Late Escape to Lava Land

A credit card on a dark drizzly Sunday afternoon in early December is a dangerous thing. A bottle of wine, a few small signs of encouragement and somehow we’ve booked a last-minute ultra-cheapy to Lanzarote. A RyanAir flight later and we find ourselves in Playa Blanca on the southern tip of Lanzarote in the second week of December.
It is actually fantastic to have the sun on our backs. But what I wasn’t expecting was that Lanzarote in December seems to be MAMIL (Middle Aged Men in Lycra) Mecca. Large gangs of silver-haired Geraint Thomas wannabe-has-beens have gathered here and sit in the afternoon sun in the seafront cafes in their colourful Tour de Lanzarote Lycra cycling suits drinking cervezas and discussing their long days in the saddle and spandex.
Feeling the vibe, we decide to hire bikes too. G wants to try a sports road bike, a prelude to a future purchase, and after some umming and ahhing I settle on an ebike. I am more than pleasantly surprised when a sporty mountain bike arrives with no shopping basket in sight. This is the real deal. It has secret settings in a Garmin-like reader on the handlebar which you press to go from eco to turbo power. Secret settings that no one else knows but me.
We get going, cycling a 40 km route through the expansive black lava land around Yaiza and Al Golfo. Now I know why the MAMILS have come. Lanzarote is a fantastic place for cycling with perfect tarmac roads and breathtaking scenery at every turn. It feels like I’m on another planet, or weirdly, inside some computer game graphics. The air is warm and fragrant and the only living thing for miles is a single spiky cactus desperately clinging onto life in this vast sea of volcanic rock. It somehow reminds me of Theresa May. We continue to cycle through this black desert and as I fly past G for the fifth time (I’m secretly on turbo) he’s already making plans to swap his racing road bike for an ebike too at the end of the day.
Day two and with two ebikes (G now is also keeper of the secret) we set out on a 50 km prime Etape in the Tour de Lanzarote racer route. It’s a road cycle for 15 km, then after a sharp left turn by Theresa the cactus, we begin a steep incline through the mountains to finally reach the whitewashed picturesque village of Femes nestled snuggly at the top of the mountain ridge. The fun begins as halfway up the long series of steep switchbacks, we both turn on the turbo and power past a peloton of serious cyclists puffing and crawling along in first gear. They stare at us in disbelief. One cyclist clad in Sky Team colours chunters at me as I whiz past him. I shout an encouraging ‘Allez Allez Allez’ over my shoulder and leave him for dust. At the top of the mountain, we’re finishing our coffees in the cafe when the silver-haired peloton finally wheezes up.
So are ebikes a total cheat? Would I ditch my electric toothbrush? Would I swap WiFi for a modem? Did Bob Dylan ever go back to an acoustic guitar? And that’s how I feel about ebikes. They’re definitely the future. You can go further, faster for longer. Plus you can have some serious fun with serious bikers (if you can conceal the battery). I’m already designing a cut-out water bottle cover that would fit perfectly. An ebike is definitely on my Santa list.
And as for our sneaky December break, what a great decision Lanzarote in December proved to be. Feliz Navidad!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog and I look forward to writing more adventures when we start on our travels in Myanmar in January 2019.