Lightning fast from Denia to Olhão

This was meant to be four days. Málaga, Tarifa, a night at the Portuguese border, then Olhão with a day spare before the flight out of Faro. A civilised way to cross most of southern Iberia.

It took two. Not because anything went wrong, but because I checked a distance at a petrol station ninety kilometres in and could not un-know the answer.

Why this route

The plan was to leave Dénia after two weeks at Co-Co Coliving and take the slow way through Andalusia, which is the part of Spain everyone tells you not to rush.

Two things argued against that. One was a severe thunderstorm sitting in the forecast for the next two days, directly on the Andalusian half of the route. The other was a craft beer in Fuseta, under a thousand kilometres away, at a brewery that shuts at a specific time.

Only one of those is a defensible reason to ride eight hundred and thirty-eight kilometres in a day. I used both, which is how rationalisation works.

So: the motorway west at whatever the signs allowed, a night in Vila Real de Santo António once the sun made the decision for me, and a short, slow hour of country roads into Olhão the next morning.

Andalusia is still there. I rode past it at a hundred and twenty.