Waking up in beds, no chronic back or shoulder pain from sleeping on the ground, was blissful. Looking at the map reaching Barcelona was an inevitability! But we had a bit of conflict, about the route to take, because it was either along the dual carriageway or over a national park hillock. We were told about this route by our mate from Decathlon as he said it was a beautiful cycle and there was good downhill sections the other side of it. But Andy's knee was hurting so he didn't fancy a hill. So we set off towards the dual carriageway. Stopped by a petrol station to get a map of Catalonia, as my map only showed motorways going into Barcelona. But they only had maps of pretty much every region of Spain, excluding Catalonia... So my map would have to suffice for the rest of the journey. Getting to the dual carriageway we went up a bit of the slip road and found part way up there was a massive sign with crosses through pictures of gyspy horse carriages, mopeds, walkers and, alas, bicycles. But our merry man from Decathlon told us about a bit of "how you say? We say the asphalto," "yeh we same the same," "no," "OK we don't." Anyway so he told us about the asphalt that went down the side of the dual carriageway, so we found this and tried it out. It worked well for quite a few miles, but then turned to hard ground and gravel. And then stopped. In an industrial site. Finding our way around the site, under the main road and into some random town. No signs around to say what town it was, we were very lost. Eventually a man came running down towards us, so I walked over into his path and shout "Senior! Senior!" He kindly stopped "si," "errrmm" I hold the map up. He goes "Maybe I could speak in a English? Can you speak English," "errm yes, I can speak English..." "we can both a speak in English, good! How can I help" "Where (the F***) are we?" He showed us and we asked how to get to Barcelona - long shot because we were still about 40 miles away. He said you can pretty much only go on the dual carriageway to get there, no small roads. So we found our way through the town back near the main road and there was a side road, so we took it. And then, oh no, the first mechanical failure of the trip! I had got a puncture! As the road was fairly gravelly a stone had gone through the gapping voids I had in my tyres as they were very old tyres. Sitting on the verge, I felt sharp little pricks on my legs and arms. I was being attacked by a load of bloody ants! Rascals! On we plodded, getting a bit hot and bothered, arguing whether we should go on the main road or not. Eventually however we had very little choice. And reluctantly I led the way onto the duel carriageway. It was pretty busy, and every now and then we had to go into the car lanes to avoid stuff in the hard shoulders. After a while I just had enough. So pulled down a slip road and we cycled into a town. Now about 10 miles or so from Barcelona. Looking at the map the road would soon turn into a motorway and all the other roads on my map were motorways into Barcelona. So we found a train station, somehow Andy confabulated with the Algerian woman there that we wanted tickets to Barcelona and we seemed to receive the correct tickets. and hopped on for the final small part. The train began to fill more and more as we got closer to Barcelona and we released how annoying we much have been taking up a lot of passenger space on the train.
One of our first views of Barcelona on our bikes (Barcelona's "Arco del Triunfo" in the background)
Arriving into the main station in Barcelona we could not yet feel relief as we had to now drag our bikes up London Underground-esque escalators... Now Finally, feeling relieved that we were now in Barcelona and had a detailed map of it, we emerged onto the streets of Barcelona. But as always there is a but, the map did not cover the section of Barcelona where the train station was. So after half an hour or so I eventually worked out that the big diagonal street we were on was on my map, just had to guess which way to go! Luckily getting the direction right we followed the diagonal road unitl we could find our way onto the map. Barcelona has some good bike lanes so was quite a nice safe cycle through the city. Going to the main tourist office, we organised a hotel to stay at, annoyingly at the top of the city so another long cycle through the whole city.
At the hotel, we booked in and asked if we could take our bikes to our room. No was the answer, not even parts of the bikes. So we asked if we could put our bikes in their carpark. "Put them in a carparking space, then take a ticket and pay when you leave," "WHAT!" It was something like £25 a day to keep our bikes there. A massive joke, couldn't even leave our bikes in the corner where nothing was, out of the way! Grrr. So we had to hop back onto our bikes and find somewhere to lock them up. It was incrediable the bikes felt so light, stable and easy to ride (as we had removed all the luggage off them). So we tried to find a bike shop hoping we could store them there, or buy some more subtantial locks. Because if you look at any bike in Barcelona locked up, they have at least three locks and are of higher quality than locks we use for motorbikes. But Mr Joyce not known for his great ideas had one. We went past a mulitstory car park, and you could pay for 24 hour parking. Interesting. So we carried on a bit and saw one down a side street. A little old man came out to us he didn't even know "yes" in English, so hand motions, acting and my dodgy Spanish would have to suffice. So holding up 4 fingers and saying dias (I got dias from looking at a sign they had and it said "dias" on it, this was my queue for remember the word for day!) pointing at our bici's, he worked out what we wanted. And kept saying "trinta", "trinta", "trinta". What is he on about?!? He went off and got some paper and wrote the number 30, ohhhh 30 euros for the 4 days. Got ya! But he wrote down something like 19-22, which was 4 days, but we needed 4 full days if that makes sense. So I pointed at the 2 of the 22 and said "tres." Excellant so this was all sorted we plonked our bikes in the corner of his garage and locked them up. One worry off our minds. Next "worry" was to find some boxes for our bikes to get them home! But we have a few days to do this, so time to chillax!! Picking up a few bits from the nearby supermarket ie big bottles of beer and cakes. And then went off to a restuarant nearby called Inca Burger. Calling it an early night, watched some Barcelona Football TV drank some beer and went to sleep. VIVA BARCELONA. WE HAVE MADE IT!!!
