1-2 June 2023, Marbella, 55.07km
Camping La Buganvilla €21 [R425]

What a day! Tiring and a mixed bag of highs and lows, largely determined by the roads we rode.
We began the day on a busy national road. We twice found that the roads we were travelling morphed into autovias and we had to turn back and find alternatives. One of which led us into Estepona with its blue-painted cycle paths and delightful ocean front and fragrant gardens. On the second occasion we discovered that Estepona's promenade forms part of the utterly remarkable coastal "path" that runs for around 200 kms along the Mediterranean sea.
Sometimes this route is hard-packed sand, sometimes tiled or paved, sometimes a wooden boardwalk and bridge that crosses swampy ground or a small river, of which there are many. On occasion you can smell the wood and always hear the clatter of wood on wood under your tyres.
At times the promenade ends, forcing you to find your way through nearby suburbs, often quite lovely, before reconnecting with it.
This part of Spain is a summer playground, both for locals and foreigners. The promenade winds along the beach past homes and apartments and hotels and restaurants and boat basins. At one of these were moored opulent craft, the shops lining the waterway, all designer, telling a tale of wealth. People jog and walk and cycle the promenade, many on rented electric bikes. We often found our lumpier and slower two-wheelers being overtaken by women in flowing floral dresses.
The plantings are lush and colourful, the smell of freshly cooked seafood enticing, the ice lollies irresistible. Pitch black Africans trade handbags or offer braiding services. On the narrow beaches, a mix of sand and stone, people oblivious to the dangers of too much sun, turn a painful shade of red.
Near the end of our cycling day, some nine hours after it began, we twice had to push the bikes through short sections of forest to reattach to a cycleable road, and to reach our campsite we had to walk the narrow cement strip on the flip side of the crash barrier alongside the motorway.
A good day, despite it being a little too long for comfort.
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Camping La Buganvilla is a formal campsite with shaded spots and excellent ablutions and a nice little bar / restaurant by the pool. And this morning a table and two chairs were delivered to our site by the good looking groundsman off the back of a modified golf cart. We are spending a second night.
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In the absence of true freedom, I am sustained by the illusion of freedom. The appeal of long term travel is that it serves up plenty of the latter. The constraints, however, are very real; our budget is just one.
Our disposable income is what it is and defines our daily spend. If we overspend, we must tap our capital - foolish at our age. If we can't afford Europe, we must choose discomfort over pleasure, for example wild camping or bumming free beds over hotels. OR we must choose a different destination. OR we must travel for a shorter period. Is life worth living if we can never afford a cup of coffee in a coffee shop? Each of us would draw this line somewhere else and change it depending on a million factors. Charl and I still have to decide where we stand.
The alleged benefits of the Schengen visa are a very real constraint on long term travellers, especially those moving at our torpid pace. You are allowed to spend just 90 days out of every 180 days in Schengen Europe. Initially we planned to cycle a shortish route through Spain, France, Italy and Slovenia to Croatia, then spend the next 90 days in Balkan Europe, then back into Schengen Europe at Greece. Then Croatia joined Schengen Europe on 1 January 2023 forcing us to change our plans. Either we must leave out Croatia OR we must cut out a portion of Spain or France and do Croatia.
Let me expand a little on the double constraint of cost and visa ... We decided on cheaper Croatia over 750km of Spain, only to find a bus from Algeciras to Valencia, excluding the cost of carrying the bikes, is prohibitive. The train was even more expensive. By expensive, I mean it would have cost us the equivalent of four days' budget. (It is possible that a different starting point such as Malaga will yield better results. We will explore this option.)
So, deciding what to do and how best to do it ain't easy…