18th day Carboneras - Aguilas

Saturday 14th April 2023, the weekend edition

After waking up, beautiful sunrise from the hostel window. Loaded up the bikes, quick breakfast (coffee and croissant), bought water bottles and set off. We had already seen the mountain in the evening and suspected that we had to cross it, and that's how it was, at the beginning several steep climbs with over 350 meters of elevation gain. The following route went directly along the coast, but also along cliffs, so up and down. In total, it was 65 km and 650 meters of elevation gain, more than we had planned. The reason is the next accommodation in our price range. Since we assumed that some Spaniards would go to the beach on the weekend, we had chosen an inexpensive guesthouse in Aguilas. Nice and clean with a restaurant, and right below us a big Spanish family celebration.😋 Afterthought: We went there for dinner, it was good. However, now there is a complete Samanter group (the hooded men in the K week) below us in the banquet hall, with drums and flutes. Good thing we have earplugs with us, no one will hear our snoring or coughing.

Today we had our first breakdown, Stefan's front tire burst during a hard brake, tube completely damaged, irreparable. Unloaded the bikes, installed a new tube, and performed chain maintenance on both bikes. Afterthought: In the evening, we bought a new tube from a large sports shop to have a completely new tube with us again (tire blowouts cannot be patched).

Oh, by the way, today we left Andalusia (Seville, Granada) and are now in the Valencia & Murcia area.

The two retirees... will report back tomorrow.