Cycling The Globe

Distance: 96.1 km
Ride time: 5:12:41
Average: 18.5 km/h
Max speed: 48.6 km/h
Total: 54887 km

We are back in full-on holiday country on the Spanish coast between Alicante and Barcelona. The beaches keep coming, and sometimes we are even able to follow a bike path right next to the water. Once again I keep thinking that I’m a world away from cycling through mud hut villages in Africa. Oh well, I’m grateful that I got to see so different sides of this world that we live in.

Even though we are back on the coast the route continues to be hilly – up and down all day resulting in some 1100 meters of vertical climbing. The view is beautiful, often with a white village or a pristine turquoise blue beach showing up around the next corner.

Benidorm is a place as touristy as they get with plenty of British and other northern European retirees around. Even then, we found a charming square with locals playing chess in the shade. This area of Spain might be full of tourists, but there is a reason why they all come – its just a great place!

A final climb later and we arrived at our destination for the day, the kite surfing beach of El Verger. Manon, an avid kite surfer herself, was keen to go in, but the prices are really quite a bit higher than in South America.

For now we were content enough with an evening swim before putting up our tent at a camp site across the road. I would like to do more wild camping, but the beaches in this part of Spain are so developed that camp sites seem to be the place to go for now.

Tomorrow we will be cycling into Valencia – another one of Spain’s impressive cities.