For the next couple of days we had nigh on zero euros... Well about 15 ish euros for each day. McDonalds were doing a 1 euro chicken burger, so we survived on about 5 of these a day. Otherwise we sunbathed on the beach. Andy listened to music, whilst I watched the extremely attractive half-naked Swedish girls wander about. Happy times!! As we had restricted our luggage, we had no swimwear nor at this stage clean towels. So we went swimming in our boxer shorts and let the sun dry us. We had to go into the sea in turns as there are many unscrupulous fellows about... Other activities included walking around A LOT, and in the blistering mid-summer heat of Barcelona this was sweaty! We marvelled at the Sargrada Familia, Gaudi's cathedral and other Gaudi buildings. And sat in an Irish bar to watch football, sipping extremely slowly on a pint to make it last about 2 hours. Times were desperate, but we still did enough to embrace Barcelona and its charm.
Andy in McDonalds, I got a weird look from the worker here. Probably because we had been to this same McDonalds about 20 times in three days...
On the bike side of things, we still needed to get a cardboard box. Eventually we managed this by going to a Decathlon shop in the centre of Barcelona. Here we spoke to a man, he wasn't too sure what we were saying. So before we had left England I had looked up the Spanish for cardboard box... being caja de carton. This sort of helped, and finally we all came to an understanding. He explained a truck comes in the evening about 10pm to deliver new bikes. So we were to meet him behind the shop in the delivery area to get a couple of boxes from him. So at 10 we arrived and found our man, he unpacked a couple of boxes and gave them to us. Right, so cardboard box sorted... But new problem. The boxes were humongous. As they had been containing fully assembled bikes. Nonetheless, we were now in ownership of some boxes, excellent. So we carried these boxes through the heart of Barcelona, though great hoards of Japanese people and other tourists, using our boxes as battering rams to force our way through. Back to our friend with the car park, he greeted us and we explained(ish) that we were leaving the boxes with the bikes. He seemed satisfied by this and returned to his booth to pick his nails again.
Us with our new bags (as we needed to get our stuff home, hence had no bags beforehand) outside our most favouritest shop ever Decathlon!
The next day we went about getting some parcel tape. We found a stationary type store and Andy asked if they had parcel tape, to people that could barely speak English. So that didn't go far, in the mean time I found the parcel tape and we were set to obliterate our boxes. Back to the car park, armed with tools and tape. Cutting the boxes to size and dismantling the bikes so they would become smaller. And then taping the holy crap out of the boxes. We took our remaining cardboard out of the car park and after some time found a bin. It was now quite late and we were stopped by some raucous scenes. Massive explosions and a mob type atmosphere. We joined a crowd watching some crazed pyromaniacs prancing the roads eating, breathing and making fire - everywhere. They were firing the fire at us and anyone nearby - im sure it was safe and city approved, but it was pretty scary and very crazy. We decided we should escape this madness and try and get back to our hotel. I should explain we were pretty tired at this stage, normally I would be all over this sort of thing. But the side roads and adjacent roads all had these people parading up and down completely trapping us into this area. Fireworks with huge explosions were being fired down the streets - it was almost like a strange version of safe-ish street warfare!
I didn't take many photos this trip, but there are a few of the Sagrada Familia. Though all terrible, this was about the best one!
Back at the hotel we booked a disabled taxi, as I figured this would be best to fit our bikes in. The taxi driver turned up and pretty much spoke no language anyone speaks in the world - Flemish... So that was no French, no English and not really any Spanish I know... Anyway we jabbered away and ended up at the airport. I was getting frustrated because I understood he was asking which terminal. So I kept saying to him "2" or "dos". But he wasn't listening and eventually goes "easyJet, Oh okay.. terminal 2!" OH MY GOD YES, AS I HAVE JUST BEEN SAYING FOR THE LAST 20 MINUTES!!! Anyway here very early (maybe 6/8 hours early) just in case something wrong happened regarding our boxes. And guess what something did go wrong! Obviously we couldn't put them on the normally baggage travelator, but then we couldn't put them through her large luggage scanner - travelator. So she made a phone call to someone, we watched on nervously. Eventually she goes okay, take your boxes to the other terminal and go to Gate 22 and a man will meet you there... So off we plod to this other terminal with our boxes and waited at the gate. After what seemed like an age a man found us and took us through - pretty much to the runway. Here there were soldiers waiting by a large luggage scanner, they told us to put our boxes through. BUT. Guess what? Yup, this scanner was too small as well... So they told us to cut open our boxes. Errm with what exactly? I had my passport in my pocket and about 5 euros.. It might take me a while to break in to be brutally honest. Ah no problem, Manuel had a flick knife and proceeded in butchering our boxes up, chucked our bikes through the scanners. Surprisingly no problems. And then set about forcing the bikes back into the boxes... Nightmare. They weren't being successful in putting the bikes back in and then told us it'll be fine, you can go now... Andy I'll be honest was not being very optimistic about either the return of his bike, nor if the bikes did make it, the quality of his bike... After finally landing back into Luton Airport, the first things we see are our boxes waiting next to baggage collection. We had successfully cycled to Barcelona, made it back with everything in one piece!
