Countries
Spain sent us off with orange groves, sunshine and a little sadness at leaving our friends behind. We left Valencia in mid-April feeling nervous and overloaded: 16kg bikes, 13kg of bags each, but the first few days along the familiar coastal roads eased us in gently. The route through the Sierra de Irta natural park was a real highlight, but hard going, and we had great days in both Girona and Figueres. The Dalí museum alone was worth crossing a country for.
Catalonia tested us, though. The EV8 signs basically evaporated at the regional border, the roads got hillier and rougher, and the winds coming off the Ebro delta were genuinely relentless. We abandoned the last 15km into Miami Platja and jumped on a train without a moment's guilt.
Spain set the tone for the whole trip: generous drivers, brilliant food stops, the occasional proper physical challenge, and a generous helping of yellow cars that made everything seem worthwhile.
France felt like stepping into a different world. Everything got tidier, the roads better-maintained, the supermarkets dramatically more exciting. The section from Perpignan to Arles was some of the most beautiful cycling of the entire trip, canal paths lined with plane trees, flamingos drifting through the wetlands, the medieval walled city of Aigues-Mortes rising impossibly out of the flat plain. We met our cycling buddy Soren on a canal towpath and ended up sharing several days together.
Provence was something else entirely. Aix-en-Provence, the wildflower roads, a giant field of poppies that we had to stop and frolic in. We celebrated our 1,000km milestone, nearly destroying a phone on a tripod in the process.
The not-so-great bits: the mosquitoes along the coast were enormous — the first one we saw, we thought it was a small crane fly. Three guard dogs chased us and bit at our shoes. And the headwinds on some stretches were properly grim. But France more than made up for it, we left reluctantly, heading towards Monaco with tired legs and full hearts. The drivers are courteous and friendly, it's our favourite country to cycle in.
Italy is a proper mixed bag, which is perhaps the most Italian thing about it.
The first surprise was how much of northern Italy isn't quite what we expected. The Po plain is flat, industrial in patches, and car-dominated even through town centres. Some days were genuinely hard: rain and headwinds on the long stretch from Pavia to Mantua, a grim stretch of gravel track next to a water pumping station that sapped Mat's will to live, and a washing machine in Mantua that locked all our clothes inside until midnight.
But then there's the other side: Turin was wonderful, full of yellow cars and beautiful buildings. The cities have been extraordinary: Cremona with its Stradivarius legacy, Mantua rising out of its lakes, Ferrara the UNESCO jewel, Padua with its ancient frescoes and the oldest botanical garden in the world. The food and produce are unreal, and cooking with Italian ingredients has been a genuine joy. We've hit our longest day yet (103km to Ferrara), we're a month in, and the legs are still holding up.
Unfortunately, male Italian drivers are really, really awful. They overtake on blind bends, they pass with mere centimetres of room, and they shout at us regularly (I promise we're following the road rules). One morning a driver cut across a roundabout, driving on the wrong side of the road, straight towards Mat. Men driving tractors are even worse.
