And we're off once more! Today we leave the laid-back pace of homestead life in the Valencian foothills to continue on our circuitous path for Istanbul - which, by some quick Google Maps-aided calculations undertaken out of curiosity, is still some 7000 km away. So much for our distance estimates: the trip is actually about 12 000 km long. Nevertheless, we are confident we can make it in time. We have improved immeasurably since those first few days out of Copenhagen, and are now solidly proficient at climbing all sorts of hills in all kinds of weather...
We start off the morning by rising early, gathering our personal effects, packing everything up, and loading the bikes. With that done, we cook a spot of breakfast - scrambled eggs with a side of eggplant-chickpea mash, the latter resulting from a culinary experiment that turned out not quite as expected. Lesson learned: olive oil does not heat as well as lighter oils and is thus unsuitable for deep-frying. After the meal, we set to painting over the first coat in Joseph's room, finishing a job that we had started a couple of days ago. Finally, we exchange our farewells about 1100 and head off for the train station in Llíria, where we grab the metro into Valencia - we could bike this, but it is already quite late and the mercury is steadily rising...and besides, the inland jaunt from Valencia to Llíria is not strictly part of our route.
In Valencia, we decide to pass the midday hours drinking orange juice and tea in a café off one of the main squares; this is a prime opportunity to catch up on any Internets we may have missed in our atavistic rural paradise over the last couple of days - for although it was possible to get a connection in Pedralba, it was not exactly reliable. We make our way out of the city later in the afternoon, managing to locate the northern exit and smaller highways without the undue effort that has characterized many of our city-leaving attempts. Valencia is not very large, it seems...
...and the path takes us up along the coast, along bike paths past fields and dirt roads by RENFE lines, even dumping us into an orchard at one point - but we make it a fair way out of Valencia before calling it a night, stopping with enough time to find an open supermarket and grab the ingredients for a lentil-fish curry-stew concoction (which, despite the unappetizing description, is tasty indeed!) We had spotted an orange grove behind what we thought was an abandoned farm building; however, when we go to check it out, we are subjected to a barrage of barking dogs from within...so we instead camp in a play fort underneath the play structure in this playground just out of the small town we stopped in. Our hobosity augments itself yet again...