Spanish trails, day 1

Ah, sunny Spain. So warm, so beautiful... Our first day out, according to our trail guide book (written by british people), promised huge climbs, huge views, and huge descents. Perfect. After a leisurely taken breakfast, we set out from El Chorro, pedaling up into the hills and across the Guadalhorce dams. British instructions were extremely vague at best, so we were checking the book just about every 3 or 4 minutes. But eventually we made it on the first big climb of the day, up into the mountains.

Peter's kit matched my bike nicely


The climbs were big and steep. And big. And steep.


But being the manly men that we were/are, we eventually made it over.


Oh, and it was really beautiful.


One of the many stops to check the stupid book...


At the top of the climb I noticed that one of my suspension linkage bolts was gone. Whoops. After some creative problem solving, it looked like I wouldn't have to walk down hill. Thank goodness for that. The descent was long and rocky and fun as hell. Big fork and big tires were hard on the climb but paid off in spades on the descent. The only drama was losing the best bit of singletrack due to poor instructions on our book's part.........


...it made Peter so angry that he had to make this face


More to come!