Day 3 — Thursday 28 April 2011

Alcala de los Gazules – Ubrique

Today I had planned to cycle through to Grazalema, 78 Km, but I rather thought that I might stop at Ubrique, the only other town on the route after 50Km, as I was aware of feeling pretty tired. The thing that I have forgotten after being home for several months is just how tired I was most of the time. In the evenings I would often go for a walk, often thinking that it might be better to rest, but that was something to do with having left my book behind. My evening routine became supper, sending a text message to Liz, writing up my diary and a short walk. It might have been different if I had had something to read, but I saw things I would have missed if I had not had an exploration on foot each evening.

I was using sun tan lotion quite liberally except for my head, and noticed this morning that the sun had striped my bald head through my cycling helmet. I had brought along a baseball cap that I thought I might use instead of my helmet when it became intolerably hot, but on the other hand there is the argument of safety and giving the right appearance to passing motorists, who I think tend to notice if a cyclist is not wearing one. When driving I now perceive a cyclist without a helmet as being quite vulnerable, even though the statistics don’t actually bear that out. I had bought a new helmet for this trip with a sun visor, and this one fitted better than others I have had, it had good air flow and so in fact after the first few days it became second nature to wear it. Although helmets are said not to give you serious protection in an accident involving contact with a motor vehicle I have just recently seen a fellow cyclist crash in front of me after misjudging a grassy curb and hit the road at about 20 miles an hour resulting in his helmet being cracked in the fall. If the helmet hit the road hard enough to crack it, without it it would have been much more serious, as it was he was able to carry on riding.

The small mileometer had begun to work intermittently as, presumably, the fork sensor began to dry out, but by now I was using the Bryton Rider50 successfully, and was intrigued that it was able to find my route on its Open Source maps in the middle of rural Spain. More of this later, but what a pity that it got stolen just at the end of the trip. It would have been fascinating to upload all the daily data, maps, speeds, temperature, altitude etc. and see it all on Bryton’s website. As it is I have reproduced the route on Bryton’s planning maps, and these are the ones I am showing here, pasted into imaging software and glued together to give greater resolution than the Bryton site allows.

I had some bread and salami and then packed up the tent, only to discover that the camp restaurant was open for desayuno (breakfast) by which time it was too late, I was on the move and the day was beckoning. Back along the small road to Alcala and then two right turns onto the A2304 for Ubrique. I was using 1:400,000 Michelin maps, and despite the scale being too small for English roads, because the road density in Spain is so much less all the roads you need are there. Admittedly they’re no good for negotiating towns but then there are always people to ask, if you’re bold enough.

During the morning I had to get off and walk three times and was beginning to feel desparate. At about one o’clock I got to the Puerto de Galis (at about the 15 ml mark on the gradient map) and there at the road junction in the middle of nowhere as if by magic there was a restaurant. I don’t know whether there is a law that says things happen when they’re needed but if there is it was working. I had a really good menu del dia of a huge salad, asparagus and egg scrambled together followed by venison. I downed a whole litre of bottled water and set off to enjoy the gently rising ridge road shown on the Google Earth image that replaces the one I didn’t take. At times I could see down both sides of the ridge and the road really was a joy to ride.

From the top of the ridge road I whizzed steeply down to Ubrique arriving at about six o’clock just as people started to come out into the town squares for their evening stroll. Whole families were out watching their children play, sitting in shady corners, shopping, chatting and having no clue about any hotel or other place to stay. I could see from the map there probably was no camp site near Ubrique but there had to be somewhere to stay in a town of this size. After fruitless attempts to ask in bars, I wandered up a side street that just looked promising and came across a lady in a wheel chair selling lottery tickets door to door. After a short exchange including the magic word habitación (a room for the night) that I managed to pull out my faulty memory the lady in the wheel chair drew me a map and wrote down the name of a pensión and sent me off in roughly the right direction.

This thing about things happening when they need to began to dog me. A man approached me as I was standing puzzling over the hand drawn map and told me that he had lived in Rugeley, Staffordshire for a number of years when he was working in England, how much he liked England and said, “Come on, I’ll take you to the pensión”. I’m glad he did because I would never have found it.

The pensión had been a block of flats now turned into individual rooms with a shared bathroom on each floor. The landlady was intrigued by this mad Englishman and his bicycle, which she gestured me to wheel into a central light well in the middle of the building full of pot plants and open to the air, before showing me to my room. I showered and washed my sweaty cycling kit in the bath, and rolled each garment in a bath towel and walked up and down on the rolled up towel squeezing all the water out. It worked a treat, and hanging the clothes over the balcony (securely fixed with the six clothes pegs I had with me) had them all dry before I turned in. That night I didn't go for a walk.

Liz and Eva would have caught the boat from Bilbao to Portsmouth that evening. I envied them the luxury of the 24 hour cruise back to England.