Waking to an overcast day definitely made up for the disappointment of last night's camping spot. The cooler conditions and less sunshine were great for cycling in with no need to stop for a siesta. Unfortunately we couldn't get many miles on the clock I'm the morning because we had my spoke to repair and a few e-mails to send. We sat down at a cafe in town for a team first...breakfast that was not muesli and UHT milk. What a treat! I got my spoke fixed and we clocked the weather for the day...stormy. However, we also clocked the fact that Morocco was currently at 30 degrees Celsius. Fingers crossed the temperature stays down there.
Again, Seville was entirely impossible to navigate out of. We ended up on the motorway cycling in the direction of a bridge which looked like suicide to try and cross in anything other than a heavy goods vehicle. Stuck with no other option we had to hop under a fence at the side of the road onto a scrubby looking road...at least it wasn't shared with cars travelling at 70mph +. only once we got off this road did we realise that we'd technically broken into the airport and probably caused a bit of a panic for some security guards!
As with every big city there's a lot of debris at the side of the road and in this case a big chunk of metal blew out Char's front tyre causing a fairly spectacular fall and a number of cuts and bruises. As you would imagine, Char was pretty shaken by this but a standard dose of salami and smiling cow cheese baguette got her back on track!
You know a storm is probably big news if the local weather station is reporting at the side of the road side being bombarded by branches and huge chunks of bark. However, we're made of tougher stuff so we cycled on eventually stopping to check everyone was still together. The guys were all present but Char was nowhere to be seen. She arrived a good twenty minutes later in a car...her BACK tyre got a puncture! The man who offered Char a lift, Javier, was a total gentleman and also offered her a lift to Lebrija; about 10 miles down the road. Thanks very much Javier.
So the guys battled their way to Lebrija against shockingly strong winds to meet Char at the train station where we quickly got down to cooking dinner on the steps in our camping stoves...the wind was hungry work.
After her fall today and the heat from the previous few days Char decided to get the train to Cadiz and a bus to Tarifa for a day off to recover. She later told us she had a relaxing sleep on a hammock on a roof terrace in Cadiz...much better than the lad's attempt later that evening. We cycled a few more miles and slept on the tents in what looked like a horse lesson arena...just mixing it up a bit!
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