November 29, 2019
Tabernas
Today’s ride
We have a short ride today, more or less straight north to Tabernas, a small town in the heart of Almeria’s desert. It’s an easy climb, and one that becomes increasingly dramatic as we leave the city and its suburbs behind. Almeria is a surprisingly easy city to bike out of going north, with a well marked bike route to its outskirts. Beyond that we have a good shoulder through the suburbs, until we finally break free completely and find ourselves surrounded by bare eroded hills with the occasional western frontier town or Comanche settlement.
If you’re any sort of movie fan at all, this country will seem familiar. It’s been used as a film set for countless movies, including Lawrence of Arabia, A Fistful of Dollars, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Three western town sets - Fort Bravo, Oasys, and Western Leone - are the main tourist attractions here. The host of our B&B has signed photos of film stars on his wall, and (I think) told us that he was an extra in a film or two when he was younger.
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Video sound track: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly by Ennio Morricone
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Here's what you can do: backtrack and do the studio tours and post some pictures. You're retired. What else do you have to do?
4 years ago
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Today’s hike
Our twenty mile ride didn’t take much out of us or of our day, so we have the whole afternoon free for a walk. With paths and ramblas (seasonally dry stream beds) crosshatching the land in all directions we have plenty of choice, but we settle on a nine mile loop through the low hills south of town.
The loop isn’t quite what we’d expected - we’d envisioned something more rugged and more desert-like - but it’s a very pleasant walk and we’re almost utterly alone once we leave town. We hear one person far off and out of sight somewhere, and amazingly enough see a pair of adult ibex clambering up a steep cliff. They’re everywhere! They’re starting to feel like almost a common sighting, and for the rest of the walk we keep an eye out for them. That’s it though, until not far from the outskirts of town three youngsters stop me cold when they cross the road in front of me, dive down a steep slope into a rambla, and then run up the other side.
We’re here for two nights. There’s still time for us to check out Fort Bravo tomorrow, but I suspect we’ll just go climb a mountain instead. To each his own.
And, no video again today. We’ll post it when we get sufficient service. In the meantime, you can be whistling the theme song to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to put yourself in the mood.
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Lots of different species in the ice plant family.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aizoaceae
4 years ago
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Ride stats today: 20 miles, 1,800’; for the tour: 2,061 miles, 76,600’
Today's ride: 20 miles (32 km)
Total: 2,061 miles (3,317 km)
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If you get to Burgos, there is a town called Santo Domingi de Silos to the southeast. The cemetery scene in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly was filmed there and they've recently reconstructed the filming site. There's also a good documentary about it called Sad Hill Unearthed.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6997426/
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