There’s an initial sense of freedom, of having divested ourselves of the encumbrance of panniers and cycles. Now we have a daysac containing all our travelling wealth. Reduced to a simplicity of a few kilograms.

That initial release is short lived, for we’ve been moved on, passed into the vagaries of the public transport system, and a set of new experiences.

First up is Burgos bus station. A new and vast circular structure where the departure board is permanently blank and where the arriving buses reverse park like spokes in a wheel. A novel concept as the bus number and destination are now hidden from view. Another bus reverses in alongside, creating a metal funnel. As every S2 physics pupil knows, if you feed passengers and their luggage down this gullet you end with the obvious consequence.

It’s a neat calculation for inducing stress as you suffocate in a press of human traffic.

Strangely everybody else seems to know exactly where to stand in this increasingly constrictive space. Especially the crowd-clogs of ‘meet and greeters’ who you politely await, erroneously assuming they are intending to board. They never do.

Closed information desks the norm, somnolent departure boards the standard, with an exception in Úbeda where the other extreme can be witnessed. Every single departure is listed for that day and the following night. Taking minutes to scroll through, such that the flustered late arriving passenger stands frustrated, waiting the return of page one, only to realise that their bus is now pulling out. Late arriving passengers are also the norm.

In other terminuses the bus arrives face forward, which for recognition purposes might be an improvement. The illuminated header board has only the company’s name, the same name that’s depicted in decals all along the bus’ ribs. So I’m left hunting for some sort of evidence for a possible destination. A dashboard with a hi-vis vest, a clipboard, a confusion of detritus that almost obliterates the piece of paper with a suggestion that this bus is going to a place I don’t know of. Therein lies the problem; you can never find a route map, not even an up to date timetable just when you need one.

It’s always a slide along the ‘learning curve’, a snakes and ladders of gains and losses.

That first bus trip had been booked using a site that had charged in sterling what had previously been quoted in euros. Effectively an 18% commission. We won’t be caught with that one again. Although care is required. Another bus line appears to have outsourced its online seat booking to an independent ticketing agency. Commission isn’t mentioned and as the bus station is only a few minutes away, we head there to buy tickets for an overnight bus that will cross the whole of the Iberian peninsula. TheNavigator’s reaction when the agent held up his adding machine spoke volumes. She actually looked at it three times, putting on her glasses for the third glance just to make sure she was correct. The figure is nearly half the on-line quote.

It’s why, as we’re exploring a new town, we make a point of checking out the bus and railway stations. More often it will land you in some quirky situations, some interesting places that don’t appear on the trip advisory sites.

You’ll need to dice roll for a double six just to navigate or escape from Madrid’s two main railway stations. Atocha especially so, as it’s a mesmerising amalgam of differing stations that, even with no time pressure still took us half an hour to solve. Two weeks later, we’re passing through again, with a tight transfer and are never so glad to have done that preparatory work.

Madrid to Córdoba and Edinburgh to Thurso are the same distance apart by train. One journey takes 1hr47min, the other eleven hours less a couple of minutes. Scotrail willing. The difference is on Renfé’s overhead screen: a scrolling map and a speedometer: 267kph. The trackside electric stanchions a faint fleeting smudge, the only other visible indication of speed. A near silent glide through an agriscape that morphs from the monoculture of olive groves to irrigated cereals with a minor interruption for a few unharvested fields of cotton. The sierras to the south, soft shadows on the horizon, slashed with old snow, the pueblos blanco, small specked clusters of villages scattered along their flanks. But it’s all visual.

It’s a slow realisation. For some time we’ve both been aware of a less than wholesomeness to the journey and for an answer we keep commenting on the obvious. No bicycles. They are the physical missing element, what has been less apparent has been the abstract and intangible losses.

The pieces, the connective tissues that lie in between. I’m watching the scrolling commentary of countryside through the train’s window, that could just as easily be a silent tv screen. Only I’m not a part of it.

We’ve long advocated in favour of ‘the journey’ and against ‘the destination’. Railed against comments that questioned our tardiness;. “but you’d get there quicker if you flew”, “there’s nothing to see…it’s all boring countryside”. I know from the body language that it’s a discussion that I’m never going to win.

We’re moving at great speed, racing towards the next proscribed locale, the next ‘must see’. The next deep cobble-sett street, bracketing another Gothic domed cathedral in yet another claustrophobic horizonless city. Punctuation marks in a sentence without any explanatory or connective text.

We’ve strayed away from ‘the journey’ and embraced the ‘destination’. We’ve become voyeurs; vacation destinationers.

PostScript: Re: shipping goods. AirTags were of a particular concern apparently. Maybe they didn’t want to be ridiculed for the gross excesses of ‘road-miles’ accrued as our cycles wandered around Europe. Or that the actuality of their location miss-matched the supposed tracking information. Witness this evidence: Our boxes arrived at their intended destination on a Tuesday, on the Wednesday we receive a tracking memo that states they have now been moved to yet another German customs facility for tariff evaluation. Go figure.

PostScript 2.0: One week after dispatching our bike beastie boxes; sans airtags , I’m cynically smiling as I read that the European aviation industry has announced that they’re going to encourage passengers to fit tracking devices to their baggage, to help with the repatriation of lost luggage. No doubt the budget airlines will now take this opportunity to impose further surcharges for non compliance whilst we the customer, will be doing their job for them.