Day 12 — Monday 9 May 2011

Guadalupe – Bohonal de Ibor

I was intending to get to Navalmoral but in the end stopped at Bohonal de Ibor. The weather was still good and in the far distance I could see the Sierra de Gredos that in a couple of days I was going to have to get over. first I had to get out of Guadalupe and that took some doing. The road loops clockwise round the town and claws its way over a mountainous ridge just under 3,000 feet high. The road has crawler lanes for heavy vehicles that began to make my heart sink whenever I saw one. I walked for quite a way that morning but when I did get to the top the going was good.

I stopped for a good lunch at Castañar de Ibor and in the afternoon at one point I had wide views into deep valleys either side of a high ridge that were quite exhilarating. I stopped to take a photograph but the camera would not start. It had been in the back pocket of a pannier all morning in full sun and I think it got too hot. I transferred it to my bar-bag and by the following morning it was working again.

I dropped off the ridge towards the Embalse de Valdecañes and let the bicycle free wheel down a perfect stretch of deserted dead straight road, reaching 64 k/h. As I approached Bohonal de Ibor there was a hotel on the left and I decided to stop there as there were no campsites at Navalmoral and bird in the hand is better than searching for somewhere to stay in the early evening. They had a problem. The hot water system had broken and they couldn’t give me a room with hot water. No problem, I assured them, and they offered me a discount that I readily accepted. My bicycle was locked in a huge basement garage and I showered in cold water, washing my kit and rolling it in towels as before.

The restaurant didn’t open until eight o’clock so I had a bocodillo in the bar and wrote up my diary and sent a text message to Liz. Times in Spain are odd, as they keep the same daylight saving hours as central Europe even though the country is way over to the West. I couldn’t read my watch in my tent until about 7:30 a.m. Their whole day is later on the clock and I suppose the solution would have been to adjust my daily routine as well, but I didn’t, and that was that.