April 19, 2012
Oviedo
on a bus after cycling 30-odd kilometres on AS-217 to Tineo
I'm not sure what's good about breakfast. Maybe it's the freedom to choose between all the packaged cakes and pastries stacked up at the end of the cafe. I opt for a couple of chocolate ones that are really sweet, like pure sugar.
After my cup of milky coffee, I wheel my bike around the sodden centre of Allende, as it seemed to be abbreviated to, and find a sign pointing to Tineo, my goal for the day, and decide AS-14 is the route for me. Originally I'd earmarked another, the longer but perhaps (?) more scenic AS-15, but you know those Michelin guys and their green highlighter pens; they've probably got things around their necks again.
The sky has fluctuated between sun and gloom and when I make my way north it seems okay but then, like Jekyll and Hyde, changes in a flash; coming over the high ridge that surrounds Allende are clouds that have downpour written all over them.
It's uphill and my speed is slow and to make it hard to escape fast. Luckily there's a bus shelters at around every kilometer and the second one appears at the right time with spots falling when I takes a quick photo. Then rain is soon bouncing off the surface of the road and pinging on the shelter's roof.
The sides are just clear plastic sheets bolted to steel braces and there are gaps where the wind blows through. The worst is the gap along the bottom, as it chills my feet - I put on my ankle socks and the blue and yellow jackets, and eventually put my feet up on the old wooden bench and curl up in a fetal position, trying to keep warm.
The sky is a total gray blanket and it doesn't look like there'll be any respite today.
There's a house across the road that looks smart; recently painted at what I would guess was a decent price by professionals who took pride in their work. In one of the upstairs windows is a face, peering out and it looks like it belongs to someone old. No doubt the bored person is having their entertainment for the day: me chilling in a bus shelter with no bus due for a day.
After 20 minutes an elderly man opens the door and comes over to speak to me. There's no common language: he could be trying to tell me there're no buses, or that the weather is awful, or asking where I'm going. My guess is the latter, so I show him my map, but his eyesight isn't too good and the Michelin copy is apparently mumbo-jumbo to him. Within a couple of minutes he's gone back to his warm room and resumes his study from the upstairs window. An invitation to a cup of hot coffee would've been a nice touch. Never mind.
At around 11:30 the sky brightens and it seemed unlikely but that's what happens. I pedal off, giving my audience of one a wave as I do so. What must be route AS-15 looks busy down in the valley.
The bus shelters are different. Some are metal, others concrete. I don't see another one made of transparent plastic sheets fixed to steel bracing, but it's reassuring to know they're there in various forms and that there's a place to hide if - or when - the rain returns.
Surprising it doesn't for a while and route AS-14 is a cyclist's dream. There are no vehicles and the vista is sublime, giving views of a wide lush valley after cresting at the 5 km mark. The road links villages consisting of a handful of houses - one is called San Francisco - but none are marked on the Michelin map. It helps that there's a steady downhill all the way to Gera.
It's tempting to call in at one of the village's two cafes, but as it isn't raining it seems best to keep going. Three kilometers uphill later it is, but an isolated bus shelter appears in the nick of time and that's where I stand for 20 minutes, listening to the rain hit the metal sheeting right above my head.
Just a short distance away, within view, is small village and when I ride through I see a café where I could have sat and had a sandwich and a hot drink, but as the sky has now cleared there's no stopping me.
The dark sky has returned as Tineo appears at around 2:30. When I wheel into town, I pop into a café near the tourism office as it's another 45 minutes before it opens and while sat inside it duly drizzles.
The woman officer writes down the bus departures for Oviedo. The next one is at 5:10 and the fare is just over 5 euros. Later, once I've done using the Wi-fi, she points to the bus station, just 100 metres away; a new structure that strikes me as soulless when I enter.
It rains again on the 90-minute journey. After I get off, a security guard at Oviedo station gives me directions for a cheap place to stay and I get the gist of what he says and ride off - just a few minutes' walk away he reckoned.
Then it starts to rain so I turn right instead of left when I see a two-star hotel that will be okay of it isn't too pricey; the receptionist quotd 45 euros without breakfast and that's a little bit much and when I go outside a bicycle design on a building catches my attention and it turns out to be the office for the Asturias cycle touring organization, which I never knew existed. It's closed.
The hotel the security guy directed me to is okay in that the room costs 28 euros, but it's a cold place, by which I mean there's no heating. I dig out a blanket from a wardrobe when I go to bed at nearly 11:00, which is after watching the other Madrid team play Valencia in a Europa Cup game on TV in a café down the street.
Today's ride: 34 km (21 miles)
Total: 2,129 km (1,322 miles)
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