What an exciting day Team Basil have had today. We thought it was going to be a day of watching the La Vuelta time trial, but then things got even more exciting, if that were possible, with the appearance of a relatively rare bird.

A tumble down church in the village

View of Cobreces

The first task of the day was for Sarah to take the dogs for a romp on the beach, where Mabel surprised us by playing nicely with other dogs! Is this a turning point for our 10 year old Welsh Springer Spaniel, who has always been frightened off other dogs. We can but hope.

After breakfast we went down to the village to watch the Vuelta Caravan come through. This is where sponsors vehicles parade and give out goodies. I understand that in the Tour de France this can last an hour or so. In the case of the Vuelta it lasted about 10 minutes and although we got some free hats and bags, it was, at best, disappointing. The highlight was spotted by Sarah – four cars sporting “Welcome to Yorkshire” logos. Unfortunately the distributed some fairly tacky dufflebags. I think they would have done much better if they had thrown Yorkshire Puddings, Pork Pies and the like at the crowd. One member of Team Basil would have been happy for days.

Welcome to Yorkshire

The time trial didn’t start for another 3 hours so we retreated back to our aire for a cup of tea. While we were sitting out I noticed, through my binoculars, a strange looking bird foraging in a farm pond next to the aire. I got my Bird Book out and positively identified it as a Glossy Ibis, which was strange because the book said they should be further south in Spain. Maybe this was a stray or Global Warming is moving the species further north. The bird was behind a chain link fence, but I got my birding lens out and did the best I could to get a photograph.

Glossy Ibis

Following the Glossy Ibis excitement and lunch it was time to go to watch the Vuelta time trial. There was a reasonable turnout of spectators in our small village and maximum noise was made for all the Spanish riders by the locals and the Dutch riders by a large, cowbell wielding, group from the Netherlands.

Steven Kruijswik

We were, of course, above all this in the clear knowledge that there was only one nation leading this race and that was Britain through Simon Yates!!

“Go Simon” I was shouting as I took this photo of race leader Simon Yates.

I took a hundred or so photos from different angles and I’ve put the best ones at the bottom of this post.

Alejandro Valverde, in 2nd Place

Watching a time trial is a strange experience, because you cannot see riders racing each. Each rider rides on his own, with one minute between each rider, to see how fast he can race the course, in this case 32km, against the clock. Each rider is of course racing each other rider to try to gain time, but it is just not visible to the spectator. In any event it was a novel and interesting spectacle. Regular readers of the blog will recall we also watched a time trial in Slovakia last year, but in that race Basil got into slightly hot water! (Click Here)

Tomorrow we head into the Picos de Europas mountains, via LIDL and some Gaudi Architecture.

Vincenzo Nibali

Adam Yates

Nairo Quintana