The Bikepacker: Bikepacking 2024 - Zarautz to Markina-Xemein

Day #

State of Legs

:-)

	Distance (miles)	Distance (km)	Ascent (feet)	Ascent (metres)	Punctures
Today	33.3 miles	km	1844 feet	metres	1
Trip Totals	1058.8 miles	km	28386 feet	metres	1

Today's Route

Route So Far

Travelogue

Last night we spent some time scrutinising the route we'd planned using Plotaroute because we'd been surprised to find our way blocked by steps a couple of times, despite having indicated to the tool that the route needed to be suitable for bikes. We also noted that there were quite a few occasions on the route where we'd been routed onto what looked like unpaved paths despite having indicated that we didn't want this. Unpaved paths can mean anything from a beautiful gravel path to utterly horrible trails made of mud and sand and lava (honestly!) and who knows what else. The point is, you can never know until you get there and we'd read that parts of the Camino del Norte and Camino de Santiago, both of which pass through these parts were difficult or impossible to cycle and we didn't want to find we'd been routed onto either if we could help it.

So, why did the route Plotaroute had helped us create look like it might not be ideal for us? User error was discounted. Our settings looked correct. But we read a note about semi-automated route planning for specific transport types (walking, cycling etc) that indicated it was dependent on the presence of data that described the surface of roads or paths for this feature to work and that not all parts of the map could be guaranteed to have this data. So, maybe this was the issue.

We also saw that Plotaroute estimated there would be over 5,500 feet of ascent for today on the route we were originally intending to cycle. Now M1 believes Plotaroute is quite inaccurate when it comes to ascent and gradient figures. It always substantially disagrees with Strava which always reports significantly lower total ascent figures and less steep, more believable gradients. But even if Plotaroute had exaggerated the total ascent figure today, it looked like the route as it was would be very tough, especially on our heavy bikes (have I mentioned....?).

We decided to take control and manually plot a route that stayed on the more major roads only. On these roads we could be sure of the surface and from our experience of such roads in these parts, whilst there might be more traffic than if we took the hillier back roads, we didn't expect it to be too bad. Much of the route we came up with hugged the coast as well, so we'd have the bonus of great ocean views too.

So, today we followed a new variant of our route that stuck to beautifully paved roads always. This turned out to be a good choice. There wasn't too much traffic, apart from in one or two small sections and the surface was quite fast to ride (downhill!). And the views did not disappoint.

We passed through a series of small towns. In Deba we stopped for coffee. M1 made a mess of trying to order coffee at the bar in bad Spanish. Bearing in mind this is Basque country, with its own language, speaking Castillian Spanish may not have helped exactly. Luckily a friendly customer stepped in and sorted things out and we got our essential morning coffee :-)

We climbed for a while in low gears. It was never too hard but the climb did go on for a while. As always though, there's a pay back in the form of a thrilling descent!

In Ondarroa further along the coast, we crossed the river by one of the several bridges and sat and had cold drinks. It was getting very hot so we were in need of liquid cooling!

Our destination today was a hotel just outside of Markina-Zemein. The town itself was quite nice in parts and we bought lunch (guacamole and Doritos!) and some groceries for later and sat under the shade of a tree to enjoy the guac.

The hotel was only a mile away and reached through a large park.

After unwinding for a while in our room, we had drinks sat outside the bar. Weird noises were heard. One was found to be a cat that nobody has taught how to say "miaow" properly. The other was similar to the noises we heard on the way to La Tremblade from La Rochelle. And sure enough, the source was the same. Frogs! We could even see some of them peering through the algae growing on top of the water they were living in.

Another pretty good day.