Actually, if I'm being honest, I suppose I did also lose a bit of my cycling mojo for a while...
However, it well and truly bounced back last week when we left Scotland for a few days of cycling, on a self-guided tour, in beautiful Andalucia. We used a company called Cycling Country and I can't recommend them highly enough. They provided great bikes, good maps of fantastic pre-planned routes, lots of hints and tips, an efficient luggage transfer service and some lovely accommodation along the way.
It was only a short trip, but we loved our four days of cycling, mostly around the Alhama de Granada area, then on through Montefrio and finishing off in the beautiful city of Granada. We were never too far away from spectacular scenery, especially when we caught a glimpse of the distant Sierra Nevada mountains. We were also never too far away from the next big uphill climb! So many hills...! Every uphill though was well worth the effort for the thrill of the descent on the other side.
I didn't realise how much I'd missed being on the saddle till I was back on it again. I loved it. Pedalling along between nice wee villages and interesting towns, taking in everything round about me - whether that was nothing very much, or the farm workers picking the cauliflower (so much cauliflower!), or the never-ending patchwork of different crops on the hillsides, or the smell of the pine, or the smell of the wild garlic, or the stunning rocky outcrops and gorges, or the olive groves, or the winding, steep, road on the hill ahead, or the moorish buildings, or the friendly people - and sharing all of that with Alex. Bliss.
I'd hoped to capture some good footage with the GoPro (regular readers might remember how technically challenged I was with it in Tanzania...), but I forgot to take the charging cable and the battery was pretty flat to start with. Silly me. And, during the short amount of filming that I did manage, I've got the camera pointing too far down, so there are some lovely views of my bike bag...
I've attached the Strava profile for each day of our mini tour of Andalucia, for those of you interested in such things, down below. As you'll see, I wasn't kidding about the hills! And, as you'll also see, I stuck to my usual manta of 'slow and steady' throughout...!!
