Day 26 - Traffic, Tunnels and Temperature

I may have mentioned at some point that I do not like the Spainish road system, today was the day that solidified this opinion in my head.

We left the campsite relatively early to a rather dismal looking rain then no-rain kinda weather pattern, huge lines of cloud punctuated by lines of clear sky seem to be very popular with the northern coast of spain (perhaps that is why we saw so many umbrellas - those umbrella companies are making a tonne of cash in Spain). We said goodbye to our drinking partners from the night before and wished them well (though I was secretly envious of their red car) and set-off. The way down, being a steep hill all the way, nearly had me off the side once or twice - when cycling in hilly areas make sure you are equipped with decent brakes - and I felt sorry for my little rubber brake pads, who were really feeling the burn that day.

Got into town and tried to navigate our way out. We had picked up a map of the town centre, which handily included the direction toward, what seems to be, the only way out of San-Sebastian - the big fat main road. Dodging motorways like crazy, we finally get onto what we hope is the main road out and to Lasarte-Oria, where we were to begin our trek south over the mountains along a minor road that dived in and out of the motorway going the same route - to Tolosa and further, if you wish to check the map. Lasarte-Oria is literally a blip on the map, but it took us over an hour to get there thanks to the enormously complex and crappy Spainish road system that seems to exist in these parts. Signs appear occasionallly, but mostly to prohibit bicycles, and we had to rely a lot on pray and guesswork to finally get us to Lasarte-Oria where - they go and do it all over again.

Lasarte-Oria lies on the route that the N-1 road takes south to Tolosa, but which we cannot follow because it takes on motorway characteristics there. Beyond Lasarte-Oria there begins a minor road that connects all the small towns alongside the N-1 together and to the main road. However this road doesn't start in Lasarte-Oria, to get to it you have to - travel up the road we cannot travel on! We didn't realise this however, so we followed the main street going through Lasarte-Oria as it turned south hoping to join the minor road that followed the N-1 but thats not exactly what happened. Okay, picture a normal road, two lanes, one going south (we are on this one), one going in the opposite direction. Lots of turnings off to the motorway, but we are clued up on the signs for that (blue is bad for bikes) and we head straight south where the road doesn't so much end as goes into someones garage. The lane north leads from the north-bound lanes of the motorway and are one way, the southbound lane is actually only there so you can drive to someone's garage. I mean, c'mon! They are not making it easy for us.

Obviously looking forlorn and lost, we were helped by a really friendly guy in a white van. I had already figured out a way round our problem (I've become quite interested in the art of map-reading and navigation - I like maps), but he showed us the way. Basically it involved us climbing up what must have been a 15 or 20% hill to a town just east of Lasarte-Oria and then following the road there further south to join the smaller road to Tolosa and beyond. I don't like hills, but such are the Pyrennees, and it wasn't too hard going after the first climb. When we finally reached the town of Urnieta and followed the road south to Andoain we thought that our troubles were over... No, no they weren't. At Andoain the regional government had cleverly not put up any sign detailing how to get from Andoain to the next town up the road. Wasted an hour looking for a way round, and eventually through sheer chance found a sign pointing in the right direction. At last we were on our way out of there.

But, no. The sign we saw didn't point in the direction we wanted and we found ourselves on this rough track heading up the side of a river. I had had enough at this point and after a little checking of the map realised that this may take us to sort of where we want to go (but certainly not a planned route). Danny asked a couple of walkers if this road led to Lietza, and they said that yes it did, but it was very steep (it wasn't), so off we set into the wilderness. We kept on this road, little more than a stoney track, for what seemed like hours (we have no idea how long it took us) because we had to cycle so slowly due to having thin tyres rather than heavy duty thick ones more suited to this type of terrain. Danny's in particular are extremely thin, 23s, but guess who sprung a puncture? Me. So we stopped and I replaced the inner-tube and we set-off again (though unbeknownst to me, my tyre still wasn't right as I had a slow puncture which would later make the trip very dangerous late at night).

This track was just amazing to cycle on, and the road wasn't steep at all. I had been dreading the Pyrennees quite badly, as my hill-climbing is appalling and I just end up in absolute pain from it, but this route proved to be slow, easy and not painful at all. Indeed it was actually a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the entire way up to Lietza. The river was a raging torrent, and supplied many interesting vistas. The road wound through the mountains and in some cases through the mountains. Tunnels, though we weren't sure about how they had been made, offered plenty of excitement as they were unlit and some of them wound round so much and were so long that it was pitch black in them (the only way Danny could make it through was thanks to his head torch, the only way I could make it through was thinks to his back light). One of the tunnels, which made me question whether they had been man-mad, rose up to the height of a small church, far beyond what would be needed to fit a car through and was quite site. There were also old abandoned tunnels and bridges where the road had changed course and these relics of a previous route had been claimed back by nature; the tunnels becoming bat caves (to the bat cave!) and the bridges becoming beautiful, vine-entwined paths for the wild-life to use. It was beautiful.

We finally reached the end and cycled to Leitza as the sun began to go down. We still had a little way to go, and on the map it seemed to follow a little river valley south. It didn't. It climbed higher and higher through the mountains till we must have been over 800 metres. As we climbed, and it was a fairly steep climb, the snow began appearing. The road had been cleared, but on the sides where these huge mounds of snow, like decomposing snow-men. In my mind the whole scene is blue, like some Narnia winter or the Parkwood Path in the 1st year when it snowed. I was not in a good mood, it would be fair to say that I was in a very miserable mood. I was tired and I was too hot, for indeed, whilst there was snow on the ground, rain in the air and a temperature that got cold enough so that for some of the way it really did precipitate snow, cycling up hill has the odd effect of making you really really hot. I was obviously wearing all the clothes I could (including my new hat that I had bought, but I had to unzip everything just because the heat was getting too much: our bodies were working so hard that the excess heat was making us boil.

Obviously as soon as your body stops working your core temperature plummets crazy-mad, which is what happened on the way down. It was round about this time that I realised that my back wheel was going down: the slow puncture had made itself known. But we couldn't stop, had we stopped it would have been very difficult to start again. I do not think I have been so cold in my life. So there we were, coasting down-hill, my back-wheel feeling severely under-pressurized and the light fading fast, heading for the town of Lekunberri, where we hoped we would find a campsite that was open. We did ... sort of. It was actually closed, but the woman in charge was there and she let us stay in one of the log cabin places (basically a room with bunkbeds to fit six and just for the purposes of sleeping). The rules said no cooking, but we cooked anyway and I had a very odd night of not sleeping on the ground (for I had chosen the top-bunk!).