We Ryan Air-ed over there, so minimal kit with us. We have our house there already, and a car too. This made collecting a bike a good bit easier.
I'd tracked down a 58cm Merida road bike a few weeks earlier, and collected on the morning of the first day. 2x8 Campag Avanti with properly old school, high gearing. It had been well looked after though, and for £95, it was a fine steed.
Over the course of the next ten days, I did a little over 300km and greatly enjoyed the scenery and total desertion on the roads. There are so few cars there. The longest I went without seeing a moving vehicle was 38km. Incredible really.
I'd put the roads into four classes.
* Main roads - smoother than anything you'll ever experience in the UK. Like riding on glass.
* Normal roads - as good as anything you'll find here, very rarely a pothole.
* Gravel roads - these are still public highways and are largely fine for road bikes. Very smooth and fine gravel
* Forestry roads - I ended up on a few of these. A bit rough for 25mm road tyres!
There is some variety in the landscape too, between forested hill roads and pancake flat valley roads passing through farmland. Plus, lakes absolutely everywhere.
One thing you notice is that you almost never brake. The hills only go to 6-7% and they don't tend to build sharp corners into them. So a climb is usually followed by long, sweeping descents, but it's not alpine.
When we move next month, I'm going over with a road bike, a gravel bike, a mountain bike and a 'bobbing around town' bike. I'm really excited
There is a local cycle club that is quite active. Mostly mountain bikes and gravel bikes, but a few folk regularly road cycle. I went for a nice 48km ride with a chap from the club.
Either way, there is no point to this post, but I thought it might be interesting to share.
Here are a few screen shots and photos of what it's like there on the bike:
