Today was a great day. Today’s route was my favorite so far and I’ll tell you why.
We had a leisurely breakfast at around 8:30 and were ready to leave at around 9:30. But then we got chatting to another German in our hotel, so our departure was later than planned. He comes from Stuttgart and is driving all the way to Portugal. Whew, that’s a long time. We’d rather do a relaxed tour.
As Llantres is on a mountain, we had to cycle up the first 8 km. That’s really hard on the legs.
Our first destination was Villaviciosa. The town lies on a long river and is surrounded by a national reserve. The ride there was all downhill (gradients of up to 14%). As the road is asphalted, it was quite easy and I reached a top speed of up to 46.6 km/h. Maybe not fast for a car driver, but on a bike it was very fast!
From there, we headed towards Gijón via many small villages. You always have a view of the sea and the roads are really nice to ride on. The highlight was Playa de España, which lies between two mountains.
Then we had to fight our way up a super steep incline to get away from the beach again. So far, this was the hardest stretch we’ve ridden (2 km, average of 8% on 180 m elevation gain) That sounds tough, but it was 😂 Stephan went to the toilet beforehand and I went ahead. It took him up to 12 minutes to catch up with me… but it’s also hard to catch up with someone so fast 😂😂
We then arrived in Gijón at 14:10. As we had ridden up so much, we could just let ourselves roll down into the city. Because where it goes up, it must also go down. After a bit of searching, we finally found our hotel.
Gijón is really beautiful and that’s why we decided to stay here a day longer. That means tomorrow is a beach day and we won’t leave until Wednesday.
The route today was really great because we were up in the mountains and had a constant view of the sea. But I also think it’s always great to be able to ride down quickly 😆
Conclusion of the day today: every mountain can be conquered!
