It’s all around us

The last part of this beautiful journey that I am typing from an airplane seat is all about Spain, the country that has been my spiritual (and physical) home for some time and which still means a lot to my soul.

Barcelona greeted us with hot, sunny weather. We got out of the bus with our poor squeaking bikes and headed to Cornella de Llobregat to meet our host Adrian, a great person (and musician!) who showed us around El Gotico and of course, the famous Parc de la Ciutadella. Days in Barcelona were easy-going and nurturing. We spent hours walking around the city, dancing in the streets in the evenings wherever there were dance events, juggling (learning how to) and slacklining in the park. After several days of rest, it was time to move on.

We had several options: to cycle inland or to cycle along the coast of the Mediterranean – surely, we chose the second option. The choice was obvious: we would swim in the sea every day, sleep on the beach without putting up a tent (September was quite hot), enjoy great views.

With our classic 100-110 kms per day, we headed south direction of Valencia. Sleeping on the beach worked well – we would lock our bikes together, put the mats and sleeping bags out and our bags and backpacks as pillows. Thankfully, nobody seemed to be attracted by our current bikes so we could sleep peacefully – or so we thought, but let’s wait a bit…

 In Valencia we were warmly welcomed by an elderly couple who didn’t ask us much – but kindly showed us the room as they knew we were tired from cycling. Warmshowers hosts on our way were all about that – they would give you space, food and not flood you with questions because they understood how tiring it was to cycle all day. Bless them, really. In my future home, I will have a room that will be a safe haven for cyclists and hikers to rest before continuing their journey.

After a night in Valencia, we continued pedalling south and faced a gruesome heatwave. It was around +40 and sunny. We were drinking liters and liters of water and always kept shirts on our heads as turbans, still making up to 100 kms daily. There was this mirage-like movement of air above the hot tarmac and if you looked at it for a long time you had a feeling of hallucinating, so we looked at the sea and arid plains and hills instead.

We passed magnificent Benidorm, Denia, Alicante… In Alicante we climbed up to the castle and enjoyed the view of the Mediterranean.
Here, we had added some variety to our menu of bread, grains, fruit and milk and were eating avocados every day. Arroz con leche – rice pudding w/milk – was our little treat on an especially tiring day.

Somewhere along this stretch till Murcia we faced another nuisance – after a night on the beach, on waking up, Lina had realised that my backpack which served me as a pillow was open and things were scattered all around. I have no idea how I didn’t wake up – here I could paint whatever story, but I just don’t know which methods thieves use in such cases. My wallet was on the ground, open, and all the cash – around 150 euros – was gone. I remember being shocked for half a day, but eventually carrying on. Sad to lose money especially when you don’t have much of it, but at least we were alive and safe.

Eventually, we cycled into Murcia, walked around for an hour or so and decided to camp outside the town inland. Maybe that was Mercury in retrograde or whatever people like to blame their challenges on, but oh my – our challenges continued. We put up the tent right after some fishy industrial zone that just didn’t feel right. At night, around 4.30am we both woke up as we had heard a group of people not far away from us. There were at least four people (young guys) from my memory, and we heard a mix of Arabic and Spanish. Beautiful – thought I. We didn’t speak but we were both awaken waiting for what would happen – would they pass by – would they decide to act mean-ish? Pfffff.
From the Spanish parts, I understood that they had noticed our tent and stopped not far away. Suddenly, I hear a sound – rock! A small rock being thrown at the tent. And another one, and another one – and giggles. Then a moment of silence – and now a huge rock ripped a hole in our tent – and Lina screamed at the top of her lungs. Immediately, we heard sounds of the gang running away. Oh, how grateful I was for your scream Lina, I know you’re reading this now. And how grateful I was for the fact that I didn’t scream, as they would’ve understood there were two girls in the tent and who knows what could have happened.
After a minute when we were sure they ran at least a bit away, we jumped up, packed everything in two minutes (could’ve received an award for speed-packing) and cycled as fast as we could out of there for an hour in the darkness. With the first rays of the sun, we stopped at an abandoned mechanic workshop and sat there looking in the void and processing what had just happened.

