God bless Ryanair, cheap and cheerful, but they got me to Santander. It’s a small airport and I was out of it fairly quickly and able to put my bike together and cut up the cardboard box which was deposited in various trash cans around the airport.  Then a quick ride to my hotel, which smelt of cigarette smoke because the two old brother owners seem to spend their time walking up and down smoking cigarettes. Smoking seems to be alive and kicking in Spain. I won’t be going back to that particular hotel, not because of the smell of cigarettes, but mainly because they charged me €15 to put my bike in the downstairs storeroom. Never had that happen before. Food was cheap and cheerful in some local bar with an enforced wine stop on the way home because of a storm. And so to bed. 

My plan is to ride south from Santander and meet up with  the Camino route and some American cycling friends in Leon. Easier said than done.I set out on Tuesday morning, 19 September.  The first part of the ride was very nice along an old railway track, but at some stage I had to turn into the hills and mountains and that’s where things began to unwind. I really hadn’t done my homework, and I’d forgotten just how unforgiving and demanding are the Cantabrian hills and mountains and the Picos de Europa. These are serious, nasty, vertiginous, vertical mountains, not really designed for cycling up. I did my very best but by 3 o’clock I wasn’t very far and there was still lots more to do, and I worked out that I simply wasn’t going to make it to where I should be that night. Also, I badly needed water. So, prudence uncharacteristically dictated and I turned around, and free wheeled back down to Santander to regroup and rethink and spend Tuesday night there. 

 I was scheduled to meet up with Dean and Bev, two people I know from cycling in the US, who are currently cycling in Spain and will be in Leon for a couple of nights. So that I can meet them as arranged on Thursday,  I worked out that I could get a train across and through those bastard mountains on Wednesday to Palencia and then cycle from Palencia to Leon next day, Thursday,  which is what I did. However, the first bit of the trip was a bus replacement service, which wouldn’t take bicycles, so I had to cycle along the coast some 30 miles to where I could pick up the train on to Leon. Spanish trains are not very frequent, and only the regional trains will take unboxed bikes. So the regional express train, which is definitely not express, was the only option. But at least I got to see the beautiful hills, and mountains as the train meandered its way through the countryside. And so to Palencia.