"The matter of time"

March 9, 2022

Day 19 - rest day Bilbao

The title is from the collection of works by Richard Serra we saw in the Bilbao Guggenheim. If you'd asked me before, I wouldn't have had much to say about "abstract" sculpture, except maybe "I don't much know or care about it", but I found this totally beautiful, fun, impressive, and captivating - you walk right inside them! The different combinations of angles and curves really make you notice and think about space, and even affected my balance.

I loved the colours and surfaces! Some looked like alien planetscapes, some like paintings all of their own. Objectively, I suppose it all kind of looks like rusty steel. Depends on where you're looking from.

To shoehorn this into a blog about cycling, I am beginning to get concerned about "the matter" of our 90 day visas, and whether we will have "the time" to get out of the Schengen area before they run out. We have basically averaged 20 miles a day up to this point, which is pretty discouraging. And it doesn't look like the hills will vanish any time soon.

Would anyone care to suggest any swathes of Europe between here and Turkey that could happily be skipped by train?

If you'd asked, I would have said I was a fan of Jenny Holzer. I had never seen any installations IRL though, and this one was fantastic! Better than my expectations.

We're still not quite sure where to head to tomorrow. It's been suggested to us (thanks Scott and Tricia) that the road down to and along the coast is beautiful and worth visiting, but I believe it would involve even more hills and be less direct than strictly necessary... Then again, if we are going to skip somewhere, I bet there are better candidates! We'll sleep on it.

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Scott AndersonWe’ve seen the outside of this museum twice but it was closed both times so we’ve never been inside. It looks as amazing inside as outside.

Regarding the time and distance question though: there are also the considerations of weather and difficulty. I agree that you’re not likely to make Istanbul on two wheels before your 90 days run out, so I’d be looking more at what’s too arduous rather than what’s less interesting. One idea is to change your idea of how to cross France - your outline from your first post shows you going through the interior, which is generally very hilly - and it crosses the Alps at the Italian border, but they’re really serious climbing and will almost surely feel too hard, and likely they’ll still be snowbound in spots. Some of these passes don’t normally open up until late May.

So, maybe along the Mediterranean coast all across France, and then staying south of the mountains across Italy. Beautiful, interesting, often reasonably easy cycling, and it’s easy to stay close to a train line if you find spots or weather you want to skip over.

Beyond Italy though, everything along your planned route gets harder all the way down the coast to Greece. One idea would be to head south along the eastern coast of Italy instead of the Balkans. The coastal terrain is easier on the Italian side, and there’s reliable train service the whole way down if you want or need to make up time. You could catch a ferry from Bari to Patras and then bike east along the Gulf of Corinth.
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