I have a small elasticated clothes line that is a double twisted chord . This allows you to tuck clothes etc between the twists so you dont need pegs. I hung it between the trees behind the tents and we hung up our sleeping bags to air them. Which I promptly forgot to pack and left it there. Doh !!
Neil packed up and ready for another long ride. We were at the reception to pay up and retrieve passports at 9.00am when they opened.
Mileage start 49,495
I put last nights washing in my net laundry bag to give it a natural tumble dry in the bikes tailwind. All mod cons eh !
We rode back down into San Sebastian to take a few photos before we left. View accoss the bay to the giant jesus .
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We grabbed a quick slurp of water from the public fountain and cracked on.
The road out of San Seb, down to Cuenca is probably the best I have ever ridden. Really mountainous and twisty with loads of tunells for the first hour or so .. then opening out onto wide open plains.
Looking back towards the San Sebastien hills
Riding along today I listened to a 12 cd audio book on my Archos that I had downloaded from the internet specifically for this trip. " Travels with Charley" by John Steinbeck. I had read the book about 15 years ago and it was perfect for this kind of riding and it lasted me 3 days !. Another pic take at 70 mph !
We skirted Pamplona on the A-15 and stopped for a fuel stop at cadreita at midday and again for a top up Medinaceli on the E-90 at12.50 after we skirted Zaragza. We were topping up regularly as Neil had been told that on Sundays it can be hard to get fuel. At least when we stopped we took on liquids.
I notice here that my lucky rubber chicken was not very comfortable . Choking my chicken again !
At one stop a Portugese truck driver came over and asked if we were lost as we were looking over our maps. He was going back to Portugal from Italy and told us there was fuel every 40 miles or so and some of them 24hrs so that eased us a bit. The roads were dead streight so we just blatted on.
Video of an Aquaduct out on the plains , you can see what I mean by that bloody big arrow on the screen. I binned it off later. At this stage the camera is mounted on the RAM stem so I turned it by hand, later on I just held it freehand.Coming down through some fantastic twisty roads on the n-204 we stopped at a couple of resevoirs , looking quite low but a fantastic aqua marine blue.
You can see how low the water is by the vegetation line but in these temperatures I am not suprised.
We had a bit of a breather here as it was boiling hot and we needed to take on fluids and had a gas at how great the roads were. I think were feeling like we were in the journey proper now. The weather was great the roads and scenery fantastic and we were just bombing on with nothing to but Ride. Just what we were hoping for from this trip really .
Neil sweltering
Me sweltering. 
Bit of video around the resevoirs that we now refer to as " The Blue Lagoons ".
Bit more vid , according to the sign we are 69 miles from Cuenca , our nights camping destination.
We made it down in to Cuenca town and had a ride through to get our bearings. We stopped on the edge of town in a residential area trying to work out where we were. We accosted a local guy who spoke virtually no english but we managed to get good directions that got us to Cuenca Camping by 6.30 pm.
We had the usual carry on with our pidgeon Spanish but Neil was chief translator and we got sorted easily enough, Good job because I just resort to speaking loudly and sign language. We had to bear in mind this was the interior of Spain and not the Costa Del Scum so not a lot of English is spoken. We also bought a few drinks and a snacks whilst we were there.
We were given a choice of pitches and we got ourselves set up . The gound was a bit sandy but I carry a small ground sheet which we put between the tent entrances to stop the grit getting into the living space.
We were old hands at setting up camp now ( after one night ! )
Happy with our days work and looking foreward to a shower and some grub
The Motorhome next to us belonged to a really nice English couple in their 50's. The lady had suffered from Cancer and when she got the all clear they sold everything they owned and now just travel and stay wherever takes their fancy. They even had a trailer on the back for a small 2 seater French made car even smaller that a Smart car , pretty neat it was to . They chatted with Neil for a while and expressed sympathy and also admiration for him for doing this ride and raising money for Cancer Reasearch. It obviously resonated with them and it was nice of them to say so. It was nice to meet them and they gave us the gen on the site / showers / restaurant etc.
We got ourselves showered ( I seem to have a jinx the whole trip with showers as the cubicle area I was in had no lights in but enough from a small window. The shower block was exellent though all marble and brand new )
We scuttled down to the restaurant determined to try some local cuisine but non was available so we had the usual englishn with chips etc and Neil sank a few beers.
When we got back to the tents I uploaded my photos to the Archos and we crashed out.
I was looking forward to another good night kip but .. Ohhhh No ! not tonight. At about 2am my airbed decided to slowly deflate!! , obviously I could't run the pump at that hour so I just stuck with it but pretty soon my arse was on the gravel and my feet and head were 6" off the ground as the bed went soft.
In the night in which I slept about 2 hours total, I heard the gentle hisss hisss hiss of some other poor bastard with a foot pump having the same trouble and felt a certain comedic comrarderie as I now slept on rocks with a sliver of blue rubber for comfort. Also to add to the ambuence I heard what I assumed to be rats scuffling about around the tent , after my grub I bet.
Mileage fron San Sebastien to Cuenca - 389 - 9 1/2 hours riding.
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