DAY 10 – Well Miguel’s advice turned out to be spot on. I had a three-course meal with bread, a glass of wine all for 14.5 euros, well actually I paid 2 euros more to have a lovely piece of steak. I’d forgotten how nice a decent steak can taste; too many Wetherspoon meals over recent times I’m afraid! The strange thing was, I entered the Terramundi restaurant at around 8.30pm and I was their only customer, I was beginning to wonder whether Miguel had been given a back-hander to send people their way to try and drum up custom? I needn’t have worried as the food was delicious and by 9.30pm the place was nearly full! They do seem to like eating late on the continent.

Factoid alert! Miguel told us the population of Madrid was 3.3 million and that their water was the best in Spain as it is sourced from the mountains to the north of the city, and I have to say it tastes as good as any bottled water you may wish to waste your money on!

Presently I’m sat in my local Starbucks enjoying my man-sized coffee but staring out onto the sodden streets of the city with the rain pouring down. Miguel explained that this kind of weather event was highly unusual, and that September was nearly always bone dry! The sad thing is that it looks like it’s in for the day, which means when the Vuelta rolls into town later the whole spectacle will be bit of a damp squib ☹ I guess my only crumb of comfort is that I’m not riding today and when I hit the road again tomorrow and head north, the forecast is much better😊 Which reminds me! My revised plan now is to head into a mountain range called The Picos D’Europa to a place called Potes where I’ve booked what looks like a lovely little hotel for 3 nights. I’m then heading further north-west to the coast where I’ll spend a night, before moving on to Sarria to prepare for the big walk!

As I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to get any decent pics today, for the football fans among us, below is a photo of the iconic Bernabau Stadium where Real Madrid play. Factoid alert again! The ground holds over 81,000 and incredibly, 70,000 of these are season ticket holders!

Ok, I'm having another nightmare uploading pics where I want them, but after the stadium pic there should be a photo of the riders coming past me on the first lap of around 7 or 8 (I'm afraid I lost count) 5.6 kilometre circuits right in the heart of the city. This is after they've already ridden around 70 kilometres to get into the city. Being up close to the barrier where I was, I could see the incredible speed they ride at and feel the draught that is caused when so many riders come past at once. You can see why they all try to ride in the slipstream of the rider in front! By the way I think there may be a god after all, because around about 4 pm the skies cleared, the temperature rose and by the time the race arrived just before 7pm, the roads had dried out and the race was on! This was what they call a sprint stage and it was won by a guy called Fabio Jacobsen from Holland, but the overall 3 week race winner was a Slovenian named Primos Roglic who won the race by 2 mins 33secs. No Brits figured I'm afraid as all our big names are either injured (Chris Froome) or didn't enter (Geraint Thomas).