30 September The Road to Lumbier
After three nights and two days waiting for it to stop raining I set out from Eugi on the road for Pamplona. About ten minutes into the journey there was a heavy shower and it felt like Eugi was giving me a proper telling off. Who was I to think I could get away without getting wet! The name of the Hostal I had been staying at was Itxeberri which is a Basque name meaning new birth. It was very difficult to tell who worked in the Hostal and who the customers were, people came in and out all day long. They were all extremely friendly and very generous with their food and drink. But I was having a hard time understanding everybody cos they all speak at the speed of sound! I'm trying to catch up on my Spanish with Duolingo, but it is incredibly slow and good for describing suitcases and trains, but doesn't really translate the kind of things I like to talk about.
Cycling on the Spanish highway was pretty good. Lots of room, hard shoulder, good surface and all the drivers, especially the lorries are generous with their passing distance. Although there were still mountains all around, the road was pretty flat and as the clouds cleared I began to feel once more that this is what I had made the journey for. I also started to run into a lot of other cyclists and we stopped and chatted and shared stories of our travels.
Outside Pamplona I took a look back at the Pyrenees to see they were still pretty much covered in cloud.
There weren't any shops in Eugi and I skirted round Pamplona to avoid the traffic, so that by lunchtime I still hadn't been able to find a food shop. It seemed like every town in Spain is built on a hilltop and the main road goes round them, so you have to do a hill climb to get into any of them. Many of the towns I passed were so small they couldn't boast of so much as a post box, never mind a shop.
Finally, 60km further on, I arrived in Lumbier just after 3pm. I knew that everything would probably be shut so I found the campsite, put up the tent and went back into town. It is a very impressive place.
View of the town from the campsite.
I had just about gotten used to places in France opening after lunch at 4, but here in Lumbier the shops don't re open until 5pm, so it was to be a late lunch indeed for me. Well it tasted better for it!
I have a very good feeling about tomorrow as there is a famous gorge that I have to cycle through just outside the town, called the Foz de Lumbier, and a little further down the road is a place called Sos de Rey Católico which is a famously historic town. So it won't all be hard slogging on the bike!
