledge of the difference between a “disc’ and a “rim” brake. 

That, my friends, is not me; “woeful under-preparedness” is my (metaphorical) middle name, and unlike my long-suffering Mum, I'd have it no other way. Part of the fun of cycle touring for me is the fact that though you might know more or less where you’re heading, you don’t quite know what getting there will entail. Literal mountain range to cross? Sure! I’ll ignore that elephant in the room until I have to actually cross it. No rest days possible? Oh well, let’s just throw the proverbial spaghetti at the wall and see if it sticks. In other words, one woman’s stupidity is another woman’s adventure- or at least I think that’s how the saying goes? 

I set out from London on the morning of 22nd March with my beautiful Surly touring bike. It’s a rugged, resilient classic; heavy enough to kill a man (which can at times be testing), but robust enough to handle pretty much anything thrown its way.

After 15 years’ living in London it was a morning tinged with sadness. I had to (temporarily) leave behind my dog, family and friends. Many "refreshments" had been drunk, and a fair few tears shed. However, I should note that the past year or so of spending at least £7.50 on a pint of beer had worn me down. Some things are frankly impossible to get used to, and the possibility of moving somewhere where I would no longer be dancing with the financial devil every time I fancied a bevvie undoubtedly balanced out some of the sadness. It's not the most romantic reason for embracing adventure, but it is a reason.

A short hop across the channel on a ferry and I had left Blighty behind. As I stepped off the boat and onto the tarmac (le tarmac?) of France I was pumped with adrenalin- a lone figure ready to take on the world.

I reached the first turning and pedalled my way immediately onto a major motorway.

As first steps go, this did not bode so well (for reference, I cycled onto motorways three times during my trip. I have no real excuse and truly, I am lucky to have lived to tell the tale). But every journey must start with one step, and I figure that rings true even if the first step happens to be a narrowly averted meeting with the grim reaper.

Said death avoided, my route started in misty, moody, Dieppe. Greeted by a gloriously friendly Airbnb host I chatted about my trip in rusty French before heading out for the most garlicky, buttery seafood feast imaginable. It’s important to provide the body with calories on a long cycle trip and it's part of the "grind" that I take extremely seriously. I sat with my glass of crisp French white grinning smugly like the proverbial cat that got the cream. The thought of cycling for 3 weeks, eating what I wanted, when I wanted and talking to myself AS MUCH AS I LIKED seemed too good to be true.

My days spent riding through Northern France felt like a wonderful unfurling after months in hectic London. Normandy is a beautiful, rather desolate place. At times all I saw for hours were miles of arable land and cattle. Religious iconography is ever-present and in my solitude I got super fixated on taking photos of all the beautiful crucifixes I came upon as I rolled from village to village. The other striking element of this part of the trip was that food just wasn't that easy to come by- no doubt another result of my laissez-faire attitude to route prep. I’ve travelled in the Himalayas before, but I swear finding yak milk and porridge up a mountain is a breeze compared to finding so much as a stale baguette in much of Northern France. Boy though, did I make up for it when I came upon a boulangerie or boucherie, gorging on delicious French carbohydrates (and pig) like never before.

Heading South, I kept the pace going at a respectable 50-60 miles per day. Tiny villages with ornate Mairies (town halls) and sometimes a castle thrown in for good measure gave way to more of the same. And then, almost imperceptibly, the landscape started to change. This is one of my favourite things about cycling- the world around you morphs just fast enough to feel kind of miraculous, but slow enough so that you notice the smallest of things. Dropping into Paris on day three was a world away from the silent plains of Normandy, just as winding my way through the blustery Massif Central was totally different from Lyon and it’s bustling boucheries. And all this before I'd even reached the ruddy soils of Southern France or the superyacht glamour of the French Riviera.

Now, one thing that may have crossed your mind is that, as a solo female, there’s a degree of risk involved in covering large swathes of country alone. It would be disingenuous of me to deny this outright, but on all the tours I've completed, I can honestly say that I've only felt unsafe on a couple of occasions. Yes, you get the odd leery driver, but honestly the biggest risk to me was octogenarians asking me repeatedly why the hell I didn’t have a husband with me (this happened more than you might think!).

