Wednesday 4 September - Logorno - Soria - 60 Miles

The weather was wet when leaving Logorno, and Edwin and I went our separate ways, he towards Burgos on the Camino route, and me heading south on my way to Madrid. The day was cold and blustery, with some rain, and there was a long 1,000 meter / 3,000 feet climb, but at least it was gentle and straight up without going up and down, so every turn of the pedal I made at least I was going up in the right direction and not having to repeat the climb successive times. If you get my drift ! The range of mountains I was crossing are, to the best of my knowledge, The Piqueras and the final bit was through a two and a half kilometer tunnel which brought me out on to the other side of the mountains, where suddenly the sun was shining ! I was a bit doubtful about whether I should have cycled through the tunnel, even though it was very quiet from the traffic point of view and had a very generous shoulder that I could cycle along, but my mind was put to rest when I saw a sign advising drivers that there was a cyclist in the tunnel and to take care, so somebody must have know I was there, and it must have been okay. Anyhow, I was very grateful for the long tunnel, because it spared me even more vertiginous climbing. The ride down to Soria was a long downhill route, with the wind behind me, and the sun shining, so I was happy. Soria, well, I can’t say I know much about it, but there was a rather squat, solid looking main church, very much as I have seen in lots of the places recently in Spain I have gone through. I think it is sort of church militant architecture, at a time when the church needed also to be a place where you could sit out an attack from an enemy. My enemy of the day was some bossy finger wagging lady of a certain vintage, all dyed hair and done up to the nines with little dog in toe, who accosted me at my AirBnB and told me, I think, that the bike couldn’t come in. I just smiled and wagged my finger at her and, after she had taken a picture of me in my Mamil Lycra and my bike, presumably to make some kind of report to whomsoever, she went off all a-puff, and I did what I wanted. The Spanish, I observe, can be very autocratic / dictatorial / fascist and like to tell you what you can and cannot do. I guess it goes back to Franco and all that clerico / catholic / fascist nonsense, perhaps even further, but they do make a fool of themselves when they get all directive, as this woman did, because I simply don’t take any notice. The Guardia Civil, however, I would not mess with. They are the archetype of fascist / authoritarian, and you see them along the roads at check points. Mind you, find it hard to take them seriously when they wear those silly traditional Spanish hats, which look as thought they have got them sitting on their heads the wrong way around. It’s a culture of authority and control that we don’t see back in the UK, and one that is not very pleasant, and which I’m glad I don’t have to put up with on a daily basis. But, when in Spain…. By the way, the AirBnB was very modern and comfortable and I had a good night there, with a tapas grazing dinner in the square, including some type of tripe that was very tasty.

Thursday 5 September - Soria - Ucero - 55 Miles

My intention now is to tack towards Madrid for the weekend and to have a pause and a little R&R before heading on south. I’m a day or two ahead of my original planning so I will have some short days so that I stay on track. I have never been to Madrid, so a day or two of looking around will give me an idea of whether I’d like to spend a bit more time there one day. So, tracking towards Madrid I have decided more or less to follow the El Cid Trail. El Cid was some kind of 11th century Spanish knight who seemed to have battled with everybody including the Christians and the Muslims, and there is a route that takes me past amazing hilltop / mountain top castles keeping watch over the valleys and the plains. This bit of Spain is very different to the northern mountainous part that I have come through since The Pyrenees, all high plains and deep valleys and stupendous views and castles. Ucero is an El Cid town with a Knights’ Templar castle, formidable looking, and I am camping, although the weather is not the best. It rained shortly after I got there, and then again in the morning. They had huge storms in the days before, and the ground was a bit waterlogged, so I was going to get a bit wet anyhow whether it rained or not. The camping place had a rather relaxed eating place, which didn’t begin serving until at least 8:30 pm and it was 9:30 before I got any real food. Spaniards really do eat late. Anyhow, all needs were met, and apart from it being a bit of a damp night, I got the required rest and sleep to face in to the next day.

