We're in Bilbao tonight, having ridden from the coast at Lekeitio. The ride was nice, if difficult with some hills that were way too steep. Riding into Bilbao is an anxious experience; not one bike lane to be found for miles around and awful traffic. Here's the route.
Leketio is a really beautiful town. We had a nice time walking around the sea wall and watching the fishing boats come and go, but headed the 2 km back to the campground fairly early. We didn't realize that there was some kind of huge festival back in town. In fact, we didn't figure it out until about midnight when the fireworks started. We thought that it was thunder, but figured out pretty quick that it was a party. After the firework the concert started. Unfortunately, it lasted until 3 a.m. with obnoxious Euro pop music at what mush have been huge volume because even at 2 km away we couldn't sleep.
Oh well.
We broke camp and were on the road at 8:30. Here's a quiet Leketio as we rode by. Beautiful.
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| Leketio as the sun is coming up. At low tide you can walk out to the island. |
Today's route heads away from the coast to Bilbao, which is inland a bit on the Rio del Nervion river. We knew the route was lumpy and knew that there would be 3 moderate climbs. We decided to get coffee at some village about an hour down the road.
The first hill was as expected, and in this part of Spain that means 8 to 10% and in the case we went up about 500 m. But the town that was supposed to be our coffee stop had nothing open. So we went to the second hill. It was as expected, too, just about the same as the first. And in Morga, a tiny village about 2/3 of the way to the top we stopped at a small cafe and had great coffee and a ham sammy. That hit the spot and gave us energy to summit the second hill.
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| Two down, One to go |
The descent from Morga was quick and then we saw what looked like a cement wall right in front of us: it was the start of the third hill. When we make routes for our rides, I plot the course with a couple of things in mind. First, avoid big roads. Second, use roads with bike lanes where ever possible. Third, I "drive" the roads using Google street view -- it gives me a real time view of what the road looks like. I knew that the road on this third hill was kind of small, but with Google street view you can't get an appreciation for how steep the hills are. I should have checked that detail for this road with the software that I use to plot the GPS course.
We hit the first "wall" pretty fast but slowed super quick on its 16% grade. Our GPSs show us what is coming up and this road looked steep. It was. From bottom to to the gradient was never less that 14%. The steepest was 20%. The average was 16%. And this was for 4 km. The "road" itself is a concrete path that is only about 1 m wide. I'm not sure how the Google cameras were able to pass...
So how steep is a 20% grade? It is difficult to walk on. If it is wet, you can slip easily. It is really, really steep. I can't believe that we made it. Lorie killed it.
About 1/2 way up we needed a break and this local guy who was walking and knew not one word of English stopped us. We communicated just fine without one common word. He told us that the road ahead was too steep. We tried to show him our GPS but he indicated that he was pretty much blind. We laughed and had a good "chat" -- it gave us some measure of encouragement. When he realized that we were pressing on he just gave us some kind of "aupa" and walked away. I'm pretty sure that it was his encouragement that got us the rest of the way up the hill..
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| Not much of a road, and you can't gauge how steep it really is |
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| A car would not fit |
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| A bit wider here and just as steep |
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| The patron saint of the killer hill |
When we approached the top there was some kind of fancy building that was totally fenced off and boarded up. It seemed really odd -- there was no apparent way to get to it. (Maybe there is another road that is nice and wide and not steep...)
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| No idea what this was supposed to be, but it is near the top so I didn't really care at the time |
The road down the other side was just as steep, but it was gravel. Oh this was an interesting riding day. I stopped twice to give my hands a break from riding the brake levers so hard.
But we finally made it to the outskirts of Bilboa and our course, back on normal roads (if super crowded with no bike lanes) took us right to the hotel where we're staying.
After getting into our room and festooning all our camping gear around to let it dry out a bit, we headed into old town to get a traditional Spanish mid-day meal. It was great. No English, but we muddled through and had a wonderful time.
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| Cold tomato soup with bread |
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| Seafood Salad |
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| Local fish "Ttoro" -- very tasty |
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| Brownie with walnuts |
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| Mango ice cream |
I need new brake pads for the bike so we walked downtown and found a bike shop that had what I needed. Tomorrow I will work on the bike -- these hills and the weight of the bike are a bad combination for brake pads. Then we're off to spend most of the day at the Guggeheim. We're really looking forward to that!
Cheers
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