July 12, 2011

We get up extra early again and set off before the sun rises to beat the heat.   However, the sun doesn’t rise – well, it does but behind clouds so we can’t see it.  So much the better.  We manage to get 20 km under our belts before breakfast – and most of it uphill (nothing new).  Although we can’t see the sun, the clouds are making it humid so it still feels hot, but nowhere near as bad as a couple of days ago.

We cross the border into the Province of Valencia and are immediately surrounded by orange groves and fields of carob trees.  There are also numerous almond trees which remind us of ours waiting for us back home.  That is the up side but the down side is that the whole area is very untidy with rubbish all alongside the road and especially where the communal rubbish skips are left, which don’t appear to have been emptied.  This gives the whole place a scruffy appearance, something we haven’t seen elsewhere in Spain.

The kilometres rapidly accumulate and before we know it we have done 80 km.  We have to find somewhere to stay near here because if we venture any further we will be into the back and beyond again, with the map showing no villages or camp-sites for about another 50 km or so.  As always, when you have to find somewhere to stay it proves difficult and we spend most of the afternoon circling the town of Buñol following up on false leads given to us by policemen and others before checking into a really charming old Posada (a type of road-side inn from times past when mules were used to transport goods).  We are a bit more hopeful after today that, if the slightly cooler weather continues and we continue to ride early in the morning before the hottest part of the day, we should be able to get back home on the bikes.  We are going to abandon the original route though for a slightly shorter and more direct version.