I’ve just got back from Gandia where, as those of you who have read the Peloton section will know, there was once a great free bike scheme called Labici, which made a small civilised place bigger and more civilised.

The scheme was introduced and operated by Gandia’s socialist administration. The bikes were red and the infrastructure orange and red. When the right came to power, as well as reintroducing bull fighting after a 20 year absence, they privatised the bike scheme. The new colours were cream and tan, the new bikes leaned towards the conservative too, more sit up and beg than mountain.

So Gandia was a free-bike-free zone. But late Good Friday as the crowds dispersed from the Plaza Meyor after the hoods, drums, chains and shoulder carried shrines of the Semana Santa procession, I noticed the bike dock beside the town hall was a new colour and quickly found a bar with wi-fi and discovered the scheme has become Saforbici and will be rolled out across the sub-region and run in-house by the administration that privatised it.

The new colour? Well Labici has risen from the red of the masses, through conservative browns to a ducal/papal purple, the colour of the birthplace of the Borgia popes.

Just as a footnote (a pedalnote?).  In the last regional elections one of the candidates for president of Valencia promised free bike schemes to every town with a population over 10,000.  Sadly he knew he stood no chance of election.

Inevitably when the ham hocks arrived they weren’t as huge as they’d grown in Shane’s telling, the meat fell away deliciously from the bone, but not into the great sea of vegetables he had me imagine.

You can get three hocks for six quid in Leeds Kirkgate Market. So the day we looked at the maps for the first time, I bought carrots, parsnips, potatoes, celeriac, cream and three hocks, one each for us, one for the freezer. Their three hours in the oven gave us plenty of time to join up the three OS maps that cover our epic journey.

We came to some decisions:

1. We will include a little detour on our first morning to take in breakfast in Saltaire, Shane has never been to Salt’s Mill.

2. We are looking for stage finishes/nice places to stay/good places to eat in the Kippax, Castleford, Sherburn triangle for Day One and somewhere near Howden for Day Two.

3. We confirmed our decision to follow waterways as much as possible.

I’d soak your ham hocks for a little longer than we did, they were delicious but salty. That night back in Sacramento, Barca beat Bilbao 5-1. Messi scored twice. There was fourth decision made over the Yorkshire ham hocks.

4. Shane needs to buy a bike.