Preparing for Spain (preparation & progress)

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Our Travel Diary (blog) is finally published after some very late nights in the final week before departure (Sunday 8 September). It will stay in situ for a short time then the placeholder posts will revert to draft and remain that way until the live events are recorded. The blog 'Happy Pilgrims' is just another creative option to capture our holiday adventures in Spain. Friends and family are under no obligation to read any of it. An influencer (wrong word) and an strong advocate for us to capture our stories, photos and videos, is one of the elders in the family who isn't on social media.

#1FavouriteUncle as I refer to him, has been elevated to 'fan status' and like us, enjoys travel, photography, music and reading. We hope he will enjoy the Happy Pilgrims blog as much as we enjoy our adventures and documenting them.

Credit for a second extraordinary blog

My first attempt at blogging was The Happy Pilgrim (circa 2015). Credit to this latest creation must be shared with a kind soul who works at the Sora Templates Helpdesk (Manoj Tiwari). I am guessing he's from Sri Lanka but he didn't tell me much about himself. Despite me being tired (and slightly annoying) he helped with the development via WhatsApp.

This Sora-Article template is cute, but definitely not a simple click-and-load model. Some parts were easy to recall from 9 years ago, but some of the complex detail was beyond my brain capacity (especially late at night). Manoj was an absolute godsend, helping me pull the blog together at the last minute. In the daylight hours I did follow his advice, and extended myself by reading the task cards with my glasses on. I am happy to report that I finally achieved the baseline blogger skills required to take the blog on holiday. Despite a sense of urgency and panic, I'm pretty proud of the some of minor html coding I did and super impressed with the co-developer. Capability uplift? I will let the readers be the judge!!

For those interested in blogging, Sora Templates and html coding details are here.

E-bikes

Those who love cycling will get it straight away we can't wait cycle across Spain.

We've done some local training after work and on the weekends when the weather and time permits. Training as brought us immense joy and activated our 'adventure' switch! Each day we head out we discover a multitude of bike paths that weren't so obvious when you're in the car or on a bus. I was familiar with some when I trained for walking the Camino in 2015 but having wheels and that bit of electricity to 'zhoosh' up those steeper inclines is awesome. Obviously you still need to use your legs but the electric power is there as back up, keeping your speed constant and taking you a little further.

Having e-bikes has been life changing and has turned a 20-30km 'normal ride' into an easily achieved 50km+ ride and suddenly our world has expanded.

We purchased our Merida e-bikes from Bec at 99Bikes Phillip (Woden). Store manager Bec was fabulous. Initially we purchased only one e-bike to share for the purposed of training for Spain. It was so much fun that sharing was never going to work. A few weeks later we went back and got a second one. Same brand but the bikes are gendered bikes, so I can reach the ground!

Our new phrase is 'let's go this way' and training around the ACT Canberra cycleways has prepared us well for the 700-800km trek across north-west Spain. We have expanded our community and by chance ran into Bec's husband (who we had never met before). He helped us with directions, got chatting about our wheels and as it turns out was married to Bec who sold us the both bikes! Small world as the saying goes.

When we cycle we smile and the world smiles back - Happy Pilgrims.

After 8 days in Barcelona we catch a train to Pamplona and collect our e-bikes in. The bikes are Cannonale and at 750Wh and have a bigger battery capacity and wider tyres than our delightful little Merida eSpresso L 300 SE EQ 50Wh bikes. There is a €200 Euro security deposit we pay when we collect, we are taking our own seats and helmet and apparently the team at Bicigrino.com have placed a GPS in them in case they get stollen (not in case we get lost!).

Cannondale e-bike full suspension 750h
We won't know if have removal batteries for charging until we pick them up.

I've had a tool box talk 'tour-briefing' from a cycling enthusiast I know and admire. Also a recent convert to e-bikes, I figure he may watch our Camino on Socials and work on convincing his wife to take the journey next time they are in Spain. Mr Wightman has always been frank and fearless with his advice. (Thank you, letting you know, good for launch.)