Towards the South meeting the Desert coming North.

September 30, 2011

Not having been to North Africa before, I got the impression today of what it may be like from the warm fawn, streaked brown landscape reflecting soar on the eyes intense sunshine. Africa is nigh, a little voice says, continue to Africa, while another less adventurous voice in me says, another day as I'll soon have to be getting home.

In the shade in-front of a supermercado.

Toward southern Spain the landscape cannot be much different than North Africa.

My campsite was up a steep track on a promontory amid rock-outcrop, further hidden from the road by scrub. The tent, a Norwegian Hellsport, tunnel design, non-self-supporting and so needs pegs and guys in order to stay upright. Problem is, there is rock close to the surface just about everywhere here, and where there is soil it's parched as hard as concrete, such is the climate, so I find myself having to gather rocks to anchor the guys which isn't exactly ideal. Mental note for the future, unless camping in Northern Europe, or similar places, where soil is soft and humid, take my other tent which stands up by it's self.

I was not much more than two hundred metres from a hamlet, a scattering of a few houses on one side of the road opposite the track whence I came up, from where a dog barked regularly making me suspect it knew of my presences. But this was the only wild camping possibility in a long way, as it was treeless agricultural and viticulture all the way from Yehco. That was the preceding evening, this morning there was increasing desertification of the countryside. The sky warm blue but with a dirty brown fog cover ahead of me. Supposedly all the exhaust-fumes of so much traffic which is very noticeable when there's no cloud.

The grapes are now being picked. Back in France they used big gleaming blue-yellow trim New Holland machines like combine harvesters: the body though folds up-over and down the other side of a standard row of vines, like a square slot through the machine's middle where the mechanical picking goes on; and the grapes fill a hopper on-top behind the glass bubble cab where the driver sits comfortably. Here it's still done by hand; teams of six to eight men pluck and empty full baskets in trailers pulled by special narrow tractors, which are seen on the public road on the way to the wine co-operative, a factory recognizable by gleaming silver silo-like vats and the pungent whiff of fermenting grapes in the air.

Between noon and one, Is riding through the clean white-washed village of Fontana which seemed to have an awful lot of "Holiday Let Apartments", estate agent signs in English; also, cafes and bars with English names such as "The White Horse Bar"; and cars with UK number plates. The country onwards was very stirred up and built on with a cement factory amongst other unsightly urbanization. The sun was especially warm, the air dirty and not a prospect of sitting in the shade for lunch, until the road crossed a canal; whereupon, I turned off and cycled alongside a short way to where the inside was enclosed high boundary railings and green hedge of residential back-gardens which cast a metre wide band of cool shade. I lent the bike, handlebar poked into the hedge, and sat on the ground by the front-wheel leaning back against the stud-wall under the railings. I was wet and stained as just before sitting down I'd dropped a full bottle of coke, which had ruptured and a thin jet of gassy coke hissed out of a small hole. I managed though not to lose too much, and transfer the coke into an empty coke bottle.

I wondered what getting into the city of Murcia would be like. I had a feeling it would perhaps be twenty kilometre of unremitting urban sprawl, but there was only one way to find out. Spanish roads are now amongst the best with an ample shoulder. The shoulder gets narrow just when you need it most though, just as the traffic builds up approaching a big city. The shoulder on my-road was before long reduced to a narrow strip between the white-line and a drop-off into a concrete storm drain, a painful fall if distracted, not to mention damage done to bike. And I'd to watch-out for strewn sharp chippings, broken bottles and all manner of things thrown from car-windows. Further on as the road became narrower between urban walls and had gained a canopy of leafy tree-cooling shade, it became unsavoury. First at a cul-du-sac, I saw a scantily-dressed young woman sat on a stool, foot up with leg-fold-to-chest, and chin Lent on her knee in hopeless reverie; and a little further at a side road, with only a bikini for modesty sat a blond on a plastic chair staring vacantly into passing traffic. And for the next kilometre or so stood many more women, in naked silhouette on the scruffy roadside: the undignified human face of a sinister dark underworld.

At an interchange, cycling around a big roundabout with traffic swishing by in both directions on the autoroute underneath, passing the on-slip-road with a sign for, Murcia: Malaga: and through to an adjacent smaller roundabout where, I turned on to a wide thoroughfare following a sign: Murcia Centro 10km. The traffic was light as I rode from lights to lights along a corridor between box-shaped steel-frame buildings with advertising and company names on outer cladding. At one point I happily came alongside a bike shop, where I pushed the bike in and checked out the bikes and gear in the window. It was died inside and the door was firmly locked, with a label on the glass which showed it wouldn't open again to 16.30. It was yet only half three so I wasn't waiting.

The mountains were silhouette-light-blue in lazy afternoon sunshine beyond the rooftops and long straight street-ahead with traffic-lights at every cross-street, where on red the few siesta time cars leisurely moved across. I got caught at some lights, feeling the heat on sunburned calves while standing still, but more usual I sailed along getting through often just as they went from green to red. So after what seemed like fifteen kilometres, it started to look as though Is getting near the city-centre. And at last after asking directions I found my way to a plaza with a cathedral and the tourist office, though half an hour too early, the door being shut until five o'clock.

From humble beginnings to cycling great, now streets are named for Miguel Indurain.

Have you been here long? I asked a couple with a man whom appeared to be tourists as they spoke English among themselves, but the couple were local and where showing around their friend, the man who was visiting from the USA, so I asked did they know of a cheap hotel. The woman googled Murcia and hotels, on her ipad, coming up with pages of nice pictures of hotel rooms alongside text with locations and prices, the cheapest being thirty-five Euros, so I waited until the tourist office opened it's doors. When it did, the woman behind the desk gave me a flier for a hostel called Casa Verde, recommending it, saying she knows la chica englesa that runs the place. With her pen she circled it on the city-plan and drew a line along the most direct route. Likewise, she marked a bike shop which was only a short few streets behind the cathedral.

The bike-shop man stood answering his mobil when I came through the door. We made eye-contact, he waving his oily free hand in a gesture of I'll be with you shortly. After what most have been five minutes or more, in which I'd had a good look around his shop, he proceeded to serve me while continuing to nod affirmatively to the handset clasped on his shoulder, as whomever was on the other side had a lot important to say, and it showed by the weary expression on the bike-shop man's face. Once paid for (the brake-cable), he finally said "un momento" and set the handset on the counter. He took forth a pole with a hook on the end such as used to be used to open and shut high windows, and reaching a shelf up at the ceiling, he caught and lifted down a big bag of water-bottles and intimated to me to pick a bottle for my bike, a kind of memento of Murcia; then took up the handset anew and patiently continued.

Across the street in the play-ground with art-work on the walls and pavement, I quickly fitted the brake-cable under the curious gaze and questions of where you from from young BMXers. Afterwards I made my way as shown on the city-plan to the hostel, Casa Verde, where I didn't see la chica englesa (the Englishwoman proprietor) but her partner, a charming thirty two year old Spanish woman, that made me very welcome.

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