March 17, 2012
Yunquera
Sierra Nevada
The two cops are a pair of dudes with slicked-back, collar-length hair and easy smiles. 'It's easy to Coin, all downhill except for maybe 100 metres.' the shorter one declares with authority in perfect English. Nice.
Maybe today I'll make it to Ronda, although they shake their heads when I say so. 'Fifty miles,' they agree, confusing me a little with the imperial measurement, and shaking their heads in unison.
I climb for a couple of kilometers out of Mijas; the car-driving cops obviously never having ridden to Coin. Yes, is a sweeping descent into the town, which comes after I've stopped to fix that slow, slow puncture from somewhere back in Morocco.
How about this for a theory: When I paid my hotel bill in Midelt, among the handful of coins I dug out of my fleece jacket pocket was a drawing board pin. I've absolutely no idea how it came to be there, I'd certainly never seen it before, and it gets my mind going that if, somehow, someone somewhere along the way had used it to pierce my tyre, then popped it in my pocket. Or maybe I've read one too may John Le Carre novels.
The fact is, the hole is too minute to detect, so I insert a new tube, pump it up hard and make it to Coin around coffee time, which is spent sitting outside in the sunshine.
Debbie says it's my big ears (a symbol of good fortune in Chinese culture), but I've definitely been a lucky bastard with the weather. It's another clear day.
I don't stop elsewhere in Coin, as it doesn't seem as cute as the white villages that dot the Sierra Nevada. I've covered 17 km and it's another 65, according to the sign on Coin's edge, to Ronda. It's unlikely I'll make it.
There are some long climbs and although they aren't too steep - 9% according to the road signs - they still have me pedaling in my lowest gears for quite a while. And it's hot. Towards the top of one, at the edge of a village named Alonzaina, is a small petrol station where I stop for a cold can of pop. The friendly attendant gives me a free map when I ask about El Burgo - unable to say for sure if there's a pension or hostal there or not. The map doesn't say, but there's no way I'll make Ronda today, a quaint place I've visited a couple of times before.
In fact this is the third time I've ridden from Malaga to Ronda, or vice versa - twice with Dave; the latter trip including Debbie. The first ride was 20-odd years ago, on one of Dave's first trips on a bike. He'd borrowed my Cannondale mountain bike while I rode a recently bought Moulton, which had cost me an arm and a leg... around 1,700 quid way back then.
As I pedal up one long slope, certain views seemed familiar, one in particular casts my mind back - a wonderful old bridge is set down from the newer route. The arched brickwork dates back, I'd guess, many centuries. Dave and I had clambered down with the bikes and posed for photos on it.
Some of the route seems to be pretty new; wider than I recall. There are pieces of the original road winding beside the smooth tarmac of the A 366 and I stop a couple of times to see if anything looks familiar. It's too long ago.
My watch reads four o'clock when I reach Yunquera - a respectable time to call it a day and if there's a room going it'll be mine.
After a cruise through the sleepy, locked-up village, sure enough, there's a two-star hostal that charges 30 euros for a nice room with breakfast: pretty good value. My bike sits in the rear walled courtyard - a long open space lined with geraniums and waist-high aspidistras and other plants growing in rustic, terra cotta pots.
The hostal's ground floor restaurant has just one other diner and we sit near each other and after a starter of breads and olive oil, the elderly man starts to chat. Now 84, he tells me he's a retired police officer who has worked along the coast for 40 years. A self-taught English speaker, I'm tempted to ask him about the road ahead to Ronda, but his hearing is bad and I'm having to shout.
And I recall what the two young cops had said this morning at breakfast and they've been proved right. Ronda has been too far.
Today's ride: 48 km (30 miles)
Total: 405 km (252 miles)
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