Friday 6 September - Ucero - Atienza - 70 Miles

I’m still following the El Cid route with its castles, and today’s riding was initially pretty much all flat or down hill, but then came the payback and some tough climbs in the afternoon, albeit with stupendous views of the surrounding countryside. The road was quiet, and well kept, with a decent shoulder, so it was more or less pleasant cycling. And, the really good news is that the sun has decided to come out and things have warmed up and life is much more pleasant. My object today was to get to Atienza where, after my rather soggy experience yesterday, I had booked a little hostal. The town of Atienza didn’t look to have very much to offer, but the hostal said that it had a restaurant, so I was hoping that I would find all the I needed to keep me happy. And I did. The hostal was simple, but the restaurant was stupendous. It was called Miramar, and had wonderful views over the surrounding countryside. The food was excellent. I think I had what I decided in translation was some kind of borage thick soup with truffle shavings to start with, then really tasty beef cooked with raisons and juniper berries and some kind of finishing off with a liquor. To find such wonderful cooking in such a remote area is amazing, but evidently the Spaniards take these things seriously. The restaurant didn’t open until 8:30 pm, and for the first half hour or so another guy and I were the only people, but then from 9 pm and as late as 10:30 pm people were coming in and taking tables, most of them with small children. Back home you would get reported to the safeguarding people for having children out so late. For such a small, unprepossessing place, the Miramar really was great. Oh, there is an El Cid style fortress there, if you can be bothered to go up the 500 extra feet to get to it. There were some other cyclists, but I think they were Spanish, and didn’t do the usual cyclist talk with me, and there was a guy I met in the morning who was all togged out for walking; he was walking some route from Valencia to Compostella, the Camino del Levante. That’s a serious walk. He will have a lot of mountains to go over.

Sunday 8 September - Gadalajara - Madrid - 50 Miles.

Today was always going to be a short ride in to Madrid. I knew that Madrid would be a sprawling place, and cycling through suburban and built up areas is always much slower than riding out in the countryside. All stop and start. Madrid does spread itself out and between Guadalajara and Madrid there wasn’t any countryside, just endless industrial estates and businesses along the roads. Before leaving Guadalajara I’d crossed over the railway tracks to get some breakfast - pan tostado with tomato and jamon - at the cafe/restaurant where I had eaten the night before. There was a team of young lads in there, football I think, having their coffee and breakfast before heading off to their Sunday match. They were well behaved, courteous, interested in their pan tostado and jamon, and I couldn’t help compare what I see back home with so many young people, who are often surly, bored looking, loud, aggressive, ignorant and just generally common. And probably carrying knives. 20 somethings here behave so well. You will see a group of them sit down to eat and drink, interested in their food, in conversation, in being together, and without an iota of bad behaviour or ignorance or drunkeness, or cropped tops, bare midriffs, or crotch revealing short skirts. Which is so often what you see at home, and also lots of drunken behaviour and stupidness. Take a trip down Broad Street in Birmingham any evening. I guess the difference it is that the youngsters here know what it is to sit down at table and eat together and to value the community and friendship of family and friends. They done it since day one in their own families. I couldn’t imagine one of them calling Uber Eats to get pizza or a MacDonalds. And, in general, they are not fat and lardy. Because they eat properly. Compare that to what you see walking down our streets at home. So, it’s nice to see well behaved and mannered youngsters who value being together, eating together and spending time together. Back to the Madrid suburbs. The going was slow and getting tough, with increasing traffic and having to keep an eye out all the time. So, at a suburban train station about 10 kms from the centre I hopped the train with bike and went in to Atocha Station in Madrid and then headed the few kilometres in central Madrid to my AirBnB near Puerta Toledo. Around Atocha, I did get told off by a policeman for riding on the pavement. I was dutifully compliant. Although, I did think,”Haven’t you got better things to do than stop cyclists - like looking for robbers, terrorists etc rather than worrying about me trying to find my way around a strange city ?!”Police are all over the place in Madrid, slowly cruising around the squares and streets, doing spot checks, lots of them, all over the place. The police in their various guises are very much in evidence here, I’ve decided. I blame Their Catholic Majesties Isabella and Ferdinand, the Inquisition and Franco. There is lots of control going on here. I do like the way they behave. I don’t like the coercive way it seems to be achieved. Police presence should be unobtrusive. In a democracy the role of the police should not be made too easy. Otherwise they take over and take control. I sense a bit of that here in Spain.

