Pair 1: bought at an outdoor shop in the UK, lost somewhere in or near Tarifa on cycling day one.

Pair 2: bought at El Cortes Inglés in Seville for about £11, broken at some point in the following 12 hours. My fault? Probably. Too late to return them.

Pair 3… Should I go cheap again? Or wait until I can find an outdoor shop to buy some good quality ones? Spain doesn’t seem to do outdoor shops like we have back in Britain, however, and it could be a lengthy search. How about cycling sunglasses? Aren’t they horribly expensive? Only one way to find out…

I’ve just been to Zafra’s finest purveyor of bicycles, Bicicletas Rodrigues. Well, I think they are. Zafra’s only has one bike shop but they looked as though they knew their stuff. The ones in the locked cabinet? €120. Ouch. What about these? Under €40 with an extra 15% discount on all stock! It’s just like Homebase without the naff furniture. So that would be about… £25. Not so expensive. Are they 100% UV? Mmm… What’s that in Spanish? Ah yes, look at the multilinguinal leaflet inside the carrying case (they have a carrying case?!)… “100% absorption of ultraviolet UV400 Rays“. Ah yes, UV400 rays. Those are the ones I meant… The others are not important. “Polarised category 3 filter…” and a second set of orange lenses to “…improve vision in poor or diffuse light.” I bet Superman didn’t have them! So here they are, my new sunglasses:

“Any downsides?” No, not at all! “What are they called?” Err… Spuick. “On the side of the glasses where it’s written, doesn’t that look a bit like…” STOP! No it doesn’t!

Now, repeat after me: “I will not lose my new sunglasses and I will not break them. At least not until after my arrival in Nordkapp…”