No straight lines. The plan is to keep heading roughly east until the Black Sea makes me turn, then follow the mountains as far as they'll let me.
Apr 1 – Apr 7 · Portugal · 410 km · 6 nights
Out of the city and straight into the silence of the cork country — red soil, stork nests, and a wind that never quite became a friend. The trip's slow, nervous first breath.
Apr 8 – Apr 18 · Portugal · Spain · 520 km · 8 nights
Across the border at Marvão, up through Extremadura's empty dehesa, and into Spain proper. This is where the front panniers went on and the bike learned to steer.
Apr 19 – Apr 26 · Spain · 470 km · 7 nights
The high tableland of Castile, big skies and bigger headwinds, sharing the road for a while with pilgrims walking the Camino in the other direction.
Apr 27 – May 1 · Spain · France · 360 km · 4 nights
Down out of the meseta into the green, wet Basque hills and the first sight of the Atlantic since Lisbon. The food alone justified the detour north.
May 2 – May 11 · France · 540 km · 9 nights
The dead-straight pine-forest cycleway up the Atlantic coast, into two days of brutal headwind and the kindest strangers of the trip. Where the famous box got mailed home.
May 12 – May 20 · France · 480 km · 7 nights
Inland through Gascony's vineyards and bastide towns, the Pyrenees growing on the horizon all week until they stopped being scenery and started being a problem.
May 21 – present · France · Andorra · the high cols
Based out of Pau, picking off the great climbs one valley at a time — the Tourmalet first, then a loop south over the border into Andorra, before turning east along the chain toward the Mediterranean.
Nine flags so far, if you count the way I do — every border the wheels actually crossed, in both directions. Portugal and Spain traded off four times along the wandering line of the Raia frontier; then France, a quick dip into Andorra, a wrong turn that briefly became Monaco on a coastal day-ride, and the odd few hundred metres of Gibraltar and the Vatican-sized republics that border-towns hide. It's a generous count. I'm keeping it.
East from the Pyrenees: the Mediterranean coast, the Alps, the long run down the Danube, the Balkans, and eventually the Black Sea — and if the legs and the visas hold, the Caucasus on the far side of it. A dozen more borders, give or take, before this stops being a journal and starts being a story I tell at dinner.