An Ode to Kindly Folk

We’ve faced a few challenges over the past days. Chief amongst them, Beck’s Long Covid rearing its head again. She’s asleep next to me on a bench as I write this. We’ve also had some weather and some kit fail. I’m left temporarily unable to charge stuff using my dynamo, with more holes in our sleep mats to glue and we even had a mini flood in our tent due to some poor tent placement a few weeks ago (ironically a day after posting this).

We’re quite lucky that’s all that happened given our chosen route and how the rain event escalated into a red alert as we rode away from it. We still had to ride up a river for a few kilometres after we’d taken shelter in a railway tunnel for an hour. Eventually, even the tunnel started leaking…

These things happen but the whole situation has been made markedly easier (despite not easing Beck’s symptoms, sadly) by the kindly folk we have met over the same period.

First up, we tried out Welcome To My Garden for the first time and Vincent kindly let us stay on his farm. We actually stayed in his tent on a proper mattress. Luxury. Beck had been dreaming that we might one day camp on one of the terraces in the many olive farms locally. Her dream came true.

When we turned up at the nearby town we went to the bar where Nacho worked and he looked after us from that point onward. We even had cake as a freebie with our drinks and dinner from the bar together back at Vincent’s. We were *so* well taken care of. Thank you both for making our stay so special…and we sure hope to see you in Mexico sometime Nacho!

Also, outside the bar in town we met a couple of local families. Oscar, a local builder, recommended the green route we planned to take and enthusiastically showed us videos of what was in store. Then he gave us his card and said that if we had any issues at all on the next stage of our trip to be sure to call him and he’d come to help us. That was a bit of a tear-jerker. Such a genuine and kind offer…and one we got close to needing to take him up on.

Once we made our campsite that night we immediately spotted another touring cyclist. They are few and far between nowadays. We had a lovely evening with Luana, exchanging stories and getting to know each other. The night that we had our mini tent flood Luana had a rat gnaw into her tent. She was awoken by it running around her before it eventually exited the way it had entered. Eeeewww! Luckily, I had a tent mesh repair patch, just bigger than a rat hole size.

Some campsites attract exciting folk and at this one we also met David and Kolja, from Germany. We had a great evening chatting about all sorts of fun adventures.

As we were about to leave the site we met our motorhome neighbours. Their story was so inspiring. They sold everything (including a house they built together) and have been travelling in their motorhome for five years. They mostly help out at sites to pay their hosts, and they have no plans to reintegrate with ‘normal society’ and no concept of how they might. We are starting to understand that feeling.

All in all, these encounters have turned our past days from ‘somewhat challenging’ to ‘positively life-affirming’. Thank you all 🤍