A second try

So a second try. This time the early afternoon sun was beating down and within a hundred metres I was warm enough to remove at least one layer. Tieing my shirt around my waste I pondered whether it looked cooler to have its tail straming in the wind to give the impression of speed or whether it was simply better to sit on it. In reality neither looked as cool as lycra. A few more excursions are needed before I buy myself a lycra suit.

So up the gentle constant slope I peddle towards the snow capped mountains once again. Within a minute or two I was happy with progress, picking up speed nicely. "How easy this has become in so short a time, I thought optomistically.

Within another couple of hundred metres I was puffing and straining at the knees. How hard it had become. I should have taken another rerst day. You can overtrain, I thought. It is a strange thing about cycling the same route. The difficult parts become easier. Where one thinks of yestrdays strain and puffing wheezing chest, one finds ease. The genetles slopes that seemed easy yesterday become mountainous.

The sun burned bright as I turned westward towards Finestret. Quite low in the winter sky it lit the grey trunks of the peach orchards, casting long shadows. A distant chaffinch chirped and a slient robin bobbed sliently amongst the bare fruit branches. A slight wind softly moaned. A far away dog barked. Mostly there was a calm silence. A car slid softly into earshot soft at first, yet buidling to a rumbling crescendo as it sped past and away into the distant hills.

Finestret seemed ever more windy, ever more down hill than yesterday. Across the bridge and out of thre village past the smallholdings, and high on the terrace above the river. Those in cars driving along a road with a precipice on one side think of danger. How much more so on a wobbly bycycle, on a bumpy road, only centimetres form the edge of the road? Down the verticle wall and steep bank the river splashed and bubbled some 60 feet below in the dark shadows of the trees.

With greatre confidence I was up the gears into top. Speeding along, taking advantage of the slopes to get the legs moving. Using momentum to carry me up the small undulations. Safer away from the river, opening up a rhythmn.

The main road came up soon with a lull in the traffic for a while allowing me to keep up the speed for the slight dip before the short sharp climb to the village turning. Past the two huge Alsatians at Mestres, the coal mearchants. "Do they not yet recognise me," I think, as they start to snral viciously from behind their reinforced chained fence. And so to the long drag into the village. peddling furiously today, again noting the slight downhill before the steep rise into the village, making life easy by knowing the route. Exhausted I get off outside El Puig, pushing the bike the last short steep slope up to the house. My knees ache and burn and I stagger the fisrt steps unsure that walking was meant to be for these legs. A second trip is over and I already feel much fitter.