DAYS 2 and 3: 445+802+780 = one very surprised cyclist!!

Your mind does some really strange stuff when you're on a bike. First of all, you're thinking, nah, thirteen kilometres really isn't all that much. We can knock that off and be having coffee by 4:00 p.m. Of course, you think that because you're 500 metres above sea level, but the cloud cover is somewhere around 600 metres and the snow limit is hovering somewhere between 650 and 800, so you really don't have much of a chance to see the challenge right in front of you. So you keep plugging on. And then your brain starts doing strange things. It starts bringing back old arguments that you had in high school. Then you find yourself chanting old songs like "Once I was the King of Spaaa-aiin..." at the top of your lungs because the odds of anyone being within earshot at minimal at best. There's so little traffic going up the side of the mountain that you end up stopping every car going up and asking the driver how much further there is between wherever here is and the next mountain pass. Then you start repeating the seven times tables, having an argument with an ex-boyfriend who's seven thousand miles away. Then the top of the mountain comes. Smile! You are in Spain! There are clumps of snow the size of small boulders on the side of the road but the chunks of salt haven't dissolved, and somehow that makes you feel better, even if your shoes are totally squishy from having absorbed so much water.

This is what it's like to climb a very snowy, very isolated mountain.

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Considering we've had to do three mountain passes in three days, I don't feel that bad. Part of that may have to do with the fact that I did so much training on the treadmill before leaving that walking up roads with a 6% or 7% grade doesn't feel that weird (although when you're on a treadmill you don't have to push a bike alongside you.) The snow is strange, though. It's that strange sense of isolation that snow gives you, which makes you feel like you'll come face to face with some emaciated being hissing "My treeeaaasssuuuuuuuuuuree....." at any moment.

We've had it all over the last two days: Snow, sleet, rain, hail...it's been wild. The weather forecast has been crazy but it's supposed to get somewhat warmer over the next two days.

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We're staying in the new Pilgrims' hostel in Pamplona, and I gotta tell you, it is a work of art. It's gorgeous - situated in the old Jesuit monastery, it's got capacity for 100 pilgrims, a huge kitchen, free washing machines and dryers for €1 a shot, huge hot showers, and an art gallery. The local council has done a marvellous job of converting the building, and I'm actually looking forward to staying there tonight, rather than just crashing and being up and moving at some ungodly hour. Oh, and the refuge has put restrictions on when you can leave in the mornings, too - the doors don't open until 6:30AM, so with any luck that'll put the kibosh on pilgims crashing and bouncing around at 5:30 AM to be the first out the door.