Angliru!

Friday 28th June

This was always going to be the hardest day of the tour. The original plan was to leave all the gear at a hotel, ride out of Oviedo & ascend the Angliru, the peak of which is around 25 miles to the southwest of the city. Return to the hotel & rest. Slight modification to that now though: Return to the hotel, pick up the gear & cycle another 20 miles to a campsite near Gijón. Two reasons for this: camping is preferred & there isn’t a sight near Oviedo; it gives us (them 🤭) less to do in the remaining days as we pick along the coast back to Santander.

Anyway, the intrepid three set off to face their demons at around 9am, whilst I took another nap before gathering myself together & bolting my legs on for the ride northeast to the Gijón campsite. I was going to take it VERY easy 😁

Getting into Oviedo had been one thing. Getting out on the right road, quite another. I think I went round in circles in the city centre a few times before picking my way out to Bobes & heading north on a beautiful & quite route up into the hills. Great views across the high meadows back over Oviedo & beyond. I could see the Angliru range on the distant horizon. Huge & daunting it looked too!

Got a message at 12.43 to say they’d made. Bloody good going guys!

I stopped in a nice spot just before Gijón & had a rather nice ham & cheese tortilla boccadillo. Then in through Gijón to the campsite on the east side.

Camping Deva is a posh site with lots of facilities, but it must have been something I said!