Best Thing About Taking Bike Adventures & Cycling on the Camino Trail - Annabelle and Alex

What's the best thing about taking a bike adventure? I've asked this of many guests now and today I am sharing your responses to this question which I also posed on our instagram account - be sure to follow us there on @SeekTravelRide if you aren't already!

We are also going to be transported to the Camino trail in Spain where listeners  I Annabelle and Alex share one day of their trip.  It was quite an eventful day indeed - just one day from their round the world journey. Be sure to follow them via their instagram account - @grainonthego

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:24

Hello listeners, it's Bella Malloy here, host of Seek Travel Ride. Welcome to another midweek mini episode where I share what it was like for you, one of our listeners, during one day of your trip, one day of your bike adventure. This week I'm going to be sharing the story from Annabelle and Alex, who are currently partway through a around the world cycling trip. Their story is from the Camino Trail in Spain, and I can give you an update on their adventure as they have just crossed over into Morocco. Now, before I get into their story, I actually wanted to start today's episode with a big shout out to the amazing Seek Travel Ride community, which is over on our Instagram. Just a few days ago I posed the question on our Instagram stories of what's the best thing about taking a bike adventure? And I had so many responses to this question that I thought it fitting to share it on a podcast episode. So here's what some of you had to say. Laura in Wild Places says Freedom Challenge cultivating inner peace all the beauty. Gaia on wheels, you said meeting new cultures. Holden.op you said trauma bonding with your mates. There's nothing like suffering together, is there? Kurt Werby, you've said the interactions with local people which always restores my faith in humanity from my travels. Love that one, Kurt. Exploring by bicycle says Freedom I love this. For those who don't know, exploring by bicycle is previous super guest, Claire Wyatt. I've featured you on three episodes there, Claire. Actually, other guests, two locos on wheels, they've responded and they've said the unknown, the freedom and learning which comes with it. Love that. Hacker.bikepacker. You actually responded with a photo which is dreamy. It's your touring bike all loaded up with some amazing mega mountains in the background, and you told me the pure sense of freedom and the thrill of living every moment to its fullest. IT Covian says the pace. Fast enough to move forward, slow enough to be able to observe things. Gentle.spin says cake. Oh I love this. In fact, I had a few which is all about food. Gal on the go. You said everything. Tandem Traverse. Meeting amazing people on the way. Joe underscore Hayden. I featured your story, Joe, just a few weeks ago on the Baja Divide. And you said eating as much food as you want. Sticking with the food journey here. Eaglebower.enterprises. You responded also with a photo, which is just your hand holding some wild berries that you've picked there. So I love the food element here. Felix Claridge, you've said seeing cultures through the eyes of the locals. Uh cycling dot Hokkaido.podcast. Love your podcast by the way. You have said regrounding. Palmer underscore in underscore bike. You have also responded like Claire and you've said freedom! Allie BKR, you've said stopping wherever you want and going over 60 kilometers an hour down mountains. Pete Gost, another super guest that featured you twice, Pete, and you're currently in Tanzania adventuring there through Africa. You have said drinking beer and feeling the reward. Sonte, cheers to you. Sue underscore chapel says the freedom. It's so liberating. Living intense says eating as much as you possibly can all the time. Keep your eyes peeled for a full-length episode to come very shortly from Melanie, who is behind that Instagram account of Living Intense. Two feet underscore two wheels. You have said freedom. Breaking away from rigidity of daily life and embracing the spontaneity of the moment. Now this one's going to test me out. I think you are from Finland, and I'm going to try and not butcher your username. It is Positiviset Pioraretcat. I'm so sorry, I have totally butchered your username there. And you have said being exposed to the life elements, sensory inputs in good and bad. And last but not least, I have Joseph.monga.7 who says planning, doing, reminiscing. I love that element, Joseph. It sort of goes into that sort of anticipation phase, the flow state of being in the moment, and then being able to reflect back on all the experiences. So as you can see, so many awesome responses there. A few that were definitely interlinked, definitely that sense of freedom and adventure, exploring cultures and food as well. I loved all your responses, thank you so much. If you haven't already done so, be sure to follow us there on Instagram. User account there is at SeekTravel Ride. Now, without any further ado, it's time to listen to what was an incredibly epic day shared to us by Annabelle and Alex. Let's go to the Camino Trail in Spain. Take it away.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Hi, I'm Annabelle.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

