"At The River"

(Groove Armada)

So another day where the road was flat and I sped down to Ciudad Rodrigo. Now frankly I would have liked to have done more than my 61 miles but an absence of camp sites was as far as I was going to get. The cruise down was enlivened by a chap who cycled past without acknowledging me. Now noboby disrespects a Leeds United away shirt and gets away with it. When someone overtakes they usually go past quickly get 20 metre past you and then slow down. Unfortunately he didn't have it on his racer and I got close and just followed him enjoying the 'tow'. So I could see that he knew he was a boy in trouble with his furtive glances backwards but he kept going and then occasionally got up on the pedals to accelerate and then clutched the back of a thigh in supposed discomfort but there I was! Sadly he turned off the road when all else failed. I could have enjoyed being paced toward Portugal. Got to the destination....and you know the story! So by way of explaining how I have coped with the language then in this instance I noted a cafe full of old geezers watching this sweaty Englishman with a heavily laden bike going around in circles and as it was a slow Friday afternoon in a small town then this was first class entertainment! So I pulled up and asked them in my best Spanish....."Campeen?". They didn't normally do talking and a waitress appeared and babbled something before finding their resident linguist who only spoke French. Much to my surprise I understood it was down the hill, over the river and then first left....and so it was. On Friday if the weather is good then all the town hits the river or practices trumpet in a field! Quite lovely really, Spain at its most natural.

Nicely out of tune...

The Spanish at play