As if to add insult to injury, after being trapped in my house yesterday by the Vuelta de España, today I am blocked in at the bodega! Well, that’s perhaps a slight exaggeration, but I do have to take a rather large detour (in the wrong direction) to get home. Today they are holding individual time trials between Cambados and Pontevedra, passing through the village of Barrantes (the exact location of our bodega), closing the majority of roads around us.

To give this post something of a wine flavour, I should tell you that they are riding through the very heart of albariño country, and that Cambados (where they start) is of course the location of our annual albariño festival. The Provincial capital of Pontevedra, where they finish, is also the home of the Rias Baixas denomination headquarters. The route map of today’s time trial will tell you that they only travel 39,4km between the two towns, but what it doesn’t tell you is that there is a rather large hill in between! It rises to about 500 metres above sea level, but with a rather steep gradient – about 4.4% for 10km (I have only ever done it in a car, never on a bicycle).

To complete the tale, a couple of months ago we were actually invited to become the official wine supplier of the Vuelta, but as I didn’t want to encourage the cyclists to drink and ride, I politely declined.

As if to add insult to injury, after being trapped in my house yesterday by the Vuelta de España, today I am blocked in at the bodega! Well, that’s perhaps a slight exaggeration, but I do have to take a rather large detour (in the wrong direction) to get home. Today they are holding individual time trials between Cambados and Pontevedra, passing through the village of Barrantes (the exact location of our bodega), closing the majority of roads around us.

To give this post something of a wine flavour, I should tell you that they are riding through the very heart of albariño country, and that Cambados (where they start) is of course the location of our annual albariño festival. The Provincial capital of Pontevedra, where they finish, is also the home of the Rias Baixas denomination headquarters. The route map of today’s time trial will tell you that they only travel 39,4km between the two towns, but what it doesn’t tell you is that there is a rather large hill in between! It rises to about 500 metres above sea level, but with a rather steep gradient – about 4.4% for 10km (I have only ever done it in a car, never on a bicycle).

To complete the tale, a couple of months ago we were actually invited to become the official wine supplier of the Vuelta, but as I didn’t want to encourage the cyclists to drink and ride, I politely declined.