May 26, 201

To sum up today – windy!

We are definitely going the wrong way along the ‘Camino’ today, not only because all the walkers and cyclists are going the other way towards Santiago but because the wind is too. We are in an area that we know from travelling to and from Portugal and so we are aware that today’s run is across long stretches of flat open countryside. We have been looking forward to it as an opportunity to speed along in top gear. It was not to be. We were either battling against a headwind or a strong crosswind depending on the curves in the road and it reduced our speed to something we would normally expect to achieve in the mountains. The only good thing about it was that the wind in our faces kept us cool all day.

We kept going despite being a bit disappointed because we have to make it to a place called Alange, the reason being that tomorrow we will be travelling a road we have travelled many times before and we know that after Alange it is at least 120 kilometres before there is any chance of a place to stay. Once we reach Merida, about 20 kilometres before Alange, we leave the ‘Camino’ behind and turn off into territory where we are unlikely to see any other cyclists – it’s pretty unlikely that we’ll see any other human beings actually.

In Alange there are a number of hotels to choose from, as it is a spa town which are always very popular with elderly Spaniards. We manage to pick one run by a Basil Fawlty-like character – do these people start out that way or is it being a hotelier that does it? Dinner was an unusual event with ‘Basil’ rushing in and out from the dining room to the kitchen serving tiny portions of nondescript food to us and a dozen or so ‘old folk’ (that’s not us …yet).