Abandoned buildings, so many abandoned buildings in the south of Spain. Someone’s abandoned hopes: houses, workshops, ranches… It was surreal but still so magical to pass by all these reminiscences of people’s stories. Having cycled a bit more and realising that we were way too shocked after that early morning adventure, we decided to catch a bus to Granada from the first bus stop that we would find.

Stretching on the back seats of an Alsa bus, we were talking to a Russian lady who was also heading to Granada. She told us that the city has “heavy energy” as it’s surrounded by mountains and else, but I didn’t take it seriously. That was the city I had been dreaming about since I was a child – after having read Federico Garcia Lorca’s poems and biography. In my mind I was chanting “Verde, que te quiero verde” and my heart was happy.

Granada was precisely as it was described by Lorca and as I had envisioned it inspired by his narrative. White houses, cobblestone, Alhambra, welcoming people, flamenco, tapas, music, art… Walking around Albaycin, the old district facing the Alhambra was like coming back home. My spirit was happy, and I promised to the city that I would come back. I didn’t know how or when at the time, moving to Spain seemed so unreachable. Eventually, I kept my promise and moved to Granada in 2019 to live there for a whole year.

It was time to leave and head to Gibraltar that wasn’t far at all anymore. We waved bye to Granada and cycled south to the coast, passing by Pantano de los Bermejales, a big reservoir with the bluest water I’d ever seen.

50 kms later we were again cycling along the coast. The views were great but cycling wasn’t fun as we ended up on autovia, where cars would go at 110 km/h and there was no proper place for bicycles so we had to endure cars passing centimetres from us for hours. Marbella, Malaga were behind, and finally, the last frontier – La Linea de la Concepcion, a small town bordering Gibraltar.

The rock of Gibraltar was there, and we were excited to climb it to finally drink our tea we had brought all the way from Saint-Petersburg! However, that wouldn’t happen…
We had completely forgotten to check what Gibraltar is about – for us it was a part of Europe, and we had a Schengen visa. How deep was our sadness, when we were turned away at the border crossing by smiling customs guys telling us that we needed a British visa as Gibraltar was actually a part of the UK!

We were trying to explain: “Look, we have cycled from Russia just to climb this damn rock and drink our tea on top of it!” Didn’t work. We made a poster explaining our story and sat at the customs for the whole day – many nice people crossing the border asked the customs to let us in – didn’t work of course. After a day in despair, we decided to sleep on the beach just 300 m away occasionally joking about swimming over to Gibraltar’s shores.

That was a beautiful end to that journey though. That beach, the warm sea, an elderly Spanish lady we met the next day – still remember her swimming with us. Churros and hot chocolate from a stand 5 minutes away and me naively asking the vendor after having cycled across all Spain – Perdon, que es churros?

We left la Linea, it was time. Silently saying bye to all the beautiful kind people we had met along the way, to all the effort, to the landscapes. Then there was a bus to Malaga and negotiating selling our Dutch bikes for 40 euros each at a local bike shop. Then, taking those 10-euro Ryanair flights to Barcelona, then to Italy to see Reinhold Messner’s museum, then to Warsaw, then to Stockholm – nearly a flight per day – and back on a ferry to Finland, then finally catching a minibus to Saint-Petersburg and arriving there just to get under the cold October rain – no home yet, no job, no studies – starting anew.
The X-ray was done and I was grounded by the doctor (the fracture had healed by that time, though the vertebra had moved a bit) the bags were unpacked, but the plains, the fields, the hills, the mountains still popped in my dreams, and sometimes I would wake up in our rented room shared with friends thinking that I was still cycling somewhere out there. Out there.
I stayed in Russia only for two and a half months after my arrival, but that’s a different story. In 10 minutes my plane will land.

The next one will be about my first journey to Asia (Thailand and Cambodia), marked by solo hitchhiking, hundreds of buddhas and Angkor’s smiles.

Have a good day,

Lots of love,

Lucy