Finally an early start plus 8 hours of sleep. Stage set for a long stage. I wonder how weird this double use of stage is for a native speaker.

Today’s route started on my beloved E4. The plan was to use it for some kilometres to avoid a major detour. Whenever possible I would try to use nearby roads. That’s how it looked on the map, coming back from a side road onto the E4.

Well, here is reality.

Even if I would have somehow gotten past this barrier, there’s a another one between the lanes, which also prevents any overtaking on the single lane per direction. The latter makes it extra annoying to drive there, for both motorised and muscle-driven vehicles.

So I had to return to the detour route. Yay, extra kilometres to drive, and one hour wasted.

At the side road on the map, there is a ~250 m high mountain with different via-ferrata ranging from difficulties A to E. But no rock climbing routes, due to the loose material. Looked like fun, next time I shall pack climbing gear.

The bike routes are starting to get worse.

The non-asphalt roads often have big holes or are very loose. This requires a very concentrated and active driving. Downhills, everything over 40 km/h starts to feel unsafe, since fast breaking manoeuvres aren’t supported by the ground. Even in curves it sometimes feels like the loose gravel could stop providing traction if pushed any further.

I had a late lunch and totally overate. In the morning, after breakfast, I felt still hungry and had the feeling I didn’t eat enough the last evening. So I kind of overcompensated that with one litre of yoghurt and a big salad box with mostly chicken and egg, well, and a quarter water melon. Took 30 kilometres before my sympathetic nervous system took over again.

A small water power plant along the way. There are many of these.

Due to the lost hour at the beginning, I took one camp site earlier on the route and thus had an early arrival around 19:00. The planned camp site would have been another 40 km and a very late arrival. Currently, I try to stick to these two constraints: ride at least 120 km, and reach a camp site until 20:00.

Camp is at the coast.

Since I had so much time, I  did clean and oil the bike chain in the evening. The new chain already lost some tension. During riding, I was thinking about writing about mosquitos and how it is not so bad at all. I’ve been bitten many times, but it’s bearable. I packed some anti-mosquito spray, but haven’t really used it so far. However, working on the bike was horrible. There were tens of them constantly attacking me. The spray I applied in-between didn’t help much. Next maintenance will be scheduled for the morning again.

Tonight’s dinner: triple portion of Ramen noodles.