And I'm Alex.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

And we are on an around the world tour. We have been gone for about six or seven months so far, and we are currently in Spain. And thank you so much, Bella, for having us on the podcast. We love listening to the stories of other bike travelers and seeing the adventures they get up to. And so we are very excited to be sharing one of our own. The day that we want to talk about actually happened yesterday, and we've been thinking of what day we wanted to talk about for a while, coming up with a few ideas, and when we started to talk about them, they just didn't feel right. And then yesterday happened, and we were like, oh, a hundred percent, this is the day we want to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Sometimes you don't find the day, sometimes the day finds you.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Yeah, absolutely. Yesterday started out super normal. We were in Pamplona. We've been riding mostly on the EV1, and where we were riding links up with the Camino de Santiago. And so we had the choice to either continue on the EV1 or ride a little section of the Camino. And so we decided to do that. And we're riding, Alex was a little bit ahead of me as he usually is on our uphills. And I see Alex stop ahead of me on the hill, and he usually just goes the whole way up, doesn't have to stop, and doesn't usually walk. And so I was like, huh, that's weird. I kept biking ahead, and then I heard the hissing sound of a tire losing air. And I was like, oh no. We've been really lucky, and we haven't had literally any mechanical problems on our entire tour so far. So this was a first. I got up to him. It would be a riding tubeless tires, and the tire was losing sealant really fast.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

There was a little hole, and just absolutely spinning up sealant. We're like, oh, why not just bacon strip it? It looks easy enough. Pull over the side of the road, tuck into a ditch to get to stand up so we could start bacon stripping and filling back up. And first thing I noticed is I just have a bunch of wasps crawling on my leg.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

But I didn't. So I was like, oh, what are you talking about?

SPEAKER_01 7:43

So I'm just like, oh, I guess it's just me. So I'm like shaking wasps off. And I'm like, at least it's not raining. Starts raining. Classic. We're able to like get the hole a little bigger, get the bacon strip in, pump up. We see a little bit of just maybe a teeny bit of a little another hole forming, was bubbling because it was a little rainy out. And we're like, this probably isn't a big deal. We might have to stop and pump again, but no worries. So we finished chugging up the hill. At the top, there's actually someone who was doing a little trail maintenance. They gave us some muffin. We're like sick, back on track, no worries. Easy peasy. Typical little tire failure, no worries. The next section is like a pretty big uphill. So we're just chugging, and Annville behind me is just that tire's looking flat. You should pull over again. Oh, maybe it was just a little bit of a bigger leak than we thought. Pull over and starting to pump up. And about this time, I'm realizing the pump which we've been using that has a little tension in it. We've also ridden a ton of gravel recently. And the pump when I pulled it out had a bunch of junk on it. I started pumping and it felt like there was a bunch of junk in it. And I'm like, okay, cool. Don't worry. I only need to pump this up a little bit. We'll get up the hill, big downhill. We'll find another place to go, get another fuller pump, no worries. Get up the hill. It was pretty evident that I couldn't make it down the hill with the level of pressure we're in. We're on like a nice road, it's fine. We'll just pump this up, we'll scoot down, we'll hop into a gas station or something, and we'll sort this out. We'll just get it pumped back up. I'm pumping it, it's just not pumping at all. So I'm basically having to just unscrew the pump. And as I'm trying to get the pump, which is stuck out so I can clean it, the stem of the pump that you're using the pump with just comes absolutely clean off. So I'm basically just staying there looking at Annabelle holding two ends of our pump, just going like, well, I don't know what now.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

