Day 29 - ... or "Day 28" take two

So with our rather failed day yesterday - Zaragoza was not reachable - we know had to spend most of today trying to either get my bike fixed or figure out a way for us to get our bikes and bags to a train-station so we can get a train to Zaragoza.

Danny woke earlier than I did, I just was not feeling in a good mood that morning thanks to an overwhelming sense of despair that I had completely fubared any straightforward attempt to get to Zaragoza and thus Barcelona. Danny left some breakfast and sailed off on my bike into Ejea to a) find the elusive tourist info office of the day before and b) see if my bike could be fixed. We didn't hold up much hope, but Danny insisted that we try.

He left and I stayed behind to have breakfast and pack things away, which I did slowly as the sun was making things hot and all I wanted to do was lie down and soak in the pleasure such weather brings to the skin. Eventually, after much moving of things I took the time out to lie down and just not think of a thing. So enjoyable in the sun. There is something quite unique about the warm sun on your skin, it isn't the warmth that does it, but some strange combination of everything that great nuclear furnace in the sky gives us. Its how I imagine plants must feel when they are fed with solar energy.

I dozed peacefully in the sun till I heard Danny cycle up the farmer's road and onto the field. Ah, what a welcome sight, for Danny appeared with bike and a new carrier, shining bright and shiny in the sun that I had so been enjoying. We packed up quickly and continued on the route were to have taken the day before. Ah, but cycling of the day before had gone, as if in punishment for my broken-down machine. The wind tore right into us and the straight roads left us travelling directly into the wind for most of the day. Slow, so slow. Danny was suffering from a somewhat upset stomach that day, so he was not on his best performance. The sun was still hot, but the rest of the day made the whole experience frustrating rather than enjoyable.

Danny wished to take the train to Zaragoza, to make up for lost time and because he was feeling unwell. I had chosen a route that would not only take us near a town with a trainstation, but would also take us closer to Zaragoza as well.

Trains in spain do not operate as they do in the UK. We reached Zuera to find the trainstation for Zuera wasn't actually there, but rather in a small industrial part of a smaller town just outside it. Once more the Spainish signs came to ruin our day and we spent an hour or so cycling through industrial estates. We found a huge carpark, and we thought it was connected to the train-station, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a car-depot for cars before they are shipped off to be sold.

Finally a friendly spainish bloke showed us in his car, and we stopped to check the time-table and what can only be described as a very run-down and, more importantly, very shut train station. It turns out there were only two trains a day that stopped in Zuera (its not a small town), and in between times the station was closed. Very, very strange. Obviously trains were never as important as they were in Britain, and Spain never developed a history of travelling by train to the same extent as we have.

With no train till 5pm, we decided to make the 25km to Zaragoza instead. In Zuera we stopped for lunch (late), and then cycled south to join the main roads into Zaragoza. We arrived there, along a messy and busy motorway-esque dual-carriageway, that was mostly the complete opposite of pleasant. Once again the Spainish made finding the tourist info offices hard to find, so we cycled to the train-station of Zaragoza as the light faded away. We found a tourist info box and whilst I counted the seconds on a rather cool digital clock, Danny queried the people inside.

We found out that there was a train tomorrow at 12:2o, just as on saturday (seems sundays work the same as saturdays for trains in spain), so we went a-searching for accomadation. We ended up in this dingy, if somewhat grand hotel, in that classic style where everything is brown and everything is bathed in brown-light.

Danny went down to the cafe that stood next to the hotel, and I slept and watched spainish TV. I became fascinated by the Spainish version of our channels devoted entirely to those stupid word games. The woman presenter (whose face reminded me of the "Mouth of Sauron" off of the films - her mouth was out of proportion to the rest of her head) seemed to not be getting any calls at all, and because I couldn't understand the language I focused entirely on the body-language, which was classicly nervous - it was almost fun. Eventually I drifted off to sleep, and Danny returned at 3am (though really it was 4am, and had we known that we would have been in Barcelona earlier).

Tomorrow Barcelona and the apex of our travels.