Cambrils 18th August 2010

This is one that got left out; I've just found it on my Netbook, along with all the email addresses that I lost when the laptop's hard drive crashed.

We arrived on Sunday at 13.30. It was warm and quite dull. There were lots of people because it's August and because Monday was a holiday in a number of communities. Today is Wednesday and it's quietened down a bit, although there are still lots of cars and at peak time the beach gets full. And then there are the bicycles.  There's a cycle path which goes from one extreme of Cambrils to the other. It's not an unbroken path but it's quite good for Spain, and it's been full of cyclists of all shapes and forms, from little kids on tiny bikes with stabilisers to big adults in stretch shorts, helmets and fast sports bikes. I've borrowed a bike which my brother-in-law found in a rubbish skip and reclaimed; the one I abandoned in Bognor was better, but this one has taken me to the port and back twice. The brakes work and the pedals, although they are crooked, move it along at my normal, slow speed. You don't want to go much faster, what with scatty pedestrians wandering onto the cycle track, skaters and scooters, not to mention dog-leg bends so sharp that they've got convex mirrors for you to check if anyone's coming the other way-if you see someone coming it's too late. Spain is a good place for champion cyclists-there have been plenty of really good sportsmen; at times the best in the world, but there's not much idea of using a bike to get about, to do the shopping and move from place to place. They are just beginning to have cycle tracks in cities, and rental systems where you can take a bike off a rack, cycle to your destination and leave it on a rack for someone else to use.