Another excellent sleep at another lovely aire – Spain has this down!
The drive to our spot to watch the final stage was not far, and we were the first ones there. There’s a fairly large area right before the summit of the second climb of the day and we had our choice of spots.
We’re right beside a memorial of some sort – beautiful fresh flowers, some inside a heart-shaped rock formation.
Not long after we arrived the fellows came along to paint the summit line.
Slowly but surely more cars arrived, including several team cars. The one that pulled in right beside us was Ineos, and they were friendly and both spoke very good english. Without even having to ask they offered us each a bidon – Yates’s! They set about loading their rider’s musettes with bottles and power bars, etc.
At one point a car pulled in and the driver got our and added two more lovely floral arrangements to the memorial. A while later a couple of the cars had to shuffle around to let two cars through and up the road – it wasn’t so much a pullout as it was a very wide entrance to a side road and the other cars were, in fact, blocking it.
A breakaway of six arrived about five minutes before the peloton.
Once again they passed as one large group, with only a few stragglers. The team cars in our pullout were very accommodating – I asked the Astana guy for a bidon and he gave me a full musette. And Colin got an EF bidon thrown by a rider.
Since we hadn’t put any flags up it was quick and easy to get on our way. We drove generally west to Ampudia, just north of Valladolid to find yet another lovely aire for the night.
There was some sort of outdoor opera happening in the town but we were too tired to go down and investigate, opting instead to just have dinner and an early night.
Sally McKenzie's European Adventures 