April 15, 2011

We wake to a really cold morning – only 7 degrees and a strong wind.  My knee feels better than it did last night and Ken´s hands are OK.  All in all we feel fairly optimistic about the day ahead.  We do, however, decide to keep today´s ride short.

We grab breakfast in a bar opposite the ‘hostal’ before heading out of the city.  We decide to have a second breakfast in another bar half-an-hour later.  We buy a few snacks for the road (doughnuts mainly) and head into the mountains. 

We’re feeling pretty positive.  Somehow things don’t seem so bad today as they did yesterday.  We expect a windy day today, Ken knows that his squeak is back and we anticipate that the route is going to be tough as we are heading once again into the high mountains.  We have a really long steady climb up to the ‘Puerto de Oncala at 1454 metres (higher than Ben Nevis) and then an equally long descent down to a tiny village called Yanguas, where we find a room in a beautiful stone house in the centre of the village.  What a contrast to last night – the owner treats us like family.  She cooks dinner for us and tells us all about the village.  All in all a good day.

We have now completed our first two weeks of the trip and have covered just over 900 kilometres, which keeps us well on track to cover the full route in time (wind, injuries etc etc permitting).

PS  Sorry for the late posting of the past couple of days but we are in the back of beyond and WiFi hot spots are few and far between.