I wasn’t able to fit my bike into the car when we moved back to Spain, so I had to bring it on the plane on my way back after Christmas. One of the rules for packaging up the bike is removing the air from the tyres. Once unpacked, I discovered that my bike pump was broken. Visiting my local bike shop to get a new one I took the opportunity to find out about good routes in the area. Not only did they point me to the excellent www.wikiloc.com, but let me know about the monthly excursions they put…
Working from home, has many advantages, but one of the negatives, is it is very easy to pass the entire day without going outside. Trips to Mercadona give a good excuse to get out every few days, but sometimes I need to my force myself to go out for a walk. It was on one of these walks I decided to take my camera. Sabadell, I’m told is an old cotton town, and as a result is rather industrial. Not exactly a pretty place, one might say. Walking in most directions from our flat involve walking past factories and warehouses,…
Long time friend, Mandy, had a trip planned to Barcelona for a while. She and some friends were visiting some old work colleagues, and so we arranged to meet up while she was here. It turns out that her friends lived a little further and more east than the 1 hour north of Barcelona we originally thought. But what better excuse to explore the Costa Brava? On Sunday morning Espe and I set off for L’Escala and picked up a hangover wielding Mandy before working our way back along the coast towards Barcelona. Forget the reputation and avoid places like…
It would appear that I’ve got national parks in every direction. So far I’ve only briefly visited two of them. This view below is one of many from the Parc de Collserolla looking over Barcelona. I’ve just picked up a load of maps from the wonderful Altai shop which I visited this week, so shall be exploring some more…
Well actually, no. We’ve not moved to Barcelona itself, firstly it is too expensive for us at the moment, and secondly Espe’s Uni is way outside of the city. So we now call a place called Sabadell home, 20km north of Barcelona. The city / town itself is nothing to write home about, but the surrounding areas do at first glance appear quite special. With National Parks in every direction and the Pyrenees to the north I can think of worse bases. That said, however, with two impossible deadlines to meet I seem to have done very little apart from…
Well, I said I’d do it, and despite numerous people telling me that I was crazy, I did. After four or five days in Madrid catching up with people (including this unlikely rif raf pictured below), playing far too much GTA IV on Jon’s PS3 and stocking up on Maps at the wonderful Tienda Verde, I set off in the general direction of Valencia. Day 1: Arganda del Rey to Algarga Distance: 59km Highest Point: 760m Lowest Point: 550m I had no maps for the first part of the journey as I’d found much talk on t’interweb of this Via…
Having worked pretty hard over the spring and summer, the time has come for a well earned holiday. An opportunity to find some Sun and forget about the abysmal summer we had in the UK. Originally I planned for Espe and I to take a road trip around Belgium, Holland, Germany, France and Spain visiting as many friends as possible. The plan was to be in Valencia for a wedding two weeks into the trip. I had a long list of people and places to visit but due to the lack of money and, more importantly, the lack of a…
It really feels like I haven’t stopped lately… (another excuse for the irregular posts). Despite living in Bristol, I spent every weekend of May in London. Throw in a week in Milan in the middle and that is not a lot of time at home. I was out in Milan on a work trip trying to organise the Milan launch for this year’s Mongol Rally. It typical Adventurists style, I didn’t find out I was going until about two day’s before hand. Thankfully, Espe came along too, as she has been doing all the correspondence with the Italian teams. Through…