Day 49: Venta Lanuza (Drive)

New chain day!

If I'd planned ahead then I may have had a better day. Yet, I did have some good luck!

You may recall that my bicycle was in need of a new chain. The first mistake I made was believing that Decathlon (sports department store) stocked the chains they advertised online in their stores! As I discovered today, they do not!

The second mistake I made, which in hindsight was probably the initial mistake, was not cycling to Calpe (about 60 kilometres from Relleu) to buy a chain on Thursday or Friday. Instead, naively, I went Port de Tudons cycling!

As a consequence, I ended up driving there today having tried Decathlon, a bike shop I couldn't find! and a bike shop in Benidorm; resulting in nothing but frustration! There were other non Calpe bike shops I could have tried but they were either closed all weekend or closed half day on Saturday! And by this time half of Saturday had already been used up!

Anyway, in Calpe, I did manage to get an 11 speed chain, not one I actually wanted but, under the circumstances, it is good enough!

So, finally, off I went to find somewhere to park-up for the night and to fit the new chain. On arriving at tonight's stopover, I went to get the keys to unpadlock my bike only to discover they weren't where I usually keep them within the van. I quickly became worried that I'd lost them, perhaps having left them on the bike rack, from which they'd subsequently fallen of as I drove here and there getting food, water, bicycle chain, emptying black and grey water, buying €50 of diesel and then on to my present location: a total drive of about 74 miles!

This is when I discovered I'd been lucky .... the keys were on the bike rack!

Not the best of days .... but it could have become a whole lot worse!!

Oh yes, also to be added to the debit side of the day's happenings: I neglected to recover my €1 from the supermarket trolley!

• Distance driven: 74 miles (if I'd driven directly to my current location without all the phaffing, I'd have only driven about 24 miles!)
• Distance cycled: 0
• Weather: Mostly sunny
• Location: Google Maps

A late evening view from current location: