15th November (raining and thunderstorms)

Our final morning in the Barcelona apartment. Tomorrow, we will leave this city for our journey home. It rained overnight and it was still drizzling on and off throughout the morning. Today we had no plans except checking on last minute taxis and arrangements that need following up. Dad had slept well last night, so we were glad about that, just hope we all get a good night tomorrow and everything goes off as it should arrangement wise. Whilst he slept, Ju and I had snuck off to the supermarket at 8.30am, not remembering that they open at 9am. Back for breakfast, without all that we initially required. Managed another trip to get supplies later on, also without getting wet.

Fixed a couple of holes in the boxes from when they had been shipped from Seville, purely with cardboard, but it did the trick. Although we have confirmed a carrier for the boxes, we have yet to confirm a taxi for the passengers, namely us.  About 12.30pm we strolled down the road, looking for a place to eat some lunch and eventually found a nice café/bakery serving lunch and coffee.

Blobbed at the apartment for the rest of the afternoon, as the weather closed in and got worse as the day progressed. By 5.30pm we were witnessing a great thunder and lightning storm and the streets were literally running with water. I’ll bet the locals were looking at us on our balcony wishing that we’d get the hell out of town, as they haven’t seen anything like this before. For us, it was quite an impressive show for our last night here. And it was free.

And so we come to the end of another adventure. This one hasn’t had as much cycling as we would have expected to do, but it has given us the chance to cycle the Loire Valley, with my Dad, not many could say that. It proved to him that even at eighty five years old, there are still things to achieve, although Dads been doing that his whole life. Tomorrow, we’re up at six o’clock, with a pick up time of eight o’clock to get us to the airport, sort the luggage and hopefully be eating breakfast by nine. Definitely looking forward to catching up with our kids and the rest of the family, plus our great friends, many of whom have been along on this ride with us, in spirit, with the odd comment thrown in on the blog.

All there is for us to do now is write our reflections on this tour and thank our amazing staff at Face to Face, without whom, we would not have the opportunity to undertake such enjoyable, quite often stressful, but always enlightening tours on the road less travelled.