14th, 110km.

I'm really happy to be travelling up this bit of coast. Not only is it semi-familiar, from family holidays round here when I was younger, but the cycle path is in the shade of the trees and I can see the faces of the traffic- a small detail which impoves your quality of life significantly when your main source of interaction all day is negotiating traffic.

I feel like I've been travelling alone for an age, though ti's only been a week!

Last night I celebrated with some Belgian surfers, a lovely bunch who gave me beer and crisps but didn't want any of my chocolate and had never heard of psy-trance. They were horrified by the very concept of my sleeping out in the open, "Won't you get arrested for sleeping rough?!"

Got woken up this morning to the peaceful sound of the beach-cleaning tractor, and by the time I left the beach at 8 I counted more than 40 surfers just in the little bit of sea in front of where I slept.

They were very funny, I don't see the appeal AT ALL- they do their stretches in about a qurarter of the time it takes me to do mine, and then they leg it down to the water and straight in as though they'll chicken out if they don't do it quickly.
Then, they just get knocked over time and time again into the waves.
Woo!

The roads were kind today, but the wind was not, so I clocked up 110 and now am in Parentes-en-Bom, on the shore of a lake (Yay! I do so very much like lakes) which swallowed up the sun as I ate my dinner, and is singing me a soft lullaby now. I've got a wooden jetty to sleep on, very excited!

At one point today, I passed a bus shelter with a poster that jumped out at me. It was a face constructed from multicoloured psychedelic swirls, with glowing eyes and a geometric mandala shining from its 3'd eye, with some kind of cosmic background. My psytrance detectors pricked up and I swerved round in the road, excited that there might be a party. Disappointed I found it was just advertizing hilight tribe's new album. Ach well.

Thank you all for your concern and advice with the brake cable, everyone; the lovely helpful man in Gama cycles in Vitoria assured me it was fine and gave me a spare (it's basically snapping off where it attaches to the frame; I wasn't sure if thqt meant it wouldn't have enough grip and might slip through... apparently not :) )