TRANS-ANDALUZ: Day 9 - Down to Three, then One

(Photo: Claire climbing between Cantarranas and Vejer de la Frontera.)

We wake up in our respective tents at about eight-thirty in the morning, and boy, is it COLD. See-your-breath-through-the-sleeping-bag cold. Put-on-everything-you-own cold. Which means that we're going to get a nice blue sky, and that should mean that we'll get nice weather at the beach. But it also means that Claire half-froze to death last night, her shoulder's all kinked up and the idea of spending another couple of nights camping near the beach isn't particularly turning her on. At breakfast, she decides that she'd rather cut the trip short at Vejer de la Frontera and head down the Algeciras, where she can get the train back to Ronda. I feel bad - after all, she did leave home at 4AM to drive seven hours to get here - but at the same time, neither of us is going to pretend that the weather is going to suddenly turn splendid and allow us to spend the weekend basking in the sun on the beach.

We stop for sweets and quick phone calls in Alcalá de los Gazules proper, then head westward towards Benalup de Sidonia along a quiet secondary highway that's been repaved and tilts ever-so-slightly down, giving us the chance to blast ahead. And that's when the rear cassette goes - just as we're being passed by a group of fiftysomething Brits who are doing a road cycling training camp.

At first it's just a couple of gears, like what happens when you don't oil the cable enough. Then it's the four in the middle. By the time we get to the turnoff to Benalup, I'm down to three gears, nothing more, and even then, if I want to change gears, I have to lean over and pluck the chain over with my index finger. The good news: I'm only seven kilometres from the coast. The bad news: There are two climbs involved, both on roads with no shoulder and lots of traffic.

I bid Claire goodbye at the N340 turnoff; she rides down to the Barca de Vejer bar where, miraculously, she manages to grab a bus to Algeciras about ten minutes later. Then it's an hour of white-knuckling it across the highway (thanks to the traffic more than any inability to gear up and down) and up the coastal road, towards El Palmar. The sea is quiet and calm and, at about 15ºC, way the hell too cold to even think about swimming as we did last year.

So that's it. The trip is over. I made it. I pull into the campsite and Juan, the gardener, gives me a big wave hello and yells over, "Have you visited the cash machine yet?" (When we were here last year we got caught by a specific dearth of functioning ATMs, and the campsite at El Palmar didn't accept credit cards. It does now.) The cool, wet weather has decimated business at the campsite: where last year you couldn't pitch a tent for love or money, I can count on both hands the number of tents I see in the entire joint. Not good.

But, hey. I made it. I made it one piece, had some good stories to tell along the way, and know that I can do a long trip by myself. Not a bad feat for someone who's this close to forty!

TRANS-ANDALUZ: Day 8 - Gibraltar, HO!

Under the watchful eyes of a an elderly couple, Claire and I managed to get the stuff off the train in record time (having received a finger-wagging from the conductor NOT to hold the train up; this, in spite of the train leaving fifteen minutes late from Ronda station.) We got the bikes assembled, went to the bathroom, wheeled the bikes out of the Cortes de la Frontera station and took a long, long look up into the hills - stunted mountains, really, great slabs of limestone poking out of the hills at odd angles, and dotted yellow with lichen and broom, which was in bloom.

The secondary highway leading up into town was narrow, but it seemed like drivers were used to packed bikes slowly making their way up the hill: no one blasted by at stupid speeds. A short toot of the horn, a smile, sometimes a befuddled look - and from one woman driving a Range Rover with British plates, a round of applause.

Riding with cyclists who are better than I am makes me realize that I AM getting better, slowly but surely. Our ride takes us sixty-five kilometres across the southern end of the Parque Natural de los Alcorconales, and I only had to get off and push twice - not bad, considering that the entire day consisted of nearly 600 metres of accumulated climbing.

This is bike touring as it should be: good, resurfaced roads with lots of green hills on either side, lots of (not THAT high) mountain passes with scenic lookouts (perfect for picnics) and the occasional group of guys who have escaped from their wives to reclaim their youth, complete with litre bottles of beer and a couple of chunks of chorizo -- and a tent they readily admit they've never put up before.

We're heading towards the town of Alcalá de los Gazules, but there's a hitch: Claire didn't realize how cold it was going to be down here, and doesn't want to camp. I'm pretty sure that we're going to be S.O.L. trying to find anything that's not a campsite - and, sure enough, anything on the west side of the Iberian mountain system, where the weather is better, is booked solid.

At about 6pm we roll into Alcalá and hit the campsite, which, to be fair, looks about as appealing as a down-at-heels Florida trailer park where people have lived for so long that they can't be bothered to take care of the lots. Turns out that impression is not that far off the mark: the vast majority of people staying there have GBZ - Gibraltar plates. Gibraltar is only thirty miles down the road, and this is the weekend getaway for a lot of British troops stationed on the Rock, as well as for gibralteños with kids who want to get away on a regular basis.

