We’re staying in a private home here that also lets rooms. It’s a warm place, and already colorfully decorated in anticipation of Christmas. The owners are the local Spanish man I mentioned yesterday, who speaks just a minimal bit of English; and his Russian wife, who speaks quite a bit more, enough to almost have a conversation with us.
She’s also quite a good cook, and serves meals if ordered in advance. We ate in last night and had an excellent salmon dish. It looks more attractive than anything else we see in this small town, so over breakfast we place an order for tonight’s meal as well.
Over breakfast we chat further with Holger, who we enjoyed a long but somewhat stilted conversation with last night after dinner. Stilted because he’s German, a hydraulics engineer from the Baltic coast near Hamburg (just west of the border with East Germany, he tells us) and speaks limited English. With the use of his English skills, my even more limited German, pantomime and Google Translate, we get by enough to carry on a chat for twenty minutes or so.
Holger is here on a month-long holiday from the business he and his wife run. He’s traveling on his BMW motorcycle on a solo tour of Andalucia. Today he’s off to Oasys Mini-Hollywood; and then tomorrow he’s on his way to Granada.
Over breakfast, he agrees to meet me at the garage when he leaves for Mini-Hollywood so that I can take a photo of him with his bike.
Holger and his clean, shiny BMW, which he proudly says he’s owned for 30 months now. He’s off to visit Oasys Mini-Hollywood today. As I was just saying, to each his own.
Ron SuchanekHe making a good choice on the destination. Also, I've rented BMWs a couple of times. Once for 11 days in Alaska, and once to drive from Long Beach California to Portland. They are truly amazing, efficient, beautiful machines. The Germans know how to build stuff. Reply to this comment 4 years ago
Today’s ride is the most challenging climb of the tour, on a tour that hasn’t seen many real climbs. The only real competitor was our climb across the highest point on the French Camino on our ride to Astorga, nearly two months ago.
It’s a long, exposed climb - we saw scarcely a tree by the road for the whole ride - but quite dramatic. Such barren, totally exposed country! It wouldn’t do to try this climb on a warm day, I’m sure. Even today, with a high of merely the low sixties, it was feeling warmish as we climbed up these bare slopes in the full sun.
But the descent - wow! Best descent of the tour, bar none.
Video sound track: Flamenco, by Anat Cohen and Trio Brazileiro
We, on the other hand, follow through with our plan to climb a hill. And then another. And another. A long, hard day lies ahead.
This looks like Fort Bravo again, and it also has its circle of teepees in the wings (you can see the tip of one behind the rocks to the left of town), but this is Western Leone. The two towns are just a short stage coach ride apart.
You can’t see it from here, but our small road parallels the Autovia, just off frame to the left. It ascends at a steady, comfortable grade of five percent or more. Not ours though, which is much more fitful - steep stretches that level off and then dip into annoying depressions before climbing out again.
Every blasted one of these thirty or so depressions looks sort of like this. Strep enough climbing out that you’d like to speed down and get some momentum for the climb out. But you can’t, because the bottom is so rough and washboarded that you almost have to come to a stop. A bit irksome after you do this thirty times.
Scott AndersonTo Ron SuchanekJust a bit. Not complaining, mind you. Just making a note of it so others will know what to expect. Reply to this comment 4 years ago
An abandoned utility station of some sort stands at the summit. We must be riding on the old highway, now virtually abandoned. We’ve only seen one other car on this climb, and four other bicycles.
Ron SuchanekOn the Appalachian Trail they call them PUDs- pointless ups and downs. (I might have made a similar comment on another post, but who knows what I do?) Reply to this comment 4 years ago
Scott AndersonTo Ron SuchanekThanks for telling me that, Ron. What a useful acronym. I’ll try to find a few times to use it soon so that it cements in my memory. Reply to this comment 4 years ago
Over the top of the second climb, Castro de Filabres comes into view. Beyond that is the final climb, but first there’s a smaller one before the next village, and the steepest one of the day. Annoying.
This is such empty, bare country up here. It looks like this for miles in all directions. It’s hard to imagine, looking at this, that people actually live up here.
Still working our way, slowly, to Castro de Filabres. It’s much further than it looks, because the road bends into and then out of deep folds in the land.
Another look back at Olula de Castro. This one really is tiny, but it’s definitely a living village. Two men were tending their orchard when I biked through.
Looking back, you can just see Castro de Filabres on the left. In between is the edge of one of several ridges we’ve been weaving our way up and around.
On top of the world, and almost alone. We haven’t seen a car for at least an hour, but while we’re sitting here two other bikers reach the summit, pause for selfies by our bicycles, and drop into the abyss on the other side.
Rachael is having fun alright, from the sound of it. She’s just entering that hairpin, and it’s so quiet that from far up here I can here her issuing a command: “GoPro, start recording!”
Our route back to Tabernas drops thirteen miles down that long canyon. Tabernas is at the base of that distant ridge, but hidden by intervening formations.
She was waiting for me to come down, so I could then wait. She thought it would make a nice photo if she biked on ahead to that shapely curve I the road far below. It took her about five minutes to drop down as the road snakes it’s way off our ridge. Well worth the wait, I think.
4 years ago