Monday 9 / Tuesday 10 September - Madrid - Rest Days

I’m having a couple of days in Madrid, to see the place, and to rest up, before my final leg through southern Spain and in to Portugal. I’ve taken a small AirBnB near the Puerto Toledo, just up from the River Manzanares which runs through Madrid, nice part of town, with all the conveniences I could need, such as small supermarkets and cafes / restaurants etc. Madrid is a tidy town, very clean, streets hosed down in the morning, and very little rubbish or litter about the place. There are lots of little parks and green areas where people congregate, I guess because most people here live in apartments and only have a small balcony for outside air, and going to the park, parading along the wide boulevards and sitting for hours at the cafe is their way of getting out in to the open. I guess they have small kitchens as well, so eating out is a usual thing. The Plaza Major is about a pleasant twenty minutes walk away, there are some interesting indoor markets, and lots of small shops selling stuff. And loads of places to pause and have a glass of wine, or a beer, and some tapas. I ate two nights at the same restaurant / cafe just around the corner, because I thought it was so good, and no point setting yourself up for disappointment elsewhere when you’ve found somewhere that suits, I think. After exploring the place as much as I could on Monday, taking the open top double decker bus tour for 90 minutes to get a sense of the place, and catching up on laundry and tinkering with the bike, and some extra sleep, on Tuesday my plan was to head for The Prado to see the pictures, which I did. The Prado isn’t intimidatingly vast, and a useful plan told me where the pictures I particularly wanted to see were to be found in the museum, especially the Goyas, the El Grecos, and a couple of Caravaggios. My favourites were the El Grecos, all long and languid and rather camp dramatic figures, very different from other, more formal, stuff that was being painted in Spain in late 16th / early 17th centuries. The Goyas, from the Napoleonic Spanish Wars, are amazing, especially the execution of the rebels, although there are some disturbing Black Period Goyas that suggest he was more than a bit of depressive at times. One Caravaggio, called The Perdido, which has only been rediscovered in recent years, and which depicts the Ecce Homo moment of Pilate when Jesus was hauled before him, is only a small painting; the other, David decapitating Goliath after he has killed him, is also small, both unlike the larger scenes that I have seen by Caravaggio in Rome. Actually, they weren’t, I think, his best, too small and too limited. But, then, I’m no expert ! They come, I believe, from his dark and desperate last years, his exile period in Sicily and Naples and his attempts to get himself pardoned for the street killing of a someone in Rome and his subsequent flight and exile from Rome. Caravaggio was a bit of a troublemaker and street brawler. Great painter, but definitely troubled and troublesome on the streets. Velasquez, a court painter, was another that was interesting, and it was noticeable that the Spanish Habsburg hereditary large chin (as in Jimmy Hill) features in a lot his paintings of the Spanish royals of that time, first half of the 17th century. Perhaps it’s been weeded out in the the current King Felipe.I think you can still see the chin in the ex-KIng Carlos. I wasn’t able to go and see the Picasso Guernica at the Reina Sofia gallery, because it was closed on Tuesdays !

I’m no expert on all this art stuff, but I do know what I think I like and what I think I don’t like ! I like Madrid, clean, organised, monumental, well behaved people (well, with all those police around, who wouldn’t be ?), and with good food and wine everywhere I went. I’d like to go back for a longer look / see one day. The weather was lovely and pleasant, but I can imagine that in the height of summer it can be extremely hot and tiring.

