Day 19 — Tuesday 17 May 2011

Ayllon – El Burgo de Osma

This was one of those days when foolishly I ignored my original plan and decided to stick to main roads. The original plan would have been more attractive but in the end it came down to feeling tired and wanting life easy, which isn't always the best way. It turned out all right though, with splendid riding along slowly undulating roads with hardly any traffic, a warm sun and cooling breeze. Huge expanses of cultivated land surrounded the road with occasional changes in the colour of crops. Occasionally I came across other cyclists but none touring as I was. Mostly well equipped sportive riders working hard at a training run, and mostly on their own. A cheery wave was the usual greeting but little else.

I got to San Estaban de Gormaz too early for restaurants to have opened. In a square approaching the centre of the town I came across a hotel with a restaurant that would not be open for half an hour and opposite it was a bar selling pizzas, so I took the easy option and had a huge pizza and three bottles of coca cola sitting in the sun under a large umbrella. I found a Spa grocer and shopped for bananas, bread and cheese. The front panniers had slipped backwards slightly on their carrier and as I leant forward to punch them back into position I got too close to a parked car and caught the nearside front pannier on its mudguard and crashed over my handlebars, ripping my shorts and receiving painful bruises and grazes. I straightened things out but found that my handlebars had bent and I could no longer get my thumbs between the brake levers and my bar bag. I laid the bicycle on its side and with my foot on one side heaved on the other, just enough to ease in my thumbs. I resolved to change the handlebars when I got home.

I was cycling up the N-110 that joins the N-122 and then becomes the A-11 Autovia (motorway) to Soria. I could see from my map that the N-122 effectively disappears for about 10 kilometres round El Burgo and was hoping that the road builders had left something for non-motorway vehicles to use. In fact there was nothing official at all, except the remains of the old N-122 to the right of the new carriageway. There was no way for a car to get onto the old road but I managed to scramble across the muddy ground and rode along the old tarmac avoiding potholes and mounds of rubble. I rejoined a proper road where a slip road left the A-11 heading for El Burgo.

The city has industrial outskirts that looked decidedly depressing as I rode through them, but I perked up where the approach road crosses the Rio Ucero and I stopped to take a photograph of the cathedral and old city walls. My map showed a campsite in the vicinity but I could see no signs of one and my enquiries got nowhere. I came across three hotels at a junction. One looked expensive, one looked closed and the other didn't look like a hotel, but it did have the word Hospederia over its door that might have meant that it was a hostal or small hotel, but the word wasn't in my phrase book. It turned out to be a super small hotel that welcomed my bicycle and tucked it up down a cosy corridor. I asked if there was a campsite nearby and was told that there was but it was 17 kilometres to the North, I think at Ucero, but by then I had paid for my room. I suppose it would have been more in the spirit of the journey to have cycled up what looks like an attractive river valley (Michelin marks it as a scenic route); another missed opportunity!

I went for a walk and found the sunlit Plaza Mayor (central square) thronging with Spanish families out for their evening stroll and that was some consolation as I sat in the square and wrote up my diary. I returned to my room and darned my torn trousers.