Author: Garry

Garry McGivern’s Spanish and Portuguese bike ride Wednesday 20th-May-2015 Tarifa to Jerez. 70 miles. Very familiar campsite last night, and I eventually worked out why. It was the same campsite I stayed in after returning from Morocco on my 2009 tour. It hadn’t changed at all.

I’ve found a new game to play today, which I came up with whilst drudging up some hill. Catch the bead of sweat! The idea is that I have to hit my crossbar with the sweat that drips off my face. It’s a lot harder than you think trying to time it right! I got pretty good at it after a while. Too much sun, or too much time on my own perhaps!?!

I managed to get lost again today while cycling through a town called Chiclana. Everything was going okay right up until I hit some roadworks, and the road I wanted was closed. So I followed the diversion signs, telling me to go left, or should I say sign, there was only one. And that was at the point where the road was closed. I never saw another one. After turning left and cycling for about a mile, I realised I was going in the wrong direction. And after cycling around in circles for half an hour or so, I came across a McDonald’s. So I stopped for something to eat and used their wifi to find the road I wanted, which, as it turned out, was only one hundred yards away!

More Confusion

I’m staying in a hotel tonight as there were no campsites around. And seeing as they had good wifi, I thought I’d check out the ferries home. I got so confused and wished I hadn’t. I need to be home by the 4th of June as Julie is on holiday. But the ferries either left before I could reach Santander or Bilbao, they were fully booked, or they left too late. I’m giving up now and going for a few beers. I’ll take another look later. Hopefully, it’ll all be a lot clearer then, or maybe not clear at all if I have too much to drink!!

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Well I decided not to move today or rather it was forced on me not to move! When I was pitching the tent yesterday on my tiny piece of grass I noticed that there were some water sprinklers in the grass, so despite there not being much room as it was I now had to try and avoid the sprinklers which I thought I had! At about 4am this morning I was awoken buy the sound of a hose pipe being turned on and pointing straight onto the tent, know problem I thought it’s just the sprinklers coming on until I realised that it was a bit too loud to be outside the tent! Quickly I jumped out of my sleeping bag and by the time I’d opened the inner tent door water was pouring in everywhere the floor of the tent was in about an inch of water it was like a river flowing through the tent! Once I opened the outer tent door and got outside I noticed that the outer tent wall had gone over one of the sprinklers so it was spouting up in between the inner and outer tent! Once outside I just pulled the outer tent wall over the sprinkler so it was now spraying outside the tent but now all over me, I now was also soaked! Once I got back into the tent it was carnage there was water everywhere the inner tent was now full of water and my mattress and sleeping bag were just floating in the middle of it all! Deciding that there really wasn’t a lot I could do until it was light I crawled back into my sleeping bag and tried to stay on mattress as much as possible to avoid getting too wet until it was light! Luckily I always pack everything away into my waterproof panniers every night ever since I got blown away in a tornado! Funnily enough that was also in Spain! Don’t seem to have much luck here really! Once it was light and the sun was up things soon dried out. In some respects it worked out quite well that I stayed here as I had a problem with the website hence there was no update last night but hopefully it’s all fixed and working ok again. Must make sure before I go to bed tonight to make sure that sprinklers on the outside of the tent!