XL. White Flag

Captain’s Log: Friday, 12 July 2019

Distance: Valencia (09:00) – Chiva (13:45), 40km, – Requena (15:00), by train

Accommodation: Airbnb

Weather: Sun

Today’s note to myself: Sometimes you have to wave the white flag, even if you don’t want to.

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I got defeated by Spain.

So, the last couple of days I spent in Valencia, because I got sick on my first day and had to rest. Because of this, and also because of my long journey already, my motivation for continuing basically went to zero, so that I thought about straight flying home from Valencia. But I managed to scrap together some pieces of motivation again, once my health came back.

Unfortunately the way from Valencia to Madrid might not be the best one to keep motivation up. After about 34km, most of them over gravel roads and “ways” which might go through as mountainbike paths, but definitely not suitable for a trekking bike with luggage, I decided that enough is enough.

Maybe I could have continued. But it would have been more damaging than rewarding in the end, so, in Chiva, I sat in a train to Requena, and tomorrow I will continue taking the train to Madrid. I am probably going to continue to Porto with the train after visiting Madrid, from where I would like to ride my bike down to Lissabon just like planned.

So, at least I can say, I rode my bike from Bregenz to Valencia, with almost 2000km in, I think it was 5 weeks, which is a lot and which is something I can be proud of.

It might bother me that I did not go the whole way to Lisbon with my bike, but thinking back to today, it probably was the better decision.

Here I have some pictures of Valencia.

And here some more from today from the train ride and Requena, which is a surprisingly nice town.