What I hadn't realised when signing up for the holiday, was that instead of the rides being like Sunday morning rides 40 - 50 miles, they were all around 80 -90 miles. Oh bugger! I went out with the Sociables group and thank goodness Stuart decided to come with me today.
The first part of the ride was OK. 40 miles to the coffee stop and I pretty much kept up. The ride was very picturesque, country lanes, stone walls, meadows of spring flowers and orange groves. Sadly no time for any photos!
At the coffee stop in a large square in one of the villages we were stunned to find the square jam packed with cyclists.
After coffee things started to go a bit wrong. Although keeping up on the flat hadn't been too bad, the hills really separated me from the group.
The other riders were really supportive, but I was feeling really bad about the group having to stop so often for me to catch up. Eventually, the gap was too great, and the group think we have gone a different route. We hadn't, but we had lost sight of the group, Stuart's Garmin had died, we didn't have a proper map, and navigating became tricky.
We did however manage to stay on the correct route, which is pretty amazing, given Stuart and I can get lost even when we have lots of navigational aids at our disposal.
We were reunited with the group at the lunch stop, again in a lovely square, unfortunately I sat too long in the sun, and ate a very cheesy lasagne and then felt like throwing up. So again no photos.
By the time we left the lunch spot, it was nearly 5pm and there was still 40km to go. Stuart and I said we would return at our own pace and therefore I didn't have the guilt or pressure of holding other people up.
It was a tough final 40km and we got to the hotel around 7pm. The end result was that we had ridden 77 miles and climbed over 4,000 feet. However, I didn't feel particularly great about this given I got dropped on day 1. What the hell am I doing here?
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