Total confusion leaving Barca today. We must have got lost at least 10 times and toured every suburb and industrial estate in Greater Barcelona.

A bemused truck driver waved quizically at us outside the factory where he was parked when he realised he had seen us half an hour earlier cycling in the opposite direction.

Martin keeps blaming it all on my 1994 map and the fact that I mentioned taking directions from the sun. I tell him that 1994 is a vintage year for maps and it's not my fault that the Catalans have built lots of new roads since it was printed. They even seem to have taken some of the roads that are on my map away!

It would have helped if we had got back to the hotel a little earlier than five thirty in the morning but a combination of cervezas grandes and an inability to remember where the hotel was put paid to that possibility.

Eventually we climbed out of the haze and were rewarded with spectacular views of the Med. Then Martin ran over another snake.

We have ended up in a town çalled Vic which is about 60 miles to the north east of Barca in the foothills of the Pyrenees (at least it is on my map).

The end of a long day in the saddle is often fraught and today was no exception. When you are hot, tired and sweaty, with 90 kilometres in your legs you don't want to be told by the hotel receptionist that you need to park your bikes in the public parking lot down the street. What you don't want even less is to be told by the man from the parking lot down the street that the receptionist has got it wrong and you have to take the bikes back to the hotel.

We refused to move them again and el hombre eventually agreed to hide them in a corner behind a 4x4.

Now we are having a beer in a bar off the Plaza Mayor where the barman initially refused to serve me "dos cervezas" because he thought I was going to drink them both myself - then Martin turned up, the mystery was solved and eveyone in the bar had a rip roaring laugh.