Zaragoza
Kms 76
Vertical 234
Mechanicals : John's seat post bolt has worked its way loose again
Medicals : nil
Misadventures : team got lost twice ...once at Tauste and once trying to find the canal route to Zaragoza .
Wine 5
Cup: Lawrie for exercising his Spanish skills and being part of the team scoring top rate super value accommodation

Another fast start to the day out of Tudela . Interesting landscapes... To the north of the road, brown dry Arizona like landscape . On the south of the road, fertile river plain with lots of cropping. Came across tomato harvesting...you could smell the tomatoes from the road .
Tauste was a surprisingly good coffee stop...an old town,not endowed with charm but the people who wouldn't have had a lot seemed friendly and social. Good coffee and pastries( savoury and sweet) . We had done over 40 Kms by10.30 am .
Got to Alagon where we planned to be responsible and catch a train rather than battle the Spanish motorways. The next train was 4 hours away so tapped into local knowledge and headed off to find the Aragon Canal path which would theoretically lead us all the way to Zaragoza . Found the canal and beautiful aqueduct but the tow path had done a runner. It took us an hour to work this out. Back to plan A ...pretty bad luck we had to kill the time by having another rustic Spanish lunch washed down with cerveza and sangria.
The 16 minute train ride to Zaragoza delivered us to the Calatrava designed train station. Impressed with what we have seen of Zaragoza so far. Lots of public sculpture . Looking forward to discovering more.

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Posted by greatgraperide at 9:48 AM BST

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Tudela de Navarre
108 Kms
524 vertical metres
Mechanicals : John, one dropped chain
Medicals : nil
Misadventures : nil
Wine: 5
Cup: Geoff ...hotel booking extraordinaire

The mornings are getting darker.The boys felt they almost needed their bike lights when they headed out from their hotel to meet Sally and John at theirs for breakfast. It had rained overnight but only had a few drops in the morning so have been very lucky.
It felt like fast flat cycling today as the climbing was very gradual ( and we are fitter).  We were on reasonably straight modern roads with a good shoulder most of the day but detoured off to villages. Arrived at San Adrian just in time to catch their street parade ....some of the streets were   closed and games laid out for the children to play with lots of market stalls selling all manner of things.
As we cycled along the newer roads we passed lots of olive trees, grape vines, banks of solar panels and always on the ridge tops wind turbines.
There was  also a fiesta at Aldenueva de Ebro but our timing for Sunday lunch was perfect. We sat down just as the narrow streets outside the tapas bars with many tables were rapidly filling. There had been running of the bulls the night before and the boards to protect the windows and pens to hold the bulls were still in the street. The Spanish, including the children , were all dressed in theirSunday best and there is so much noise as they all speak and gesture so demonstratively.
After our lunch of tapas it was a quick run into Tudela. Rather a confusing place to navigate to the centre of town...but having got there and settled into a bar for a drink the confusion was just beginning. Sally began by telling the story of how friends had once booked a hotel accidentally miles away ... hahaha.  It was odd that Simon could not get sensible directions when he rang the hotel , even odder when Simon and Tony were looking at different google maps supposedly of the same place but the rivers were quite different shapes. Then the penny dropped...Simon realised Geoff had efficiently booked our hotel on line this morning in a different place in Spain ( Tudela  De Duero hundreds of Kms away ).
No problems, we are in a hotel right in the centre of town near the square . The other hotel was cancelled with all concerned seeing the funny side so no cost for the late cancellation.
Off to Zaragoza tomorrow . Hope to get there early so that we have time to look around.

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Posted by greatgraperide at 9:28 AM BST

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