welcome to today's episode welcome back to spain today
we're riding denia to valencia and we're pretty much on flat roads except for one giant climb
in the middle you'll have to flash up the profile it's hilarious it's probably like
flap flap down you know it's a viewer's fault as well this route was going to be completely
flat along the coast ease into it wasn't sure how our bodies were going to perform
after a long time not bite back in and uh one of you guys forgive me i forgot on who it was
told us to go through a place called barks and barks is at the top of a big climb so thanks mate
it's interesting the majority of people who seem riding are just like normal mostly older people
in full kit just doing some exercise yeah it's nice to see it's really nice isn't it yeah the
culture here for riding is just a bit better isn't it yeah oh without a doubt a bit better massive
understatement i just think so many more of the people that live here ride bikes just occasionally
you know so they understand what it's like to be on the road that's the drivers are a lot more
tolerant and they're more used to seeing cyclists because there's so many around so if you uh you do
want to go somewhere nice that's close to the uk if you're from the uk this is a very short
flight away you fly to what valencia ala can't take all barcelona it's all really really good
in hindsight you should have gone with what you said to buy which was not the zero sugar
one because it's going to explode oh no because we need sugar we need sugars biggest anti-climax
ever so this green line on the elevation profile is where we are about to start the big big climb
probably looks worse than that actually is so this must just connect the two cities
then so basically we've just been on probably four or five kilometers of basically pan flat
very well paved path through like orange fields and not oranges in the color but as an orange is
what you call a orangery kept us away from cars there's lots of
people walking people running people cycling people
doing it like us people doing it just on road bikes people doing it just to get to work
probably like sunday probably to the i'm going to say the laundry but it's the wrong one country
exhibit a
when the sky falls i'll copyright strike i can't sing like that i wouldn't worry jimmy it
doesn't sound anything like the actual version what wait who's saying skyfalls is that adele
that's what the d stands for in the middle of my name adele jimmy adele adele nichols
turn
our dinner last night ended up just being supermarket food because a lot of the places
in denia were closed and the ones that were open were like meat places so what are you eating
you're using baguette as a spoon it's actually very nice we ended up smashing a whole bucket each
so we've got some left over and that's gonna be lunch today keeps things a little bit cheaper
which is nice and you get exactly what you want whereas on the road you just never know
what they're going to sell at a cafe unfortunately we didn't go to the paella place in parks because
we don't eat paella did have um some questionable potatoes bravos yesterday what was questionable
about it i quite liked it but it wasn't potato's bravest was it it was like deep fried crisps
with sriracha sauce on top pardon me if i'm wrong i don't think it's technically potato's brothers
we have now had some food has some peanuts dropped down from that climb onto a very long straight
road which should take us all the way to valencia how are you feeling jimmy this is valencia
technically no no this is it the hotel's just around the corner oh that would be nice
unfortunately that's not the case we're about 30k away and uh we're going through like a kind
of national park sort of thing is there going to be a nice lake on the left hopefully we'll
be able to see it all going well we should be back within an hour and a bit so not too long
so see you then see you then guys bye you've ruined the video now jimmy now what am i supposed
to do well just teleport us into valencia but then you missed the like so then it just goes like
and then we're we're in valencia i wanted to film us going in because it might be
well i'm expecting like an epic city but going in is valencia like that's the same thing isn't it
so
we are in the process of recovering from that ride and we thought we would go through
some top tips for planning your routes because there's a few things that we've been doing that
make your route planning a lot easier especially when you're doing it on the fly and bike packing
tip number one being flexible is going to give you the best chance of having a good time what
that means is well we only have tomorrow planned we don't have any of the other
days planned whatsoever we have nothing booked whatsoever but that means if we wake up tomorrow
and we feel terrible or if we wake up tomorrow and we're feeling really energized we can choose
a route accordingly tip number two travel with a tripod tip number two booking.com is your friend
i'm sure there are other websites that do a similar thing but the one that i have
historically used and we're using on this trip is booking.com it lets you search for hotels on a map
it lets you search for hotels that are currently open which especially around here
makes a big difference depending on the season and it gives you a timeline of all the hotels you book
so you can see it going forward if you're being a bit more meticulous and planning days in advance
it will literally tell you every single day that you've got a hotel booked and what's coming up
number three oh you're gonna do tip number three i'm prepared anything i'm gonna caveat this last
point by saying this is a fully funded trip from ourselves what are you messing with my lighting
for i'm trying to put number three into tip number three we're paying for everything out of our own
pockets and there are no sponsors but we are using commute to plan our routes because it's the best
way to plan routes i have found well i guess it is similar to strava in some respects that you
can like upload what you've done previously and keep a log of what you have done and plan routes
but it's essentially built around being a route planning app um i think they sponsored you on
other stuff that you have them but as you said this isn't sponsored we both just use it
it's the best one i've found for planning roots it isn't the only one out there for planning roots
it isn't perfect but a lot of the time it picks you can just do an a to b and nearly always
it's a good route one thing that i always do when i'm using commute to plan routes
is do the whole route first so in this case we were going from alicante all the way to barcelona
then break it down into smaller chunks based on where you can stay so looking at booking.com and
checking where the hotels are we've managed to split it up into about 100k a day people take it
the give or take a bit and then we've opted to add some more climbing in and some extra miles when we
wanted them but one of the best things i've found to do when you're not sure about a road might
look like a main road on commute is head over to google maps drop your little yellow man on the
road and then you can see a street view of what the road looks like so it does help sort of going
in with a fine-tooth comb and checking if there is actually a road there and what the surface is like
is it worth adding that a lot of the planning is built around where hotels will be and where
we can get food and get drinks they're completely like if you don't factor in them you're in trouble
yeah you do have to take into account how much food you're going to be able to carry if you have
camping gear with you if you don't your dictated your route is dictated by hotels pretty much or
where you can stay there's always an abundance of hotels on the coast so we really haven't been
worrying about it too much but in places like australia there was like one place every 200k
so we basically just rode in between those always worth saving some bag space just for food because
you never know when you're gonna have to do a longer stint uh but yeah then we start getting
into more in-depth stuff about actually what you take bike packing which is a separate video
so there's your tips today's a good example isn't it because it's sunday you very fairly noted that
that means that lots of things are closed in spain um some cafes and bars were open but all
of the supermarkets were closed completely so that was why we stocked up yesterday on stuff
but that meant that today we had to ride with a massive baguette and some filling for the
baguette until you eat it and then you don't have to ride with it well i guess you still do
technically yeah that's just stored somewhere else that marks the end of today's video thank
you so much for watching stay tuned for tomorrow where we'll be riding a slightly shorter day but
a very scenic one fingers crossed and perhaps we will cover some more bike packing topic which we
have not decided on we also then need to decide the rest of the route or at least the following
day i have some ideas i haven't told you about them yet it involves very short flat days
you