The story of today is – as Martin O’Neill would say (who has been inducted into the League Manager’s Hall of Fame this evening) – a game of two halves.  First we cycled up 61km and then we coasted down 25km.  Needless to say, the up section took longer than the down section, even though the “up” was up a total climb of 450m and the down section was about 1000m of descent. 

The route took us out of Leon in the early morning – just as everyone was driving the opposite way to go to work.  The weather was fine, the air was clear and we were not smug at all.  The road went up and down, but more up than down as it left the city and went through a series of hamlets.  We had coffee in the small town of La Robla after about 27km (a town dominated by teh cement works) and then continued up to the top after 61km.  As we climbed the mountain scenery developed but that is best seen in pictures not words. As we gently climbed the wind gods were in our favour today and also blew us up the mountain.

The pass – Llana de Puerto – was the highest point of our trip at 1370m, higher than Ben Nevis (just).  The view from the top was amazing as we looked over the Cantabrian mountains, with glimpses of snow in places.

We then descended steeply to the valley below on a winding road.  Bernie had had her brakes serviced a week ago and was grateful they worked properly as the slopes were 15% down in places!  It’s a long time since we’ve done a long  alpine type descent with hands aching from continuous braking. As we rapidly dropped the temperature rapidly increased  and the air whipping past felt like a hairdryer. After no time at all we got to Campumanes where we stopped for a soft drink, along with the Guardia Civil Cycling team.  Bernie had to wait for ages to be served at the bar until local after local was served before her until waving some euros seemed to do the trick!

A few more km and we got to the modern town of Pola de Lena and our hotel (which took ages to get into – but that is another story).  This is a modern town where the local tradition is “Sidra” – a strong form of cider.  It is poured from bottles to a glass allowing the liquid to aerate on the way down (often 1m in descent) and only with maybe 1cm in a glass.  This is immediately gulped down while there is still a fizz in the drink – and rinse and repeat.  The two women on the next table to us were on their third bottle by the time we had had our 12Euro “menu” (3 courses and wine included – with the quality you would expect).  All the fun of the fair.