Diary written by: Bernt Pölling-Vocke ( bernty@gmx.com )

What happens, when you get a room at the very first hotel you ask for one? Exactly, you don´t get very far, at least when you start inquiring for one very early. But after our experiences from the last stages we learned that there is never a "too early" but almost always a "too late".... One night at a construction site was fine, but also enough...

After we had conquered Frank´s Mont Ventoux earlier on our tour we arrived at my Costa Brava today. Originally we had planned to cycle an easier route through inner spain to Barcelona but of course the coast is a lot more interesting. The coast is also a lot harder to cycle, as the Pyrennes more or less end right at the water in northern Spain and you don´t really stand any chances of finding flat areas at all. Oh well, after days without major hills it was time to get busy again...

...and busy it got. I can´t tell you how often we cycled something like 150-200 height-meters from one coastal village to the next with a big hill between but I would guess that we amassed at least a 1000 height meters today. And by comparison to the Mont Ventoux we also carried our luggage today and the psychological backdoor of turning around didn´t exist. At least the weather stayed on our side. Many clouds harbored in the sky and the temperature stayed just below 30 degrees which might still sound much but was just fine. It could have been a lot worse..., we also could have cycled another route, so what?

Frank wasn´t really all that happy about cycling along the coast in the early going and I had to cycle through one bitching sequence after another. People under the age of 21 might want to read this page so I will not put any quotes here but I was rather sure that we would not continue along the coast all the way to Barcelona. On the other side I really had a lot of fun. No other cyclists were around, many cars honked or people yelled at us and cycling one hill after another was tough on the one hand but somehow, well, fun on the other. You knew that there was no turning around, the legs felt dead and you knew that with legs like that you would immedeatly jump of the bike, if it were a stationary bike at a fitness-club. But this was the Costa Brava, and this was great...

Later during the stage, we had already entered Spain,  Frank stopped bitching at every little hill and we made the deal that we would stay at the coast if we would find a hotel without any problems. Luckily for me the first place we asked had a room available and I am also sure that Frank conclued throughout the day that it might have been a torture, but a rewarding (nature-wise) one. Continuing along the coast we would probably loose the extra-day we had taken from our schedule so far, but three days in Barcelona would still be enough.

During the evening we walked around Lanca and it´s inner city for quiet a while and ended up at a rather medioce chinese restaurant. I also won the day´s only chess-game and am 2-2-1 in my last five now, even though the overall standings are still a different issue. Maybe I should declare the first 10 games preseason....

Chess statistics:        Bernt vs Frank         3:14:1