The tire still had some air in it, so it wasn't like all hope was lost, but we knew we needed to fix the situation soon. Alex goes down the hill as fast as he could, and I followed soon after him. And we're like, okay, we're in a small little town with a few houses. Maybe we can knock on some doors, see if anyone has a pump. We pulled up Google Maps and saw we were basically on like a service road of the highway, and through a few farms and over the highway, there was a pretty big gas station. Maybe we can either use their pump, maybe someone has a bike pump, just like people we can talk to and maybe figure something out. But obviously, we couldn't cross the highway. So there was these like back farm roads that led you up to around the gas station. And when we got to the gas station, there was a fence and a gate, and they were quadruple padlocked. Oh, great, like another roadblock. Alex pretty nimbly lifted his bike over and hopped the fence. But we figured, let's save ourselves the hassle. I'll just stay on this side of the fence, you go deal with it and call me if you need anything. And so Alex topped up his tire with more sealant, got everything ready, and was trying to use their pump.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

And as I'm digging through my repair kit, looking for the valve that can furt to like the regular car pump, I'm realizing it is just gone. Like I'm looking through everything, I'm looking through like my bailout screws, I'm looking through all the sealant stuff, I'm looking through the extra tube we have, and I'm just like, it's gone. It's absolutely not here.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Nowhere else it could be.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Yeah, it's like I tore apart my entire frame bag looking for it, absolutely gone. So I'm like standing up front holding a half bottle of sealant. There's sealant on the ground. I'm just like looking confused because I have no pump. My pump is broken on the back of my bike, and I'm standing at a car pump without a way to pump my tire up and just watching people zip by. And Annabelle just like shouts, like, Are you okay? And I'm like, I don't know what to do now.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

Yeah, and just as we were like starting to run out of ideas and like lose a little bit of hope, this woman like pulls into where Alex was trying to pump his tire, and she starts like giving Alex a lot of instructions in Spanish, and most of which I don't think I wasn't there at the time, so sorry, I'm just telling your part of the story, but she started bossing me around. Yeah, and Alex's like, okay, normally I wouldn't react too well to this, but I have nothing else to do. So yeah, sure, I'll listen to your instructions. She was telling him to move the bike into this back hallway.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

I'm walking my bike through the gas station into like the back service part of the gas station where there's a restaurant, like Annabelle said, it's just take off your wheel. Um, we have a back rack on and we run a bell drive, so it's a huge deal to take off your wheel. So I'm like, why? What's going on? She's pointing to her car. I'm like, where are we going? And we're able to suss it out a little bit and use Google Translate. And she was basically trying to say, Oh, you come with me, we go through the pump. I'm like, Oh, is there any possible way the pump could come here? So we don't have to, my cook, my bike's also super muddy, so I don't want to wreck this poor woman's car. And she's like, Oh, yeah, my husband's gonna come. Let's let your girlfriend in out like the other side of the fence. She goes out with a huge set of keys.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

So she's trying the keys one by one, and there's four padlocks, a lot of different combinations to try. She lets me in, awesome. And so I link back up with Alex. She asks me to bring my bike inside, and we waited out in like the gas station restaurant until her husband comes. He comes, he has the floor pump in hand, like totally saved the day. And he's a mountain biker. So he's like, Oh yeah, like I call my wife all the time to come pick me up when I get into trouble. Happy to return the favor. And he helps us out. He pumps up Alex's back tire, and he had pumped pumped it up to 25 PSI. And we thought that was like a little bit too low because Alex had basically slowly been losing air all day since we discovered the first hole.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

And we're not sure if the seal was gonna hold at this point.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

Yeah, and so we were a little nervous, so we were like, oh no, we think we should pump it up a bit more, which turned out to be a fake. Foreshadowing, foreshadowing. But so yeah, we pumped it up more before we left, and yeah, said goodbye to them, left into the sunset. We had a little bit of daylight left, so we were like, all right, let's make the most of it. I think we had about like 13 or 14 miles left to go at this point to get to the town we were staying in that night.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

