Day 5: Cádiz to Algeciras (123km)

Today was headwind day and by now I am absolutely toast.

From Cádiz I turned southeast and I had rolling hills and a solid headwind right from the start. However, the more I got South approaching Tarifa this developed into a real storm. I guess it is a surfing hotspot for a reason.

Most of the roads went straight through endless plains followed by soft climbs both with absolutely no protection from the fierce wind. I chose not to fight it simply because this takes away too much energy. I rather went slowly, made myself as small as possible but this still was exhausting.

Around noon, I ran out of water, a beginners mistake. It looks like I needed to go another 40km against the storm until I could refill. Yesterday, that would have been nothing but against this storm it felt like an eternity. Luckily, after 10km a gas station appeared out of nowhere and I could have a “lunch”.

When the wind came sideways, my inframe bags functioned as a kind of sail in a bad way. I was almost blown off the road twice. The storm lasted for about 100km until I reached Tarifa and later Algeciras.

The one fun bit, next to an unexpected call from my wife Carolin in the morning, was a nice drone video shooting of a herd of cows in a pittoresk valley shortly after the start. My first one on out-of-sight-distance under severe wind conditions. All went well, also for the cows 😎

Another great thing was finally seeing the mountains of Tanger, Morocco, i.e. the African coast across the street of Gibraltar. What a small world we live in.

From tomorrow on, I will only be cycling North.

Insight of the day: When you are ready to benefit from a tailwind, don’t complain about a headwind the next day. At the end, life gives us equal amounts of chance.