We go to sleep with the lilting Andalusian Spanish which is interwoven with phrases I don't understand...and punctuated with the occasional statement right out of EastEnders or Beverley Hills 90210: Crikey! Whoamgod! Duuuude!

TRANS-ANDALUZ, Day Seven: Time to be TOURISTS!!

How did the idea of being a tourist get such a bad rap? Sometimes the only thing you can do is be a tourist, stop hiding your camera and just ogle in the experience of not being stuck in front of your computer. Claire makes it down to Ronda in a record six hours, and the afternoon is spent having a long, leisurely lunch in the Ronda Parador, before wandering around Ronda with the cameras and seeing how many megapixels we can cram onto the cameras.

The only disadvantage to travelling like this, shamelessly being tourists, is that we stick out like a pair of sore thumbs, especially when we went to a Semana Santa procession. One young cofrade looked at Claire and with his best Andalusian accent, made even more difficult to undertand thanks to having lost most of his baby teeth, asked her where she was from. "Inglaterra," she said. "¿Y tú?"

The preschooler looked at Claire, then looked at his mother and lisped, "I don't understand what she said!"

There are times when all you can do is embrace your foreign-ness and be thankful you're on the OTHER side of the camera!

TRANS-ANDALUZ, Day Six: Up, Up and Away (Horizontally)

There's something wonderfully sinful about waking up in a suite for six - by yourself - and realizing that you don't have anything going on except a day of biking. Andrés had a pretty crazy day, trying to organize lunch for four hundred hungry bikers who were taking part in the Encuentros Cicloturísticas organized by a biking group in Málaga.

Not wanting to get in his hair, I made myself scarce somewhat early. Or tried to. Andrés was off doing his stuff while I met up with, and coffee with, the newly renovated Juan Ramón Toro, the manager and owner of the Coripe Station Restaurant/Bed and Breakfast, who has been extremely successful at remaking his life: in addition to running the station, he has successfully lost at least eighty kilos - sixty in the form of an ex-wife. Success suits him; in spite of working twenty-eight hours a day (his estimate), he looks happier and healthier than when I first met him three years ago. After a couple of cups of coffee (and some flirtation that really didn't take), I headed off.

When the weather is nice, the ride over the sierra into Algámitas must be lovely. When I hit the pass, after 400 metres of climbing, it still wasn't bad, opening up to give a view of the snowy peaks of Grazalema before the rain came in...horizontally. Lunch in Algámitas was a given, as a way of avoiding the rain; but the weather was unpredictable enough that there wasn't much choice but to take the bus into Ronda.

Andalusian cities tend to get overrun during Semana Santa, but Ronda was a lovely exception probably given that the weather had crapped out so badly. I settled into the Hotel Morales, run by Juan Domingo, a friendly hiking enthusiast who has a soft spot for cycling tourists (the hotel boasts a warm, dry room for the bikes to sleep.) And then after a warm shower and to explore the city during Semana Santa. The celebrations, after all, do not rely on the tourists, which makes it better for those of us who make the effort!

TRANS-ANDALUZ, Day 5 (pt 1): Going Green and Shooting up the Church

The biggest highlight of Day Five was getting to see the wonderful Andrés Ordóñez, leader of the Patrulla Verde (a group of local young people dedicated to the preservation and development of the Vía Verde). I'd first met Andrés four years ago, when I was writing an article about the Vía Verde, and things have gone swimmingly for him since then -- to the point where they've even opened their own rural apartment for rent in the town of Coripe, a six-bedroom loft facility with full kitchen and (hurrah!!) satellite TV. (One hundred channels with nothing on is a lot more appealing when you haven't had TV for a couple of days.)

And it's worth pointing out that noting that Coripe doesn't just have the nicest people in that part of Andalusia; they have one of the wildest and most non-traditional Easter Sunday celebrations in Andalusia. Residents basically select Jerk of the Year (past candidates have included former Prime Minister José María Aznar - for getting Spain into Iraq - and Telefónica President César Alierta - in 2002, when the town lost phone service for six weeks.) Rather than burn the Jerk in effigy, the effigy is placed at the front of the church and anyone with a firearm is welcome to have a go at the effigy.

My jaw must have dropped a lot more than I thought it did: "Doesn't the priest get, um, a bit peeved at the gunshot damage on the façade of the church?" I asked.

"Why?" asked Andrés, smiling. "Every year he gets the church repainted for free!"

TRANS-ANDALUZ, Day Five: STUCK!!

They knew. The two Guardia Civil agents who were parked behind the hermitage, high above the small town of Pruna, probably knew that I'd camped wild, just by looking at my Gore-Tex pants.

