July 1, 2011

Aha!  Now we understand why we are feeling so down – it seems that we are coming down with colds.  Ken is worse than me (of course he is) and I can hear him coughing and snuffling along behind me as we cycle along.  We decide that we will do a half day today to see how we go.

It is another hot day and there is another mountain to climb – and this one is a long one.  We have decided to take a back route which runs roughly along where the main C25 road runs.  This turns out to be a good decision as the C25 is being extended to turn it into a motorway and it is surrounded by earth-movers and heavy diggers.

We spend the first 30 km going ever upwards – slow, hot work.  We are reminded exactly how mountainous Spain is.  A mountain such as this in France would be famous but here in Spain it is commonplace.  The climb is longer than we did when going up Mont Ventoux , which was 26 km, although this pass only reaches 960 metres in altitude we have climbed from sea-level this time and the temperature is 38 degrees.  When we reach the top the road continues along a ridge so that we have gentle ups and downs for about 10 km before the road turns downwards.  We had noted earlier that the only camp-site anywhere along the route for some considerable distance is at the village we have arrived at.  However, the only sign to the camp-site points straight into the middle of the road works.  That can’t be right we think – or has the camp-site been incorporated into the new motorway?  We go up and down the road a few times before eventually deciding that the only way to find out is to go up the track where the sign points.  Yes, we are in the middle of the work site – diggers, mountains of sand, signs telling you to put on your hard hat etc etc and there across the workings is a small track to the camp-site! 

Not the prettiest of locations but better than nothing.  So we pitch our tent and, after a shower, march through the road works in our flip-flips in search of food.  We do find a restaurant in the tiny village, we ask if we can eat – the bar owner tells us ‘No’, we are too early they don’t start serving food until 9.30 pm.  It is actually 10.30pm before we eat but at least this is the right way around as we are happy to wait.  The menu turns out to be somewhat limited – it is a bit like a Monty Python sketch – do you want spam and eggs, eggs and spam or spam and spam?  We choose eggs and eggs.