Dear Madam:

(From Rosa Urbión Izquierdo, General Director of Tourism, Junta de Castilla y León:)

Dear Madam:

We have received your letter, in which you talk about the difficulties in crossing National Highway 601 between the towns of Valdefuente and Puente Castro, in the province of León.

The Department of Tourism and Culture is responsible for tourist signage for municipalities of Castilla y León, as well as the Camino de Santiago, and the placement of signs on the town limits in the provinces of Burgos, Palencia and León.

Your letter makes reference to signage of highway, the responsibility of which falls under ther jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Works; as of this date, we will pass your observations onto them.

Thanking you for your interest in the promotion of tourism of this Community.

Warm regards,

Rosa Urbón

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(As-of-yet unsent response:)

Dear Director Urbón:

Thank you for your letter of the 25th of September, in which you make reference to my letter sent in August. As much as I appreciate your response, I am concerned that you did not make reference to the core issue of my letter: the danger that pilgrims face crossing that highway.

This is not an issue of signage. The issue is that this a very, very dangerous stretch of road to expect bikers, walkers and horseback riders to have to navigate. There is no way the Camino de Santiago should run right beside a four-lane highway. Nobody's arguing that the signage is good - it's the best of all the four communities where the Camino goes - but the problem is that it's extremely unsafe to walk those 350 metres. The entry into León is one of the low points of the Camino and it shouldn't have to be.

We look forward to hearing of future initiatives, on the part of the Junta de Castilla y León, to improve and re-route this very dangerous part of the Camino.

Patricia Dawn Severenuk
SPANISHCYCLEPATHS.COM

Finding Six Weeks

Six weeks of biking. The thought of getting six weeks away to do nothing but biking is....

...scary. It's quite one thing to have a dream, but quite another entirely to carry it out. After all, the nice thing about having a dream like this is that you don't have to be consistent: you can just let the dream go and let yourself be distracted whenever you want.

...worrisome. What am I going to do for money while I'm not working? How will the course coordinator react when she realizes that I need to get away for six weeks between Easter and May Day? Will I lose my job?

...problematic. What if I'm the only person who goes on this thing?

...exhausting. I'm getting pretty close to forty: will I be up to the demands, physically?

Oh my God, I WON!

Good Lord almighty!! I won the Salomon Women Will competition for Spain!

http://www.salomonwomenwill.com/sp/news/¡¡¡Enhorabuena-a-las-Ganadoras---.html

Good grief! When the hell am I going to get six weeks to cross the peninsula on a bike???

Apologies to the Community

One of the different things you learn about when you live in Spain is that apartment buildings aren't owned by individual people. The owners of the various flats collaborate in the running of the building and making decisions (what colour to paint the halls, who to pay to clean the common spaces....); since I rent, and I don't own, I don't have to get involved in the minutae of things associated with running the place.

Which is probably just as well, since I have just succeeded in doing a wee bit of damage to the common hallway. Here's the problem: I live on the fourth floor, no elevator, and the staircase that takes you down to the lobby (such as it is) is quite narrow. Narrow enough, even, that I've got to lift the bike by the chainstays and take it down the stairs in much the same manner that one would throw a Doberman Pinscher out of the house. This is not as easy as it sounds: Not only does Rocinante weigh about 22 lbs (lighter than a Doberman, given), the tires are really wide. Various points on the mint-green walls have now been smudged with pentagon-shaped marks... if the president of the community ever comes looking for tire prints, I'm done for. Not that she will. She's probably going to come looking for the person who dinged a two-inch wedge of plaster out of the wall on the 3rd floor landing.

Whoops.

THIS is going to be a problem - I can tell. I can tell that getting the bike in and out of the building's going to affect just how much I end up riding in the end....

What ever "MASS" it is... it's on tonight.

For those of you who are in Madrid this evening and would like to take part in the.... well, they don't call it Critical Mass here...it's the Bici-Crítica here....here are the details.

Riders taking part in the Crítica meet in front of the Palacio de Comunicaciones (the white, wedding-cake post office building) in the Plaza de Cibeles, at around 8:00. By 8:30, instructions are given to the riders about the route; they don't like distributing maps or giving anything graphic out because, under Spanish law, that would constitute the Crítica being an organized ride (requiring the organizers to get a permit.)

The ride usually takes about an hour and a half. Although you'll see others jumping reds and trying to keep the pack together, it's better to obey traffic rules - it doesn't mean that you're going to end up getting lost. And yes, in the best spirit of relaxed cycling everywhere, there's beer at the end of the ride.

If your Spanish is up for it, check out the Bici-Crítica's new webpage (which probably includes the biggest collection of cycling t-shirts in Spain):

http://bicicritica.ourproject.org/web/

A bit of shameless self-promotion....

Want to know what would motivate someone with a comfortable life to give up everything and move to Spain? The Toronto Star has been running features on Canadians who live abroad, so I decided to throw my bit in and see what they'd publish.

http://www.thestar.com/article/250864

I really DID do it with the intention of promoting the web site, but now that I think of it, it was a good way of letting friends in Toronto in on what I'm currently up to!

Jill, I'm about to abuse your hospitality.....!

Just got a message from my buddy Jill, who has probably spent the most interesting summer of anyone I know: she's spent most of July and August in Mallorca, learning how to be a helicopter pilot. Valencia's where she normally lives, and has asked, for the third time, when I'm going to visit her.

Three is the magic number. And you can take bikes on the train down to Valencia....

http://www.viasverdes-ffe.com/viasv_htm/vv_xurra.htm
http://www.viasverdes-ffe.com/viasv_htm/vv_ojosnegros1.htm

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have our cyclepath for the October 12th long weekend. Valencia and its greenways, it is, then!