Its fair to say that today is not a good day.

It started ok, much like every other day we have had in Sanguesa. Despite the frog chorus all night …..actually I am not sure that I have mentioned that before? Since the first night all those many, many, many moons ago (how many moons was it exactly?) there has been the weirdest, high pitched, slightly off tempo beeping noise (beeping doesn’t seem right actually but we were both convinced it was man made to begin with….perhaps a strange car alarm or a beeper on a shop door) that starts at dusk and simply does not stop until dawn. We have ruled out birds (although I can’t now recall why) and we have instead settled on it being flirty frogs trying it on with each other across the campsite. Regardless it seriously gets inside your head when you are trying to sleep and we have now both resorted to ear plugs (yes they came with the eye mask) for the last couple of nights.

As we walk into town for our now daily breakfast at Bar Landa we are greeted with several “Buenos dias Nick, buenos dias Marc, que pasa con la bici?” to which we only have hopeful shrugs by way of a response. Within a few minutes of sitting down at our usual table our coffee and croissant magically appears without it even being asked for …...OMG…we do need to get out of here!!

Anyway after much faffing about with the courier company not being super clear (to be fair I think this is as much to with our total lack of Spanish than anything else!) about what time our much needed replacement part will arrive and where it will arrive (both pretty fundamental you would think) we track it down at a local office in town and gleefully we almost skip to see Signor Bike Fix…..we are nearly on our way.

Sadly it is not to be, not today at least. Despite double and triple checking what we were ordering and getting three different sets of pretty expert eye’s on it, what has arrived is not what we need. To be clear we ordered the right part based on the website description but what has arrived is just not that part. It’s a bad moment.

We have been here for four days now and we are still no closer to leaving.

Once the initial shock has passed we spend the rest of the day trying to remonstrate in Spanish with the company that supplied the bogus part and find the right one, which of course they don’t have. We also have to wrestle with getting a return organised for the wrong part and let me tell you when you get an email effectively saying in Spanish “it’s so easy, just print this label and drop it off”….it’s pretty frustrating…..print how exactly? We do eventually manage to get it sorted courtesy of the super helpful Senoras at the courier depot but it was not my favourite two hours ever amongst a sequence of pretty dismal hours .

Then we have to again start scouting the internet for the right part. We finally find a shop in Tarragona in Spain which it says has a pair (left and right hand, we only need right hand) that are “guaranteed” to be delivered tomorrow if we order before 4pm today. They are without doubt the most eye wateringly expensive pair of shifters I have ever seen anywhere but I have no choice.

Duly ordered we can only wait, again and hope, again! We are as I say trying to not make any plans until we have a working bike but it now seems unlikely that we are going to make it to Tarifa on time for our bikes to be collected on 20 May and get the ferry to Tangiers and do it just on bike power alone. We will of course keep fighting and push as hard as we can and we will let you know where we get too.

As evidence of our ever increasing boredom and depression the only things that seem to be worthy of note today are the bin in the gents wash block, which seemed vaguely interesting for a split second, the remote control snake we nearly but not quite purchased and the stork that seems to roost in the tree above our tent.

Tomorrow must be a better day!

Ps….for TMAAT boredom frequently leads to too much wine….as evidenced last night when we found our way back to the campsite in the dark (to be fair we could do it blindfolded now!) to find the main gate closed. Rather than electing to use the (very obvious sober and in the daylight) smaller side gate we decided it was a much better idea to climb a lamp post and vault the six foot fence…..not super becoming for middle aged men!

We absolutely have to get out of Dodge!