In fact, one of the things I love most about travelling is the fact that you can leave home feeling like a complete misanthrope, but the kindness of total strangers makes it’s impossible to stay that way for long. Just a few examples of the hospitality myself and later my friend Bella (she joined me in Spain) experienced during the trip:

1. The hostel owner I called in a panic when I found myself accidentally lost in a massive forest as the sun was setting. She pinpointed my location, drove to find me and invited me to spend the night chilling with her friends over a glass of wine (or trois).
2. Antonio, the Guatemalan owner of a beautiful bar in the middle of rural France. He saw how hungry I was, sat me down, fed me homemade empanadas and closed his store so that we could have a “lock in” to listen to his Pink Floyd LPs at top volume. 
3. Karine, my Perpignan Airbnb host who not only put me up for the night but cooked for me, shared a bottle of her finest red wine with me, and regaled me with stories of her fascinating life. And on her birthday no less.
4. Quique, the airbnb host who after the hardest climb of my entire life (at one point, Bella turned literally grey and the only way to get her up the final 500m was to physically force feed her Haribo) joined us for dinner and spent the night serenading us with beautiful flamenco music. I need not bore you with the obvious life metaphors- good stuff often awaits up dem sweaty, difficult uphills etc. etc, but let's just say that evening was one of the most memorable of my life.

It wasn’t only new friends and good vibes though. There were hairy moments too. In an attempt to save my lucky baseball cap (oh the irony) I very narrowly missed being flattened by a freight train travelling at 250km/h. At another point, 40km winds literally sheered my bike helmet in two. I also had more bruises than a mouldy peach, but I cannot tell you just how magical the simplest things become when you’re out in the open, a little bashed about and totally exposed- a warm(ish) shower, a cold beer, waking up to a beautiful sunrise, an encouraging wave from a stranger. 

March turned to April and I dropped into swanky Sète in the French Riviera before wending my way down to distinctly Catalonian (even though actually French) Perpignan. It was here that I laid eyes on the landmark that I'd been working towards this whole time: the snow-topped Pyrenees. Not only was this the gateway to my new life in Spain, but it also symbolised the moment when my not too bad French would become useless, to be replaced by a language in which I could just about say "cer…ve….za" (to be fair, the most important word for any bike tourer). It also happened to mark the point when I would be joined in Girona by my best friend Bella. I’d spent most of the last two weeks screeching Taylor Swift and Foo Fighters at full volume as I pedalled through desolate French countryside. I love solitude when I’m on my bike, but I was looking forward to having somebody to provide the harmonies.

Scaling the Pyrenees was hard, but despite being underprepared I'm not a masochist- I of course took the smoothest route; lots of puff, a few "don't look down" moments, but nothing like the vertiginous cliff edges you might be imagining. And that was it; I rolled past lines of empty booths at passport control and into my new life.

The next week travelling with Bella from Northern Spain to Valencia felt like a dream. There was endless laughter, some astonishingly poor attempts at speaking Spanish, and new sights, smells and tastes around every corner. As we descended South we could literally feel the sea air warming up and it really felt like our destination was beckoning. I'll never forget the experience of arriving in the countryside just outside of Valencia. By pure fluke we managed to time this to coincide with the height of the very short orange blossom season. As we cycled through miles of orange groves, the air was filled with the most intoxicating smell- spicy, floral and totally otherworldly. I've heard people wax lyrical about this before and assumed it was all over-exaggeration. Can confirm: not over-exaggeration.

Eighteen days after I'd set off, we arrived in Valencia, my beloved new home. Stopping for the obligatory “bike in the air” photo I was at the last minute nearly squashed by my own bike (poor upper body strength), and to top things off, Bella’s bike got stolen more or less straight away. But despite all this, we somehow still both went to bed with exhausted smiles on our faces.

And that's the magic of cycle touring; all the separate bits and pieces sound kind of like suffering when you describe them in isolation, but put them all together and you get something that's the closest thing to pure contentment I think I'll ever experience.

My favourite travel writer Anthony Bourdain summed this contradiction up more beautifully than I ever could, so I'll hand over to him to sum up:

"Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”.

Here's to the trips you take in the coming months; to the ways in which they change you, to the things you take away with you, and most importantly to the good you leave behind.

Abs

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