At the beginning of every adventure there is a love story, there is passion and a spontaneous combustion takes place inside us with the subsequent unpredictable result, a cocktail of emotions and situations which we are barely prepared to face. Symptoms may include agitation, exacerbated joy, nervousness, confusion, even fear. And it all ends up in the typical arrhythmia of the last minute before departure, like in the fraction of a second before a first kiss.
When I got on the train in Bordeaux heading back home I started thinking of the parallel paths that my cycling adventure and my love story had followed. “Mum, I fell in love with a cycle tourer and I’ve decided I’m getting a bike and I’m off to nowhere. By the way I’m also quitting my job”. That had been four months before. I had joined my cyclist in Tudela and we had pedaled around 1.000km together zigzagging through Huesca, in Spain, and the French Landes. We had also cycled along, up, down and across the Pyrenees and ourselves.
For a starter we visited the Bardenas Reales, a deserted area with eroded rocks emerging from the bottom of an ancient swamp that has seen its waters escape to the Mediterranean Sea while carving surreal shapes through the centuries. The supersonic jets that carry their maneuvers out in the military area this Biosphere Reserve still houses break the space-time continuum for seconds suggesting a filmic scenario. As a matter of fact the Spanish-French film El Monje (2010) has been shot in this geological sanctuary.
But the main course of the adventure was the Pyrenees, a virtual reality simulator of how to cycle a roller coaster. The nights under the stars became colder, the tent would dawn soaked due to condensation and the feathers of the sleeping bags were just not enough to prevent the tender human skin from freezing. We followed the chamois up the rocky peaks in Zuriza and Hecho valleys, and we flew with the vultures levitating in the hot draughts between cliffs in Ordesa. As the autumn arrived we disguised with the trees, composing its carnival melodies in red, yellow and brown notes, and we became part of the landscape melting with the snow under the last warm rays of the October sun.
The Landes were the counterpoint to these magnetic mountains. Cycling had never been so unchallenging: keep straight on between the lines of pine trees and at the end of the plantation turn right. We would see pines for ten days in a row. Fortunately migrating birds were there to lead our pedals and the cranes rocked us every night with their chants as we all went to sleep nearby the lakes of the region.
Then all of a sudden love extinguished and we considered the trip ended. Snail travelling as a way of life, carrying everything on us, was over. However, the passion for adventure keeps burning inside me and it will soon explode again.
