Pamplona to Lorca

May 17, 2025

We’re okay with the road less traveled - but would prefer the road less gravelled…..

It was that kind of day.

We left Pamplona about 11:30 am; it was a short riding day and weather was projected to be fine so we were not in a hurry. We left feeling good about Pamplona and wished we had been inclined to explore a little more.

We were especially impressed with the Pamplona's new cycling infrastructure:

And the sidewalks:

We planned to stop at the Intersport on our way out of town because we never made it the day before. The ride to the Intersport was only a mile and was exactly three turns (left, right, left from the hotel) but we managed to make a mess of it and took the scenic route. They didn’t have any cycling jerseys or wool t-shirts (hoped for items) but I found a pair of crop pants to fill out my meager off-the-bike wardrobe. From there the ride out of Pamplona was messy, in part because the diversion to the Intersport put us in a busy part of town with a lot of car traffic and little cycling infrastructure. We eventually maneuvered our way onto the Camino route (for both bikes and walkers) and the Eurovelo route 3. As we learned over the next few days, there is a lot of the Eurovelo 3 route here that is on gravel, much more than we have found typical on many of the other EV routes we have ridden.

Early in the day on the outskirts of Pamplona we came to this deviation:

As we paused to consider our options, several cyclists stopped to help. There is a ton of road cyclists here, akin to our experience last year in Girona and Catalonia.

The ride out was varied and pleasant and midday we reached Puente La Reina, a busy pilgrim town. There, our day developed a few challenges. We had this town scoped out as our lunch spot and after turning onto the main artery we stopped at Restaurant Bidean whitch had some outdoor tables. This was handy as it allowed us to keep an eye on our bikes. The tables were all full but one, which I snagged. On the way in Dave saw a cute outdoor store next door and decided to step in hoping to find a wool jersey or top. He eventually came back pleased with his purchase of a wool tee. Meanwhile we told the waitress we wanted to eat. Everyone else outside was just drinking. When a waitress finally came back to take our order we ordered two drinks and a burger (to share). The waitress informed us (in a pretty uppity way I might add) that we were not allowed to share and 2 people had to order 2 food items. This seemed ridiculous since there was not one other table that had even ordered any food, but after a bit of mildly unpleasant back and forth I ordered an additional mystery salad. This was followed by a very long wait until we finally got served our food. The incident startled us. We feel we are invariably treated kindly on these trips and we almost always share. We are sure we are suffering from the Camino effect: there are just tons of pilgrims moving through and some sense businesses are just trying to make a buck, juxtipositioned with the thought that most pilgrims are on an extremely tight budget and perhaps businesses get tired of their frugality? Anyway it left a bad taste for us.

As we were waiting for our food - a long wait - I tried to pop into the outdoor store where Dave had such success. It was 1:59 but the store had already left for their 2 pm, two and a half hour break. We need to remember to adjust for the long siesta closure.

We ate our forgettable burger and salad and took off for what should have been a short ride to Lorca and our inn for the night. The center of Puenta La Reina was hopping on a Saturday and there were a lot of locals out and about along with the peregrinos.

We just reached the outskirts of the town and got stalled out due to a bike race blocking our route. (By talking to a competitor the following morning at our inn we found out it was a triathlon). It took about 10 minutes to figure out what was going on and that the traffic was being held up with no indication of imminent movement, and then another 10 to figure out a work around.

This mongo piece of farm equipment nearly backed into me as it attempted a U- turn.

This is where Komoot is weak. On the fly changes don’t work and as a result, we resort to simply reading the map on Komoot or checking google maps, which doesn’t show elevation or road surfaces.

We opted on a more or less parallel small road to avoid the race. Initially the road was paved so we were felling pretty good about the adjustment on the fly. After a km it turned into gravel but it was still okay, so no stress. And then, as we were deep into it we came around a sharp right turn…and the trail turned up and …..oh, shit.

This was the trail initially:

When the pavement ended, we were presented with an acceptable gravel road.

And then we got this:

Then the trail turned steeply uphill. The rains gouged severe troughs in it making navigation difficult.

and THEN this:

This was the steepest part and proved unridable.

We rode the gravel early on but then resorted to pushing our bikes because the trail was both too steep or in too poor of a condition to ride - or both. Our trail pitched up and then down and we started encountering deep gulleys down the center. At some point while I was panting hard trying to get my bike across a gulley I got stuck and wound up just leaving my bike. Dave came down from his upward position after parking his own bike and bailed me out. I picked up and carried one pannier and he pushed my bike with one pannier up the trail. It took about an hour to go 2 or 3 km. Thank heavens we learned, after four bike trips, how to effectively use the walk function on our bikes.

Schlepping the bikes up this incline was hard, hard work.

(That night at dinner we agreed that today had been the all-time worst road conditions we had ever encountered. It generated fond memories of other horrible trails. Our other standout was a few days on the Iron Curtain Trail in Hungary in 2022, but today’s episode outside Puente La Reina was even worse.)

We met one other rider, an Asian guy, who was fully loaded with camping gear. We exchanged greetings and a few words and later I was sorry we didn’t visit but I was in such a state of exhaustion I didn’t have the mental energy to do so.

We finally reached the outskirts of a village and were able to resume our planned route. As it turned out that was not the end of the gravel; the last few km into our village, Lorca, the Eurovelo trail was again on gravel and we had a few diversions where we rejected Komoot’s suggestion and chose roads that were in good condition instead.

Case in point: See that narrow little foot trail that disappears into a thicket of bushes? Komoot wanted us to take this as a "shortcut" but we opted to stay on the Eurovelo route instead which had good, packed gravel.

Pedaling challenges aside, we were climbing a beautiful ridge and we were not so cooked that we couldn’t enjoy the vistas.

And this is what the Eurovelo-suggested road looked like instead.

We arrived as Casa Nahia Rural at 5 pm - very late for us.

I’ll tell you more in the morning!

Today's ride: 35 km (22 miles)
Total: 741 km (460 miles)

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