Wednesday 11 September - Madrid - Toledo - 55 Miles

In beautiful weather, I left Madrid heading for Toledo. The route out was not as bad as the route in but the morning was mostly through suburbs and industrial estates. The countryside is pretty scrappy as you get out of the suburbs, lots of wheat fields that have been harvested and not much else. My final bit of the route in to Toledo took me along a river with a path next to it, but they must have had a lot of torrential rain at some point and the path was wiped out by the torrent, so I had to pick my way carefully over broken pavement and boilers and sand. Toledo looks hilly. The town proper and cathedral are perched up on the hills, but I was headed for a camp site, which turned out to be very superior, and a bit expensive as camp sites go, but with wonderful facilities, pool, restaurant and a magnificent view of Toledo town and cathedral. After a nice meal on the terrace, with Toledo illuminated before me, I went to my tent, but was disturbed by my Spanish neighbours who were chattering and nattering until midnight. A bit of Old Anglo-Saxon shut them up. And when I was leaving at 8:30 am the next morning, a retaliatory ringing of my cycle bell seemed justified. The Spanish do make a lot of noise. When they are in company, they all speak at the same time, over each other, nobody appears to shut up and listen. Go to any square and sit in a cafe and all you hear is what sounds like a flock of starlings. I didn’t see much of Toledo from my camping ground, but it looks monumental and has a wonderful hilltop position. A place to visit again sometime at leisure. Now, in case you are wondering, this trip is about cycling, covering distance, and seeing what I see from the route. I’m not interested in stopping off and visiting sites, except perhaps on longer stops such as Madrid. I pick up what I see on the way, and can come back later and visit at leisure. Which I will for Madrid, and maybe Toledo. One day.

Thursday 12 September - Toledo - Navas de Estena - 65 Miles

I’m making my way gradually south west, and today took me in to rural Spain and in to the Cabaneros National Park, which is hilly/mountainous and very rural. The morning out of Toledo was fairly flat, but then I hit the hills and the afternoon was a succession of climbs up in to the hills and the pine forests, and what I think are trees with lots of acorns on them, presumably for the pigs to snuffle for once they fall. The aroma from the pines and whatever else was giving off scent was delightful, a sort of a mix of pine / resin / incense, all along the mountain roads that I travelled. Delightful. I’ve not had the scent of fig trees, which I often smell in Portugal, but maybe that is to come. I was heading for a small town / village of Naval de Estena where there was supposed to be a camp site, which there was, but it had a definite closed look to it. A phone call, botched Spanish, and then some decent English when the guy realised I spoke English, ended up with the camp site being open, but the restaurant and bar closed for the night. It will reopen on Friday for the weekend. The other restaurant in town was also closed for the day, but the small, and I mean small as in front room, shop opened at 6:30 pm and I was able to get enough for a half decent picnic, which did the trick. I think there were only a couple of other people at the campsite, but I had the company of a family of cats that kept looking for attention and food, and of a fox that sauntered around boldly, and was probably more interested in the kittens as a potential meal than he was in me and my picnic. The weather was balmy and warm and I was able to have a quiet sleep in my inner tent without the fly sheet, and was able to look up and see the stars. And breath, aaahhh ! Camping in this delightful balmy clime is not a problem, and quite a pleasure. The problem is trying to find camp sites at the right place and distance. Otherwise, I have to resort to little hotels, as I will tomorrow night when I get to Cuidad Real.

