Cuellar, Segovia - lunch 3.15pm. For 20kms we have followed the same route as we did last year on the road from Bilbao to Sevilla.

In Campaspero several of the locals who were enjoying their Sunday cervezas outside the bars and cafés clearly recognised us.

"Mire! Es El Cabron!"

"Si Senior, and he have brought with him all the same old kit he brought last year! His chain iss muy knackered!"

"Si. At least Monty Panesar bring with him a new bike and gel shorts."

Pedrazas de San Esteban, 7pm. Another 100 kilometres and we are in a one street town in the middle of nowhere that is a whole lot busier than anyone would imagine it should be.

The plan was to stop in Iscar, 5kms to the east, but when we got there a storm was brewing and the two hotels in town were shut on Sundays so I got the space blankets ready for a night in the open and we moved on.

A lot of people ask what we do all day on a bike.

One of the things we do is hallucinate, probably due to the lack of food.

Today I spotted a statue of Winston Churchill smoking a fat cigar but it turned out to be the funnel of a chemical plant.

Later on the Goat had similar problems identifying a pair of grain silos, claiming that he could see the Everly Brothers.

All the talk in the bars here is of Alberto Contador and his forthcoming battle against Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France.

Before we left Blighty there was a documentary on Channel 4 called The Science of Lance Armstrong which showed the level of microscopic analysis undertaken by Armstrong's team in their search for the perfect ride.

Mostly the said research was conducted in an aviation wind tunnel.

A £5,000 bike was set up with Lance in his streamlined kit on board with an engine off a Boeing 747 blowing wind past him at a thousand kph.

None of this would make a blind bit of difference to us of course but, for a moment, I have this vision of the Goat in the tunnel with his panniers flapping shabbily at the back of his bike and his ridiculous headband disturbing the airflow over his head when one of Lance's technicians walks in and says, "Who's left this bag of burro crap in the wind tunnel?"

Meantime the computers are registering a drag coefficient so far off the scale that red lights start flashing and bleeps start bleeping all of which is a precursor to the inevitable smoke that will indicate that the whole shooting match is about to blow - that is The Science of The Goat and, believe me, the Tour de France has nothing to fear.