Leaving the lovely park in the morning we tried once again to find the climb on the next day’s route.
We knew we were on the right roads part of the time but just didn’t know where all of the turnoffs were as nothing was marked yet. We back-tracked to Baiona and decided to go a bit west just for fun – once again we’ve found the Camino! – 150 km to Santiago.
And there’s a parking area with fantastic views of the ocean and a lovely smooth foot/bike path.
We stopped to take in the views and I laughed a bit at the fact that some folks, when presented with breath-taking vistas choose rather to look at their phones!
…
After a bit more to-and-fro we were once again heading north along the coast when we saw a large group of riders making a turn inland – today is the rest day and it was the entire Movistar team doing a recon of the final climb and then down into the finish. The road was not marked and if we’d timed it differently we might still be circling the area!
There were quite a few nice wide places to pull over so we got a bit ahead of the team so I could hop out and take some photos. They were very happy to see us and Enrique Mas posed for a photo with a team-mate as they rode past.
We found a spot for the night on the route and finally relaxed now that we knew we were on the right road.
In the morning the fellow from the campervan that was parked near us was busy putting Belgian flags up everywhere, and he had a lot of them!
We put a few of ours up as well, and as usual as the day progressed more and more fans showed up parking where they could along the road.
There was a bit of excitement at one point when a fan coming down the hill on his bike crashed and the ambulance had to come. There were police with flashing lights directing the traffic and the ambulance took the guy away up the hill – it seemed like a collarbone or shoulder injury so hopefully not too serious.
The race arrived right around 5:00 with Wout van Aert in the lead (we found out later that he won the stage).
Roglic and some of the other main contenders were about five minutes behind.
As soon as the race passed…
…we started to pack up and were on our way to our next chosen race watching place for Thursday. We made it to the city of Tui and found a Lidls to stock up on food, then continued on past Ourense looking for a stopping area along a secondary highway. We did find a place to stop but it was one busy little road and the cars and big trucks just whizzed past all night long – not much sleep happened!
Sally McKenzie's European Adventures 