Bikepacking Spain

Park Güell. This candy land park has some serpent you’re supposed to take a photograph with. Janet and i circumnavigated the Park, and got a good look at the “restricted area” which was quite small. Although we figured we had seen the whole thing from the perimeter, we agreed to pay the 20€ to get in. But they were sold out! I did a “Fox and the sour grapes” (Aesop’s fables) and quickly felt OK about not being able to enter.

La Sagrada Familia from Park Güell. The plan is to build another tower on top of the existing structure! When you see it from this angle, you realize even more how prominent of a feature it is in Barcelona.

Our trip to Barcelona is reminiscent of our trip to Mexico City earlier this year. Both cities have Metro subways and our Air BnBs are similar. The culture is different here. In Mexico, I noticed men – and even girls – acquiescing their seats to older women on the metro. That doesn’t happen here ! People are quite polite and formal in Mexico City. In Barcelona, however, drivers are mostly respectful of pedestrians. There are more creature comforts here such as being able to drink from the tap. Also, I prefer the food selection – I was able to piece together an nice low carb meal from a convenience store! All the convenience stores seem to have a lot of fruits and veggies and an excellent selection of food. After 3 months of being nearly-vegan, I have reverted to low-carb – and have enjoyed feeling good with fantastic blood sugars for two days straight.

Janet amongst some of the artistic pillars in Park Güell.

Heavenly light starts to break through after the rain clears. Janet said, “Hey, that is Africa over there!” I pulled out my GPS, and that way was Algeria. Last night I had a dream that my friend Josh and I had a bike tour planned to ride across Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.

In the morning, it rained – a light, warm drizzle. We kind of liked the cooling effect, though at some points it was gloomy.

Janet and i have found some bike trails to make the riding more pleasant. This is Eurovelo 8, Pirinexus.

The view from below our campsite. It has been pretty warm – and humid so far. People seem to love this weather, though. It was really hard to find a secluded spot to camp.

Today, a lot of the day was in the 100s. My\nInsulin needs to stay below 80F or it will stop working. This is how I “recharge” the coolness inside of my thermos that I use to store the medicine during these hot days. It is quite a challenge trying to babysit this stuff so it will last 2 months.

Today’s route….was…..fantastic. Just superb all day long. (day 7)

The views today (day 7) were amazing all day. We have been in heaven since getting out of the flats.

Inside our Refugio for the night (day 7). Needs a little house keeping, i know.

This was the waterfall I was looking for. This was the first photo I took. After that, I kept fiddling with the exposure time, but by the time I got what I wanted, that golden ray of sun had disappeared.

Morning by the lake – it was chilly here – in the 40s! But the jackets came off as soon as the sun came out.

Cooking on a wood fire by the refugio – feeling very rustic.

Ah, the quaint towns in Europe. These bikes were all over town-for decoration, not for riding.

Unexpected to us, we came across the “Via ferrata de Obarra”. This is a vertical trail protected with cables that ascends over 1000’ to a peak called “La croquetta”. There are rebar holds and you can clip in with a harness, so someone with some basic fitness, but without major rock climbing skills could do it. I did not have a harness or a way to clip in, so I reluctantly did not go to the top. Here you can see the view looking back down to the road from where I turned around.

On our way up towards “viu”. Perhaps named for the similar sounding English word, “view?” Anyway, we are a little concerned about tomorrow: looks like we will have to climb over 500’ per mile for 3 miles on dirt. We don’t have much info on this route called “Vuelta a la peña montañesa” – but hoping we can make it through.

Our camp last night (day 13) – photoed well after dark with a 20 second exposure. We camped next to a spring that flowed out of the rocks. One thing I like about Europe is that we are able to find comfortable and quiet campsites. If the weather is good, I prefer to be in a tent. Whenever we get a hotel, it seems so stuffy to be indoors that we open all the windows and doors (unless we are using the air conditioning). Of course, if it is raining, we prefer a hotel. The red in the photo is from Janet’s red headlamp moving around over the course of 20 seconds.

We kept stoping along the Rio Aso to take photos – like this one of my favorites.

