Ortigueira–Ourense

In Ortigueira we left the north coast of Spain to enter the hilly and (according to what everyone told us) hot Spanish inland. Most of Spain is not very hilly, sometimes even flat, but on a quite high altitude. The further north and the further east you are, the higher it is, and in some places in the north-east, the landscape can be completely flat but on more than 1000 metres above sea level. So when you leave the north coast, you first have to go up a mountain pass, but when you arrive on the top, suddenly there are…

Continue reading

Ortigueira

Fourty vegans walk into a house full of skulls. No, this is not the beginning of a joke, it is simply what happened when the biketour entered a home that we had seen advertised on Helpx as a “vegan farm”. The place was pushing the definition of farm, as it was a long-neglected property with a few fruit trees on it, and really overhauling the definition of vegan, as the estate was full of horses and the house itself, full of skulls and animal skins. It was sprinkling rain when we arrived and I rushed to push aside some horse…

Continue reading

Urniza

Dear reader, An elated time has passed since we left Urniza, and we’ve grown so beautiful that I can barely recall what it was like. It went somewhat like this: Tarara stepped on top of the dog’s shelter and onto the donkeys back, reaching and nibbling at the tree’s leaves. We knew she was a good climber, still we were amazed. Making an effort to remember Urniza my mind slipped a bit and reminisced Martorell instead, my first day in Ecotopia. We were crossing the city when I felt like an organelle in a cell. For a moment I had…

Continue reading

From Tapia to Ortigueira

The Biketour has been going on for more than 1½ months now (hopefully someone will write some more blog posts about what happened during that time) and has now reached its last stop on the north coast of Spain in Ortigueira, Galicia, and will from here turn south towards Portugal. We are between 45 and 50 people for quite a while now, which is much bigger than in the last years. The size of the pots is just about big enough to make enough food for everyone, and we now have 3 rocket stoves and 4 trailers with us. In…

Continue reading