I thought I would have been able to escape my camping/hiding space on the side of Mount Terril and make a clean (and I do mean clean in the original sense of the word) getaway. But shortly before six AM the staccato pip-pip-piriririp of drizzle began hitting the tent. It let up shortly before eight, giving me ten minutes to strike the tent and get the hell out. And that was the first time I hit mud.

Never camp in an olive grove if it's raining. Not just because olive trees offer precious little in the way of protection against rain, but because most of them tend to be planted in clay-y soils -- something I didn't know until I got stuck.

I did get out. I managed to scrape the four inches of mud off the wheels, out of the brakes and chainstay (hint: don't pack your bike in the rain -- push it to the nearest road-like surface and put on everything there.)

So when the Guardia Civil officer took one look at me, one look at the bike and one look at the mud drying on my trousers from the knees-down...hell, they knew. I got a knowing little smile, I didn't get a lecture, and half an hour later, I got stuck. AGAIN.

To get to the Vía Verde de la Sierra, near Olvera, I thought, shit - shortcut. The main road going into the town of Olvera, where the turnoff to get back down to the Vía Verde itself, involved five hundred feet of climbing and a rodeo of an extra mile and a half. So when I saw the shortcut, I thought, hell, the station is only five hundred metres from the highway if I don't go up to town...
I have to say that, once I managed to pull the bike out of the mud, the workers rebuilding the gardens of the Olvera Station-Restaurant, were quite helpful... once they stopped laughing and staring. They lent me their hose, they provided horse-hair brushes, and the everlasting questions, once they got going, were acutally quite welcome. And I learned something new about burying your bike in clay: Nothing, absolutely nothing, beats water, a nail brush with firm bristles, and a good sense of humour!

TRANS-ANDALUZ, Day Four: When two kilometres is NOT two kilometres

My vote for the best breakfast in Andalusia: English Country Foods, in the town of Sierra de Yeguas, north-west of Antequera. Run by a British couple who moved back after retirement (her parents originally came from this area), six Euros will get you a belly-filling English breakfast that will keep you going for miles.

Which is just as well, because my plans for the night are to stay in a campsite which I know lies outside of the town of Algámitas. Algámitas sits some 50 kilometres away, on the side of the Zamorano mountain pass. I've biked this way before, heading from Fuente de Piedra to El Saucejo with the gang before, but we didn't make Algámitas to go camping.

And it's just as well: the campsite, which is listed in all the campsite guides as being two kilometres west of town, DOES lie west of town...three kilometres away, and uphill. But that's not the worst of it. The entrance to the campsite is three klicks west of town. Then it's another two kilometres up to the reception area of the camping area, up 10% to 18% grades which are so steep that you have no choice but to keep pushing and keep pushing. I feel like some fourth-rate diva, dodging the cars as they come down from the campsite, muttering to myself, "This is NOT getting any good publicity on MY website!"

Some 1500 metres later, I think, FORGET IT. It's 7:35 PM and if I end up pushing the bike all the way up that hill, only to find out that there's nowhere for me to stay, I will have the Mother of All Diva Meltdowns. So I do what all biking divas do: I jump on the bike, mutter several prize obscenities in the direction of the building that I think is the reception area, and head down to a copse of holm oaks that lay between the highway (well, county road, more like) and the entrance to the campsite.

Now, technically, this is illegal. Not only is the tent being placed on private property, I'm not entirely sure that I'm outside of the one kilometre limit established by law. (You can't camp wild within 1000 m of a legal campsite, but I don't know if that means one kilometre by road, in which case I'm fine, or one kilometre as the crow flies, in which case I'm breaking the law.) But I don't care. I'm angry, I'm tired and all I want to do is sleep. I scout out an area where I won't be seen on either side. I cover the bike with the poncho (still dirty from last year's pernoctation in an olive grove). I put up the tent. (Thank you, Coleman, for your love of green nylon.) And then I sit there and try not to obsess about the sounds of barking dogs, infinitely amplified by the limestone peaks immediately behind me.

I call Candy.

"You all right?" she says.

"I'm a little flipped out by the dogs barking, but I don't think anyone can see me. I'm pretty far away from any road, and the tent is behind a pile of stones. You'd have to be looking for me to really be able to see me."

"All right. But call us if anything happens, okay?"

"Will do."

The worst thing that could happen, really, is that I get busted by the Guardia Civil for camping illegally. That would mean spending the night in a jail cell. Right now that doesn't sound all that bad.

And then the wind picks up, making the temperature drop by a good five or six degrees.

And then the moon disappears, bringing in the rain I'd tried so hard to avoid earlier on in the afternoon.

Damn.

Where are the cops when you need them?