Friday 13 September - Navas de Estena - Cuidad Real - 60 Miles

The road to Cuidad Real was more hills and up and downs, well up some mountainside actually, and past a hug reservoir. Some of it was long, hot and hard, but I had a nice little wind behind me which helped me along. I went though many little Spanish villages, where you would barely see anybody, although a couple had a little shop and a bar where I could replenish. These little villages are very higgledy piggledy, and there doesn’t appear to be a consistent plan, they just seem to have happened without any thought. There’s not a lot happening it seems. Mind you, some of them had signs of imminent bull running, as in Pamplona, with metal gates closing off roads, and railings along the streets. It seems to be a thing at this time of year and in this part. It’s all very agricultural, and I keep seeing signs about Don Quixote, who must have been through these parts, daft and blind old soak he was, tilting at windmills. Anyhow, he’s evidently a character of these parts. The fields of wheat have long since been harvested, and the pale golden stubble in the sunlight is delightful. The corn of various types hasn’t yet been harvested, and some fields are being watered. Maybe that’s what the reservoir was about. So, this bit of Spain, southwest of Madrid and Toledo, which I think is Castille - La Mancha, is very agricultural and very Don Quixote. My destination was Cuidad Real, which to me translates as Royal City, so I was expecting monumental and impressive. In fact, it is quite small and I really didn’t see a whole lot of old buildings, just lots of modernish apartment buildings and squares. The main square looks like a 1970s creation. Although, maybe there is a plaza major that I missed. Still, it was very pleasant, and my hotel very comfortable, sort of stuck in the early 2000s in decor and stye, but very acceptable, and evidently the preference of the respectable middle class Spaniards who made up most of the guests. There is a look to these well heeled Spanish middle classes of a certain age, all sunglasses and big hair for the women, and slip on loafers and cardigans for the men (even in this weather !) You can tell they know their worth and I suspect most of them still would prefer to have Franco running the place. I ate, almost alone, at 9 pm in the dining room, and another table appeared at 10 pm as I was leaving. I had a little Spanish brandy at a bar down the road, which was a huge measure but wasn’t anything like brandy we are used to, more like a weak tea. It did the job and I slept well. There must be more to Cuidad Real than I have seen in my fleeting visit. I need to look at Wikipedia to find out more.

Saturday 14 September - Cuidad Real - Fuencaliente - 65 Miles

Today was going to be a day of some big climbs. So, I fortified myself with the hotel buffet breakfast, which was very fulsome, and cost less that 8 Euro, but would have been at least 15 Sterling in the UK. I had pan tostado with tomato, then eggs, then some cooked ham, and then some sweet pastries, with good coffee and juices. But, why I had to be afflicted with 1980s hard rock musak with my breakfast, I do not know. More of the incessant never-ending commotion and noise that goes with Spain and the Spanish, I think. And, I didn’t even have my hearing aid in, but it was still annoyingly intrusive. On more familiar territory at home, I now tell them that I am disabled of hearing and could they please turn the music down / off. Of course, if they thought about it being disabled of hearing would normally mean that the impact of musak should be limited. But, they don’t think about it. The disabled bit gets an immediate reaction and they invariably comply. If you just ask because you don’t like it, they take umbrage. The D world does the trick. They don’t want to be seen to be discriminatory to the disabled. So, I was well set for the hills, although the first part of the morning was very flat coming out of Cuidad Real along a track that was full of joggers and walkers. The Spanish never seem to shut up, even when jogging, and they are nattering away to each other as they take their exercise. Likewise the twos and threes groups of cyclists I have seen, riding side by side and jabbering away. I think nattering all the time is a Spanish pastime. And talking over each other. The route took me by the side of the high speed railway, although even though the trains look very flash and fast I didn’t think that they were moving at very high speed. I hope our HS2, what there will be of it and when it finally arrives, will move a bit faster. Eventually, my route moved away from the railway line and headed up some mountains, up a thousand feet or so each time, then down to a valley, then up again. I was following the N road, which wasn’t very busy because the traffic now takes the autovia. The old N road system is still in good shape, so are good roads to take if there is an autovia nearby which takes most of the traffic. I went over four ridges and valleys, I think in the Sierra Andujar, sheep and wheat and corn and olives in the valleys, pine trees and oak trees higher up. I’m staying at a little hotel in the Sierra just outside Fuencaliente, which leads me to think that there will be hot springs nearby. The hotel is a little dated, but has a restaurant where I’m able to have my meal of partridge pate and oxtail stew. At 9:45 as I write, there are only two other people eating, I think Eastern Europeans of some variety. Why do Eastern European women have such high pitch voices and up and down patterns to their speech ? It would do my head in having to l listen to that day and night. I feel for the husband. She went to bed and I chatted to the Polish guy as we finished our wine and had a little cigar on the terrace. He was very big on the Poles always being attacked by the Russians and not to trust them, even citing battles from the Middle Ages to make his case. Also firm on welcoming Ukrainian refugees, but tells me they don’t want any blacks. Poland is a very monochrome place, as I recall. Tomorrow, I’m heading for Cordoba, which I think is mostly downhill, and will have two nights there so that I can explore the Moorish history of the place.