April 16, 2014

Well, it doesn’t get any better than this! Despite hearing thunder in the distance last night, we have yet another sunny day with not a sign of rain – warm with a slight breeze. Perfect cycling weather, in fact. The road turns out to be pretty perfect too – rolling up and down and around curves through wooded hillsides. The air smells of pine resin with occasional wafts of the heavy scent of flowers and herbs. This is cycling at its best.

We take a short cut off the road where we see a footpath/cycling route sign off onto a track – it says that it is going to the village we are heading for. A bit of a risk but we’re feeling lucky today. Turns out that we are lucky today as we find ourselves on lovely disused road, with no traffic and great views. We’re heading towards an area of lakes, pine forests and reservoirs, where there should be a camp-site for us to stay on for a couple of days. The road drops down towards the first of the lakes bordered by beautiful houses and manicured gardens. As we continue we drop down to the river Tajo, the clear, deep water looks tempting in the sunshine, but we resist and continue onwards climbing up a gorge cut by the river. Another spectacular view emerges. We know from our previous trip that we are near the junction with a main road which is really busy with a constant stream of heavy lorries. We’re not looking forward to it at all. Just as we head for the junction we see another of those footpath/cycle route signs leading into the countryside – it looks like it cuts across the valley saving us having to use the busy road. Is it possible we’ll be lucky twice in one day or will we be retracing our steps in a little while? Well, it turns out to be our day – it is a very rough surface, but leads us to exactly where we want to be. The only remaining obstacle now is a tunnel on the road leading to Sacedon where we hope the camp-site is still open. A tunnel on a bike is a risky business and an unpleasant experience. They are usually dimly lit and sometimes have no hard shoulder, as is the case with this one. The worst aspect is the noise of the traffic approaching from behind – the sound rebounds around the tunnel and so you have no ability to judge how far away the vehicle is from you. You have no idea whether they have seen you and you wait in trepidation for the impact. Fortunately, on this occasion we survive and emerge into the sunshine at the other end.

The camp-site is in business and is, in fact, heaving full of campers, kids and dogs – not the restful haven we had envisaged. Still, we are looking forward to our first camping stop with the opportunity for a bit of bike maintenance, kit washing and lying in the sun reading a book. The trouble with camping is that you always remember the good stuff and forget about exactly how hard the ground is through a 1cm thick camping mat, the mosquitoes and, in this particular case, the noise of the fireworks exploding over the village until the early hours. We also had the joys of a Scops Owl perched in a tree above us – for the non-ornithologists, these call all night with an electronic sounding repeated hoot.  Quite soporific actually, as it turns out.