Every time we shop, Janet tries a new pre-packaged food. This time, it was Spanish tortilla… but this one was raw. We could have asked the owner of the hotel to cook it for us, but we had already bugged him a lot (like to use an iron to restore the water repellency of my rain jacket), so we gave this a try: immersion heater and a high temperature “sous-vide” patata. It worked! Now you have a new technique for when you’re in a food pinch.

This gives an idea of the scale of the cliffs at Parque Ordesa. At this point, we had already ascended over 1,000’ and Janet is that little white dot taking a picture from across the gully.

This is where we camped the night after the hotel. Nice “refugio” in case it rained in the night. (day 17)

I read some of the signs in Irati park; one was about the mythology of the region. Riding through here, you could easily see how the scenery would give rise to visions of elves and sprites. Historically, basque culture assigned importance to women, which you can see through the great number of female characters in their mythology. One character was “Lamiak” – a beautiful woman who combed her hair, and had the feet of a duck. Centuries later, we now see duck face poses on Instagram inspired by the beauty of Lamiak. Well, that is just a guess on my part.

We got to Irati park and I went to fill my water bottle. There was a stone wall and on either side there was a faucet. I was on the other side, and a lady offered me to go ahead of her. I say, “no, gracias, tambien hay una grifa en este lado”. She hesitated a moment and said “ok”. Janet and I looked up grifa in the dictionary because we later thought faucet is actually “grifo”. Sure enough, I had said, “No thanks, there is some dope on this side as well!”

We slept inside a refugio again. They aren’t exactly necessary – but later in the trip if it is raining or cold, they will be very welcome. We moved the tent inside because the tent got damp within half an hour of being pitched from the humid air.

I climbed down through some rubble and stinging blackberry bushes to get this photo of the Spanish Arms Factory in Orbaizeta. Janet did some research and we found that it is a heritage site (but “needs restoring”). They made bombs here in the 1700s. I was trying to imagine what bombs were like in the 1700s…. \nLater today, I was in a friendly small grocers, and the checking man said, “Where are you from?” I said “California. How did you know i am not from Spain.” His reply, “By your face”. Later, I thought that was weird because a Lucido I know on Facebook has done a TON of genealogy research connecting all of the Lucidos – and he has managed to go back 15 generations – to “Admiral Lucido” who was from… Spain. Our oldest known common ancestor is from Spain, even though we consider ourselves to be Italians from Sicily. Anyway, he may have known something about these municiones.. From the genealogy report: “‘Admiral Lucido’ of the Spanish Real Armada”

Emergency campsite over the ocean. We have been setting up camp about 2 hours before dark so we can eat, attend to health, and do chores – but today we decided to push it a little and head off without a rough idea of where to sleep. That led us to this little trail above the ocean, so in some ways that was good. It was a quiet night listening to the waves. (5 sec exposure).

We said “so long” to the Camino de Santiago, only to find it again. My guess now is that “All roads lead to Santiago de Compostela” – so why not set up a business catering to that.

El Machismo de bikepacking.com… this off-road route “Vuelta Vasco” from bike packing.com was pretty tough on a tandem. It didn’t help that we were riding it backwards from the intended direction.

There were a lot of beaches like this today (day 22). The formula is: ride up a big hill, then fly back down to the beach. Repeat.

In the middle of this descent, a couple of women come to stop me. One is very worried about us. “There is another bridge!” She says. I figure that is OK because we just managed this one. I say, “No, we aren’t doing The Camino…”. She says, “Well then the road is closed ahead.” Meanwhile, a guy on the bridge starts calling out to me, “Don’t take the road, take the trail!” Aaaaaaagh! “We aren’t doing the Camino!” He looks at me as if I’m stupid, meanwhile the ladies want to get their piece of me. So I say, “can we talk about this not in the middle of this staircase?” We go down and she says that she works at the office of tourism. “I should\nknow everything”, she tells me. I tell her we are doing the bikepacking.com route “Vuelta Vasco”. I ask, “Have you heard of it?” She replies, “yes, but it is not very well signed.” I tell her it is not signed at all: only on GPS. She wants to know where we are going because there is a problem with the road ahead. I show her the map. She says, “oh no. That road was closed yesterday and it didn’t open until this morning.” So it is open now? “Yes,” she replies. “So there is no problem?” “No,” she replies. Ok. Why did you urgently stop us, I wonder? They start to walk away, but then The 2nd elderly lady bends over and points at a bleeding cut on my leg. “You’re wounded,” she says. Pats me on the shoulder and walks away with a smile.

