Hi all. Well Sarah and I are back in Madrid after a very cool 24 day road trip in our little Citreon. We covered about 5,600km's in 24 days including almost a complete circuit around Spain. The highlights were definetly the windsurfing at Tarifa, the coastline and European cup in Portugal, the spectacular cities like Madrid, Salamanca and Valencia, and most of all Andorra and the Pyrenees. I'm not sure I had heard of Andorra until I got here (the country is only 25km's wide), but it is the best and most beautiful place I've seen in a long time. It is an outdoor dream with moutains galore all made for road and moutainbike riding, hiking, fishing etc. Even better is that it's all tax free so everything is very cheap (especially cameras etc.). After Andorra it was into southern France for the 2 big Pyrenees stages of the Tour de France. This was abosulte choas and very cool. The first night we went up on to the moutain of La Mongie where the first mountain stage finished. Because we are so close to Spain and there are heaps of Spanish riders the place was full of mad Spaniards all partying into the night. There was fireworks, music, singing, and lots and lots of drinking. There's no way any of them were getting near a bike the next day that's for sure (I'm pretty sure a lot of them have NEVER been near a bike). There were literally millions of people up on the mountains and getting off the mountain to get to the next stage was chaos. The organises really don't care much about spectators and its pretty much every man for himself. We made it to the base of the Plateu de Bielle (finish of the next day) by 1am and pitched our tent in the median stip of the road (by the time we woke in the morning it was tent city). We walked a few Km's up the mountain and sadly watch the US Postal train pass by again. I was hoping to see a Spaniard give 'the American' a lesson in climbing, but not to be. It's great to see these guys in the flesh, and see just how much pain and how sick an athlete can appear. The second day was 200km's with 80km's of climbing!! We did it pretty easy in the Citreon though (although you needed to turn the A/C to handbrake start on the hills). After a few very crazy and tiring days following the tour we did the hard yards back to Valencia that night (540km's) and slept in the car at the airport before dropping it off the next morning (sleeping in the car was to save money on accommodation after spending nearly $80 on tolls to get to Valencia - 'user pays' sucks!!) We're bakc in Madrid now and I'm jumping on a flight to Cairo late tonight for a few weeks exploring some more 'old stuff'. I'll get some pictures up soon.