39.6 mi / 13.0 mph / 415 ft. climbing
Home: Romain’s AirBNB

As planned, we never stepped out of our AirBNB unit for 40 hours, except for my occasional step out to our bikes under the covered porch. But as we were preparing to depart, we saw the family tending to their animals; we only met the husband and daughter upon check-in, where the teeneger did the English speaking, but this morning Mom was also out, and she had the best English of the three of them. So we had a nice visit with them and their rabbits and ponies before we set out.

Rett’s strange allergies had popped up again overnight, meaning she didn’t get much sleep, which made our resting-up period less-restorative than it should have been. But, she was doing better than I expected once we hit the road, and it turned into our first ride in a while that didn’t feel like a struggle.

The near-ideal riding conditions helped. The enormous coastal pine forest is largely flat, though the long-ago piling of sand by the wind has been entombed in some surprisingly-permanent dunes that asphalt ribbons have been draped across. The trees growing in that sandy soil block any wind (which would have been a tailwind anyway), and the roads and bike trails running through the forest had essentially no traffic. It all combined to allow us to hit our fastest average speed in a year, and this time it wasn’t thanks to a big Andean mountain descent.

In a couple places we saw guys with guns and dogs and bright vests patrolling the verge between the road and the trees. It wasn’t clear what they were up to, maybe boar hunting, maybe mushroom hunting, maybe both? But they were some of the only humans we saw for much of the day. As we ate a roadside lunch, where it was quiet enough to hear the dull roar of the ocean a mile away, and 10 minutes passed between vehicles, I was struck that this must be the emptiest place in all of Europe! It had strong echoes of the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, or parts of Central/Western Florida that we rode through near Christmas two years ago.

Our destination filled in some of the picture of what this region must look like in the summer. It was a “campground”, but one filled with small privately-owned cabins. We’d secured our unit with the owner on AirBNB, but then we still had to check in and pay a few extra Euros at the campground office (which we knew in advance). Our unit felt as much like an RV as a cabin, and it was very much what New Zealand holidaymakers refer to as a “bach”; among other things, you’re expected to bring your own (or rent) bed linens and pillows. Of course we have our own, and with our sleeping bag laid out on the bed, it was a cozy place, and in this non-holiday season only a few of the other units near us seemed occupied. The less-cozy aspect came from the hot water heater failing to fire up, which left Rett naked and cold. Luckily, this “campground” oddly thinks it’s still a campground (without any quotes around it), and there was a shower block a few steps away (perfectly clean and unused, because all the buildings around it presumably have their own generally-working bathrooms). So, while it’s never great to be surprised with a cold shower, we were at least in the world’s best place to manage such a mishap.