Big climb at Navacerrada and Cercedilla

Today Frans and I did a sizeable chunk of the Camino between Navacerrada and Segovia. We did not exactly cycle very far, but the climb was pretty steep and it made us realise that our first day from Madrid to Segovia is doable, yet fairly tough. We ended up climbing an aggregate 1.4 Km. today, enough to break a sweat anyway.

The mountains around Navacerrada are stunning and the trail easy to navigate. One thing we learned the hard way was not to take the Roman path just past Cercedilla, which is part of the Camino. We now know to circumvent that nasty little stretch and stick to the tar road going round it. Especially as we will be towing our luggage with us next week.

So all in all we had a great day with brilliant weather, as the photo's will show you. We noticed there were already a fair amount of pilgrims hiking their way towards Santiago. Let's see what traffic will look like next week as we set off on our journey. We made sure to buy some horns to fix on our bikes, the ones you typically find on a 3-year old's tricycle. We could have bought simple bells, but that would have been too sensible surely. The important thing is that we will be equipped to ensure that any pain-in-the-ass "I do not move for cyclists" hikers will at least hear us coming.

Today I will leave you with this video of Frans explaining why he feels that a helmet is a passion killer, something that makes him sweat and cramps his style. This segment is in Dutch, for those of you that master this romantic language.

Apologies, had to pull the video, Frans was threatening to sue so I had to delete it, as MikMTB does not have sufficient funds to be tied up in the inevitable legal battles... ... sorry people... ;-)