Monday, September 21st
Route Map and Elevation Profile
The Spanish certainly know how to have a party, and how to clean up afterwards. Some people thought it had rained overnight, but this was the result of street cleaning - as the English said, "this wouldn't happen back home".
Tony thought he had the wrong bike for today's ride - had Bike Adventures become Motorbike Adventures overnight?
The way out of Tarragona wasn't particularly complicated, but it did involve some backroads and bike paths - this one still under construction, apparently.
We crossed over what appeared to be the new high speed rail line from Valencia to Barcelona - actually, quite close to here the main rail line from Madrid to Barcelona crossed over the top of the new line. Now that's an infrastructure project!
From about 20km out of Tarragona we started to see rocky hills and mountains for most of the rest of the day.
The Catalan elections are next Sunday, and the independence flag is flying everywhere. There's those bloody wind farms again!
At about a third of the way, we took a slight detour into a town and had a nice coffee and cake - Richard road with us most of the day, but Graham decided to push on alone.
Our constant companion for much of the ride...
As I've said before, there's always a village, church, a castle, a field and some mountains...not necessarily in that order.
It was getting quite warm by now, and for a period the long and winding road was straight - just as well there wasn't too much traffic on this stretch.
When we finally returned to the coast, we looked for a bar overlooking the beach. But all we found was a nudist beach, and no bar - I'm not sure whether that was a good or bad outcome.
Catalan water, and just down the road a nuclear power plant - does that mean desalinated water?!
More windmills Joe - oh yeh, who's Joe again?
We catch our first view of the Ebre Delta, a very significant natural feature of this part of the coast. It's also a very important agricultural area - we expect to see olive groves from here to Gibraltar.
It's Monday lunch time, and all of the restaurants are full. Our need is liquid, and at 17km from the end of the ride, we look for a bar.
We think the bikes will be sake beside the children's playground (where there's also a water fountain to fill our drink bottles).
So we find a spot under an umbrella, and have a shandy or a beer.
The water looks inviting, but nobody is swimming, and we still have work to do.
The final run into Ampost is on a path beside irrigation canals - ie. it's very flat!
We cross the very clean looking Ebre river...
...where a couple of boys are jumping from an old (Roman?) wall. The motorway to Valencia, and all parts south, crosses the river in the background.
Our hotel is well situated, but being Monday there aren't many restaurants open.
While most of us eat together in one of the few places open, Steve and Robert spend their evening trying to located a missing rider! By 10:00pm (!) all ends "happily", but I'm sure we'll get the gory details in the morning.
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