So, my bike trip was over Monday. It was hard, but I did every mile. We had one day of rain and 40 degrees, where we were up in the mountains, and we did not ride. Although this was a day of almost all descending, I was glad, in a sneaky way. I hate mountain descents and this gave me 2 rest days in a row. None of the other participants had any rain gear, or barely a wind jacket. Really dumb! I used my leg and arm warmers more than once.
We did one 10k climb that was hard, but what I expected. There were 2 other 3-4 mile climbs that were similar. But the hardest climbs were in the second to last day and the last day. The last day had 2 very steep and shorter climbs, one where we were on a narrow road with "pilgrims" doing the Camino trek. The bike I was riding had one less lower gear on the cassette as my Trek and 2 less than my Guru. I was dying, and you know it is bad when you are going so slowly, your GPS shuts off! After that last climb, we rode into Santiago, which was hairy, but then we got off and walked our bikes. It was about 100 degrees out and since I could have cared less about the pilgramage aspect of the end of the trip, I just wanted to get to the hotel. That imvolved walking our bikes up a street with about a 20% grade.
This was definitely our best bike tour yet. I love Spain and we are going to try and get some friends to join us for a private tour of Porto, Portugal, so the owners of the tour company can use it as the basis for a future tour. They are like family, such a different experience than Trek Travel. Not that they are bad, but this is so different.
We rode 186 miles, with 18k ft of climbing.
On Tuesday, we drove back to Bilbao from Santiago, stopping in a beautiful seaside town for lunch. Then we had like a 25 mile descent into Bilbao, on the freeway; it made me dizzy! Sort of the reson I hate mountain descents on my bike. We've spent the past 2 days soaking up the culture and eating. Heading back to Boston tomorrow.