Day 5 — Sunday 1 May 2011

Grazalema – Moron de la Frontera

After drying out my tent and other damp bits and pieces in the early morning sun I set off to attack the Puerto de Las Palomas, about 900 feet above me. I puffed up to the top of the col and stopped to get my breath, take photographs and observe the care that the Spanish take over cycling safety. A nicely placed col sign gave me encouragement as I looked over the edge at the descent of something like 3,000 feet. It was chilly and I put on my jacket as a group of training cyclist agonised up the slope towards me followed closely by a team car with a trainer hanging out of the passenger window shouting “Allez! Allez!” at the top of his voice. I gave them the chance to acknowledge me but I could have been invisible such was their concentration of keeping ahead of the snapping (male) harridan at their heels.

The road dropped like a stone for about 10 kilometers twisting and turning as it went so I daren’t let the bicycle just run. I got down to Algodonales and had to loop round under the A384 before joining it for a short while before taking off to the right heading North again for Coripe where I was looking forward to lunch. The road twisted and turned through attractive if steeply cut valleys with via verde on either side. All was going well and I was enjoying life when I got a puncture in my front tyre. It was strange that I didn’t feel angry, just a bit disappointed that brand new Schwalbe Marathons should let me down so quickly. Off came the bags, down went the bicycle and off came the wheel and the tyre. Inside the tyre I found a small spike sticking out from the inside but there was nothing on the outside sticking through. I was just beginning to puzzle this out but before I came to a conclusion a pick-up truck pulling a trailer with about 20 hire bikes pulled up and asked if I was all right. In a flash I was scooped off the side of the road, bundled into the trailer and swept off to Coripe to the bike workshop of the via verde trail bike-hirer.

I found a note of this miraculous organisation’s address in their workshop and noted it in my diary: Informacion via verde de la Sierra, Acquileo de Bicio, Alojamientos Rurales, 655526716. On getting home the nearest website I have come across is the following: www.fundacionviaverdedelasierra.com. They tried to provide me with a replacement tyre, correctly identifying the probleam as a break in the brading on the inside of the tyre itself. They were offering me ‘700’ tyres, whereas I was using old English 27 inch wheels and they couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t fit. They left me with the run of thier workshop while they responded to a call for help from a chap who had follen off one of their bikes and needed stitching up. Meanwhile I glued two layers of rubber inside the tyre form an old innrer tube they gave me and left the glue to dry while I went off to find a restaurant for lunch. It was the Sunday after Easter and the only restaurant in town was booked up for the annual children’s Easter feast so I had to find somewhere elsr to eat. A nearby bar made me a large ham bocadillo caliente (hot sandwich) which I had with a two litre bottle of water.

Back at the workshop all was as I had left it, so I left a note of thanks and set off for Moron de la Frontera. There was no campsite and I had anticipated having to find a hostal and after asking in a couple of bars struggled up a steep street to a welcoming sign over a door saying Hostal Moron. It was one of those intimidating doorways with a bell to call the proprietor that looked decidedly out of use. No amount of pushing and banging produced any response, so I wandered further up the street and saw an elderly chap walking down towards me. I made out in broken Spanish that the Hostal Moron was deserted. He nodded and turned round beckoning me to follow him back up the hill to a bar where a woman indicated that the hostal had in fact moved to the other side of the road and that she would lodge my bicycle in her garage and that I could recover my passport the following morning from the bar. I parked my bicycle in a Fort Knox of a garage with huge iron gates, relinquished my passport with a little anxiety in exchange for a bunch of keys to get me into the hostal in its new location.

My room was very comfortable with two single beds and a small en suite shower and toilet. I cleaned myself up, washed and rolled my clothing in a towel, hung it up to dry in a wardrobe with the doors propped open and wandered down the hill to a bar where I got a filling supper of a hot ham and tomato bocadillo. I sent my usual text message to Liz, got a reply, and wrote up my diary. Four men were playing dominoes at the next table noisily banging their pieces down and chattering in the strangely punctuated rat-a-tat of fast Spanish.

I was conscious of feeling tired and relieved that I’d been able to overcome my puncture and find a place to stay the night, more by luck than anything else. I had a nagging anxiety that a lot could have gone wrong but that somehow it hadn’t, and was not confident being able to avoid further disaster. Being by myself didn’t help, and I really did begin to wonder what on earth I was doing. I think it was at this point that I realised I must not think too far ahead, as the remaining 37 days were just too daunting to visualise.

The small mileometer was now functioning properly and until I got to the Pyrenees I didn’t use my Bryton GPS device again. I think this was a mistake as the data would have been interesting, and maybe if I had changed daily routine I wouldn’t have lost it on the last day in France. Who can tell?