I bet you cannot guess which Village People song I am singing to Janet in this photo.

Janet and i saw this sign, and even though it says, “Welcome” on the left, the sign makes me feel a little unwelcome for some reason. Moments later, we were riding through a pedestrian mall and some guys at the bar were like, “You’re going the wrong way!” Once again, these were people who assumed we were lost from the Camino de Santiago! We reassured them that we are on a different route, and all was settled until one of them called out that we were riding against traffic, so we were still going the wrong way!

The guys racing the Vuelta a España race today (day 25) descended this. We climbed it. We ascend at 30fpm, and those guys probably crank out 90fpm. Lucky for us, we got to enjoy the low angle sun and colors.

Our derailleur after the catastrophe. I thought our trip was over. This is a 9 speed setup – I think that a 10 speed derailleur will work, but this broke on Saturday night – and all stores are closed on Sundays. It will be a while before we come to another big city to find a replacement. As of this posting, we have ridden about 25 miles like this, and it is actually working fine. There is some drag with the new chain routing. I used a 4mm Allen wrench and a tire lever as splints. Holding it all together are zip ties and duct tape (sold as “American tape” here).

Some of these rivers in Spain have cut some amazing canyons. This is the river “Cares”. Pronounced like “car” in Canadian, with an “s” on the end. Car, eh? ‘s. Now you can speak Spanish. Anyway, there is a hike called “Ruta de Cares” that we hope to do after the rain clears. We are waiting out a rainy day in a hotel with the double purpose of receiving an “overnight” derailleur shipment.

Getting soft: We got a hotel with 95 degree views (the room was built with an oblique angle). This is looking towards the park. Today, while posting the ride, though, the view is of heavy rain. It is a forced rest day that we actually really need. For some reason, though, I mentally struggle with resting. It makes me feel like I’m lazy and wasting precious time. Every day is precious.

Hiking into the “Garganta Divina” or the Divine Throat. Yes, you can feel swallowed up at times.

It is a big climb to Bulnes. You can take a funicular for 22€ per person. We hiked up past it and got to see this. One advantage to the funicular is that you could fast-track to a further and higher peak called Urriellu,\nbut today would have been sketchy because clouds had engulfed that area by the time we got to the top of the funicular.

This is the sunrise out our window. I made my 3 little cups of instant coffee using our immersion heater and enjoyed every minute of this.

Along the “Ruta de Cares”. Janet and I found a more scenic route using our maps.

Along the way to Lagos de Covadonga, we saw dozens of beautiful scenes – including this waterfall.

I went poking around on some pathways near the basilica and found this unnatural, but pretty waterfall.

The basílica of Covadonga.

Lagos de Covadonga. This is the upper lake. These lakes are some of the most popular in Spain as a place to visit. The Vuelta a España has a stage finish at the top of this climb every 2-3 years (not this year). There was a lot of dense fog coming in as we arrived – in fact this view was completely gone 5 minutes after I took this photo! I waited about 30 minutes just to see this view – and it only persisted about 5 minutes! I appreciate a fugacious view more than one that is easily accessible. Bonus: while it was foggy, there were some tourists in the foreground – but they gave up just before the fog lifted!

A chapel built into the rocks – this is on the other side of Santa Cueva.

Our apartment in Leon happened to be in the main square! We never would have selected this location, but we were in a last minute rush and didn’t look at the location map carefully on booking.com. This resulted in an adventure (see other captions). This procession was going on outside our window, and loud activity continued (at least) until 6am when we departed.

The train debate! Renfe, the train company sold us a bike ticket – but the conductor later saw us waiting to board and said that our bike would not fit. I assured him that it would. So far we have managed to coerce people to get our tandem into cars, trucks, airplanes, busses, and trains. I actually wanted to strap it onto a horse in Peru once to get through a no bike region, but Janet vetoed that. Anyway, it did fit as pictured. The conductor came over and said, “But this is not the place for bikes!” I showed him the little bike picture on the wall. He ignored that and tried to talk me into moving it into a smaller, labyrinth of a room after it was already placed. After a long but calm discussion, I said, “Ok. I can move it to your place.” Then he says, “well, if you want, you can leave it, but if it falls, it will cause damage.” I guess he just wanted me to agree to his place for the bike? Anyway, he was nice – but I often find that people like to get involved in these long discussions for no real reason.

