Steve's Cycling Blog

The rain and thunder continued off and on through the night, but so did the wind which meant that at packing up time things were actually pretty dry which makes the whole process much easier.

Stage 90 rider notes

From camp we had to backtrack to the road and then head north west. Of course at this point the wind which was blowing was still the nor’wester which had made the end of yesterday’s road so tough, so this morning didn’t start so well.

Thankfully the wind dropped away by around 15km and more-or-less stayed gone through until lunch. The morning ride was through a pretty amazing valley which got progressively more arid as I climbed. It also got progressively hotter as well, and finally he pitch of the hill increased to slow things even further.

In the end it took 3:50 to get from camp to the lunch stop which is one of my slower mornings, but hardly surprising given the amount of climbing which has been involved. And it was a lot more than expected – the total for the day was supposed to be 1000m but by the time I got to lunch I’d already gone up 1160m and there were still two more climbs, the second of which was the highest for the day – clearly something had gone astray in the route-note-recording department.

As is my custom I took a decent break at lunch time and was somewhat surprised that nobody else turned up before I was ready to leave – clearly the hill was taking its toll more on others than it had on me.

Initially it was done hill form lunch which was enjoyable, before the next two climbs. From the top of the third it was then downhill all the way to town, though by now the south westerly wind was blowing pretty strongly which meant that there were times that even downhill I had to pedal to maintain a decent speed.

Some of the later riders had a much tougher time as not only did they have the wind to hinder their progress they also got thunder, lightening, rain and hail! Some days there’s a definite advantage to covering the distance more quickly!

Into town and our bonus hotel for the week which turns out to be pretty nice! After a shower I took a wander towards the centre of town – the hotel’s quite a way out (as TDA hotels tend to be) and because it was between 1300 and 1700 pretty much everything was closed so I had an ice-cream and went back to the hotel to do some blog post uploading.

Dinner in the hotel restaurant was really nice – similar to other Iranian meals in that it was soup, salad, and rice and kebabs, though tonight we also got some really nice chicken pieces and to finish off desert which was the Iranian take on creme caramel which has less of a focus on the caramel and the custard component has rose water in – very tasty.

I wandered back to the shop to get some water so that I could freeze my drink bottles for tomorrow and then had a slightly comical time trying to get my clean laundry back and pay for it. I succeeded eventually!

And now as it’s just gone 2030 it’s time for bed – these recent stages have been pretty tiring so I’m ready for a good sleep.

Riding data

View from my tent

Nothing to see here, just a dusty hotel car park