WORDS CHIPPS
So I was on holiday, getting a couple of weeks of early season sunshine and warmth in Spain. Staying at the cycling-friendly Hotel Cap Negret in Altea, I found myself in the notunfamiliar position of being surrounded by pro cyclists and race team paraphernalia because, coincidentally, the Costa Blanca Bike Race was going on while I was there. We soon got used to jostling at the salad bar with the likes of Olympians Dan McConnell and Carlos Coloma Nicolás, while their team trucks were parked outside, full of some very, very fine race bikes. Mondraker had used the event to launch its new Olympic-worthy cross-country race bike and Decathlon was launching a whole new carbon race bike and new ranges to its dealers right after the event.
The hotel wasn’t entirely full of pro riders, though. I mean, they’d let me in for a start. One morning I was down in the huge bike storage area, getting my bike out of the storage cages at the same time as an older couple from the Cairngorms were getting out their rental bikes. They had hired bikes from the shop down the road. E-bike hybrids, with comfy upright bars, panniers, bike lock and a kickstand.