We rented another apartment- this time in Cuenca – to rest after the train ride and a poor night of sleep in the main plaza of Leon last night. Apartments are cool because they have kitchens and washers, but not so great when it comes to entering the building! Today was less weird than yesterday; the apartment owner simply left the keys with a local bartender. But getting the bike up the stairs was going to be impossible. Instead, I hoisted it up to the balcony as seen here. I’m glad Janet is so flexible with non-traditional approaches to things. Now we don’t need to go to the gym for upper body work.

Our apartment in Cuenca.

I wanted to climb to the top of this knob, but chickened out. Plenty of good solid holds… there are a lot of cool rock formations out here.

This is our campsite on the cliff along the Rio Tajo… Ha! I give it six stars.

Janet is dancing here to “Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.” (By the Geto Boys)[sic]. This was one of the harder images of the day to capture. She kept stopping dancing when the camera came out.

Along the Rio Tajo – a must do!

There was a group of 40 mountain bikers on the same trail as us. They were from Belgium on a 9 or 10 day supported trip. No cars on this route; it is heavenly!!

Did you know that Peralejos de Truchas was a sister “city” with Freehold? Did you know that Bruce Springsteen was an adopted son of Peralejos? Neither did we.

Usually our conversations with locals are limited to stuff about the bike and where we are coming from / going. Today, this guy wanted to really get into it: politics, health, etc. He really wanted to know which country I thought was the most powerful: USA? China? Russia? He was 83 years old, and he told me his blood sugar is always 200 mg/dL. He goes in once a week for a “shot” (I’m assuming a GLP-1 agonist); he pays 4€ – the government pays the rest. His pension is 600€ per month. It also sounded like he gets 1200€ twice a year. He said that “All Americans are rich, no?” We tried to explain that not all are rich. I also showed him my insulin and then we bonded over diabetes and same birth month – so Janet announced that we were brothers, which I think he liked when he found out my age.

Nine 8 hour days in the saddle. This isn’t normal behavior in any biological sense. The closest “natural” conduct I can come up with would be nomadic hunters in a barren land who may be forced to travel all day to seek food. Powering a 100 pound tandem with fat tires up mixed terrain on a daily basis can exceed a humans mental capacity for work (admittedly, a humans physical capacity for work is always more than the mind thinks, but is it a good idea to dance at that boundary?) So we booked 2 nights in a house in Utiel to rest. No walking tours. No sightseeing or hikes. Just a day of rest. There is Janet getting caught up on everyone else’s Strava this morning – good for the soul!

We are on bikepacking.com’s “Altrevesur” route. Off to a good start with some hike-a-bike and bushwhacking! Eventually after we were spending too much time bush-whacking, we exited the bike packing route and took a nearby parallel road. The road had no cars, so no reason to suffer on the trail.

Today we were on the bike route called “Altrevasur”, which is a southern crossing of Spain on mostly trails. It utilizes part of the “Don Quixote” route. So I guess we are doing the Don Quixote route? Maybe it is called that because of all the wind “mills” (now a days, turbines)? Like I told you: Spain is all about the routes. I really like that. Also, we went through 20 something tunnels today! Some were pretty long – nearly a kilometer. It was great riding.

Red skies by night: Janet and Brian delight.

Janet fluffing the sleeping bags at our sheep-side campsite. These are my favorite kinds of camps – high elevation, quiet, and the “lawn is mowed” by the sheep – meaning very few stabbers on the ground that risk puncturing the tent or ground pad.

Janet and I met Unai Iriondo from San Sebastian while he was riding the “Moñtanas Vacias” route in the opposite direction from us. He had raced the 2016 Tour Divide (the year that Mike Hall won). We enjoyed talking bike packing.

We spent most of the afternoon (day 53) riding rollers on some pretty rocky fire roads. The scenery was very alpine – in many places reminiscent of high elevation Peru.

Waterfall #1 along Rio Borosa… on of my favorite sections of trail ever!

Waterfall #2 along Rio Borosa… on of my favorite sections of trail ever!

Waterfall #3 along Rio Borosa… on of my favorite sections of trail ever!