We had about 13 miles of riding when we left the gas station. Turned in, like Animal saying, beautiful sunset. We had another big uphill, and by the time we were done with that uphill, it was completely pitch black. But the region we're riding in, very sparsely populated, so we didn't really have to worry about cars. Went through a nice town, literally was so dark out there. You can see like the just the whispers of the Milky Way. We were like feeling on top of the world again.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Yeah, everything was going good. We like started to regain almost all of our confidence.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

And basically, there came to a section we were gonna turn right or left, and left was a little shorter, and it was super muddy where we're at. And we're like, you know what? Let's take the shorter way, we'll take the little bit of the single track. And we get down the single track, and maybe five minutes tops down the single track. Mind you, we're still seven miles away, eight miles away from the town we need to get to, up some massive hills. On the single track, I hit a rock, and I hear the sound of the of the plug just flying away and the hole just reopening and air like rushing out of it. So I immediately like drop to my knees and grab the tire, like try to find out where the hole is and like plugging the hole up my finger. It's already flat. It's done. He's already gone. He's already gone. You can't save him. I have to take my thumb off, and I'm just like sitting there watching my tire like deflate all the way down to the rim.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

And of course, now we don't have a pump. It's 8 p.m. It's totally dark out. We have seven miles to go. It's like a two and a half hour walk to the town, and we're like weighing our options on what we can do or should do. We're on like a pretty, at least like a pretty remote section of the Camino. We hadn't seen many walkers that day in between a bunch of farms. And so we decided that the best option would be to grab our bags and stash the bike somewhere hidden. We locked them together, covered them with our ground cloth as like a little camouflage tarp, tried to make them like as out of sight as possible. And we put a little pin on Google Maps so we could remember exactly where they were. We tried for a few minutes to hitchhike, but literally not one car passed where we were. So there was a town 40 minutes away that we were able to walk to that had a bus that was coming in like an hour and a half. And so, yeah, we just decided let's face the music and let's go for it.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

And Raj uphill 50 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

And so we walked the 48 minutes uphill, got to this small town that was like really tiny. We learned later it was like 140 people, and we were waiting at the bus stop, and two buses came in the other direction, and one didn't stop for us. The second one was like, Where are you trying to go? We told him he was like, Oh, like no buses are coming there tonight.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

He just gave me the saddest head shake I've ever seen and said nothing. He just closed the door and drove away.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

Yeah. And so then 9:15, when the bus was supposed to come and it didn't come, we waited 20, 25 more minutes and it didn't come. And we're like, all right, I think we gotta reassess, find another option. And so we walked to like the one crossroads in the town a little bit further up, and we were trying to call a taxi, trying to do something, and a car drove by, and a lot of people that had passed us were saying, like, Bian Camino, or asking us about the Camino that we were on. And this car drove by while we were on the phone and he said bien camino and then drove away. And we like probably weren't as friendly as we should have been because we were a little bit frantic trying to deal with the situation, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Gave him a half-hearted wave and tried to avoid walking two more hours.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

Yeah, and we were just about accepting our fate when the taxi driver didn't want to pick us up, we didn't know what else to do. And that same guy turned around and came back. And I was able to explain to him in my not great Spanish everything that had happened up until that point, like the bike braking, us walking to the bus stop, the bus not coming, us having to get to this next town. And he was like, You guys don't need a place to stay. And we're like, No, no, no, like we have a reservation. And he was like, Okay, I'll take you. We're like, Oh my gosh, thank God you I like you saved the day. And yeah, we took the 10-minute ride with him over to our town. He dropped us off at the hotel. He was like, such a nice guy.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Yeah, like the PS of this is we make it to the town, everything's perfect. We were able to look, we have air tags in our bikes, we're able to look at our little bikes like all alone. But yeah, we went to bed instead of being like, wow, today was such a bust. Like, we had so many malfunctions, everything went wrong. If you think about it, it's like we had a flat, we had bad sealant management, we weren't able to pump it up, our pump snapped in half, a plug that should have held for a long time didn't hold, and we got stuck in the middle of nowhere. All of that sounds bad, but we had someone who was there seeing us be a little down, give us some little something to eat to go out of the way to bring us a pump, to even like driving us to the final destination. It's so nice to know, even if you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere and you've exhausted every last hope that like people will be there. Like, even if you're in the middle of the no like of nowhere, people will be there, and you basically almost can always get help if you're asking for it. And in this case, we barely even ask for it. People are so well adopted.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Strangers like really showed up and helped us out like at every turn. And I actually listening to one of your other episodes, we really liked what someone said about if you meet people with a smile, like a lot of doors might open for you. And it's like very easy in those situations to be like a little frantic, a little overwhelmed. But when we got to all of these crossroads, being a little bit smiley, taking it in stride, and I think it opened us up to a lot of people wanting to like help and interact with us. And yeah, the quick little like end to the story is that the next day we got up early, went to a bike shop, were able to buy a pump, buy some more sealant. We actually bought two pumps in case something happened to the first new one. We somehow missed a bus again. They didn't want to stop for us, and we got a taxi. He took us to like the exact pinpoint on the map where we could meander up this like farm road to get back to the Camino track to get back to our bikes. We were able to patch it up really quickly, top up the ceiling, pump up the tire, and yeah, that we were on our way.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

So much easier in the daylight.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

And yeah, everything feels better when like the sun is out and you can see what you're doing and where you're going.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

All's well, then ends well.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

Yeah, and for like our first any sort of mechanical issue on the tour, like we handled it really well. I think we like didn't fight, we kept our chins up, just had a good attitude the whole time, and I think it really helped us out.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Yeah, you all get through it sometimes with a healthy dose of humanity on your side, and it definitely made us feel a little bit more prepared for the next time something like this happens, which I am sure it will. Yeah. Moral of the story, buy a nice pump.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

Yeah, keep a good attitude. So, yeah, that's one day on our bike tour, and hopefully there will be many more good ones to come.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Thanks, Bella. I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to a few of the awesome sponsors that are making our trip possible. Thanks so much to Viral Bikes, Pinion, Redshift Sports, Outer Shell, Laser, and Old Mount Mountain. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Thanks, Bella. We'll talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Wow, Annabelle and Alex, what an incredible day. One that had so many elements to it, and I think you really tied them all in there at the end. The idea that this is the first sort of really problematic mechanical that you've encountered on this world tour of yours, and yet the kindness of strangers once again came to your rescue. It was certainly an epic long day, and I often thought while you were sharing it, what I would have been like in your shoes in those moments, in the dark, walking to a village, feeling deflated when you're tired, deflated. Sitting at the bus stop waiting for a bus that never came, and then also the joy that many other guests have shared to me as well is there is always a way, help is always there, people are kind, and you will find a solution. I absolutely love this story from you. And listeners, be sure to check out their adventures unfold. Their username on Instagram is Grain on the Go, and I will provide a link to it in the show notes. I'm pretty happy to say that I hope to also link up with Annabelle and Alex for a full-length episode to come. Wishing them well as they journey now through Africa, starting out in Morocco heading towards Cape Town. Now it's time to give a shout out to some of you super fans who this week have taken time out of your day and shown some appreciation for the podcast by buying me some virtual coffees. This week I would like to say thank you to Bliss Sawyer who says, I love your podcast. It always gets me excited about my next bike tour. Thanks for all the time and energy that you put into this. Thank you so much, Bliss. I really loved hearing from you, and I love that you are listening to these episodes as fuel for your own bike adventures as well. Thank you so much for supporting the show. And Rec Rab82, I know you're a super fan. Keep up the good work and happy new year. Thank you so much, happy new year to you as well. And uh congratulations, you've just come through 24 hours of the Strath Puffer, a mountain bike event in Scotland, where you have battled through some epic snow and freezing temps and had an incredible performance there. Now, listeners, if you too want to do as Bliss and Rec Rab82 have done, you can also show some appreciation for the podcast. Click the link to buy me a coffee, which I have included in the show notes, buy me some virtual coffees, keep me producing the show, but most of all, let me know what it is that you love the most about Seek Travel Ride. Until the next episode, I'm Bella Malloy. Thanks for listening.