December 8, 2014
Dawn to Dusk: Vecilla to Camp in Small field by Stream.
I hear an owl hooting. Later in the night I'm awakened by a buck-deer making an eere ghoulish almost human cry. The deer stands it's ground close by the tent for what seems an age, repeating it's cry, before bounding off through the woods.
While there was a full moon and the flysheet was frozen early evening, making me dread moving from the sleeping-bag's cocoon-warmth, this morning is frost free: broken clouds tinted orange, as are the peaks of the hills across the valley; nevertheless, I thought I wouldn't take any chances getting cold and wear my down-jacket while riding.
Five kilometre from where I'd camped I'm passing through Vecilla; only a little place of a main through street and three sidestreets with cars parked outside lifeless smart houses, though with a bar where I stop for coffee. The only people therein, and, whom I see in the whole village, is a chubby teenage boy standing with his back to me playing the fruit-machine. The bartender is an un-smiling woman and after a short time is joined in mute converse across the bar with a dog-walker woman, who was walking a terrier in the street as I rode in, the terrier now tethered to the barstool. Then a white haired and bearded man enters, approaches the bar and orders a drink. The women fall silent. The bartender looks her friend in the eye, then breaks off and a loud debate breaks out with the man.
Eleven kilometres further, Bonar is a small town with lots of people about; and has all necessary services, though Dia and a local supermercado is shut today, leading me to think that today is probably a holiday. A Spar shop is open, which is usually expensive and is, so I only buy basic supplies for a few days: pasta and pasta sauce and the like. Then order coffee of a sharp faced man in a luxuriant "Café Vejo" full of café-goers. On the TV is a stupid comedy where a monkey in a human roll is the main protagonist at a Spanish package holiday resort. Coming back out in the colonel front where I've leant the bike, I see a woman walking along the opposite side of the street with an umbrella up. And wheeling the bike into the street I'm hit by a singular spot of rain at first.
The rain is more pain in the arsh than any thing else. I've already packed my shopping in the pannier and now I've to take it all out again to get at my rain-jacket. And, I've to take off and pack away my down-jacket, as I daren't risk getting that wet. The rain doesn't amount to mush more than a few more isolates spots as I tackle a three kilometre long seven per cent gradient away from town. And cresting the hill, the day has become extremely cold with the sunless dull sky looming low round the mountains, especially on an equally long descend, which takes me down to Savona with picnic tables on a grassy triangle at the town's entry-exit road where I stop for a lunch of tasty bread and salami: eaten in haste, as it is too cold to hang around long.
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Barely a kilometre on from my lunch stop I come to a tee with N625, where I turn left and pass a sign: Santander 172 km. At last I can confidently say I'll be there on Wednesday.
The road ahead follows a tight valley with a swift river on the right. Then shortly after turning right in a village of old stone houses, I grind my way up a great steep S-bend and across a dam wall, then up through a three-hundred metre long tunnel taking me out on a road skirting high above the reservoir.
The weather is closing in again and drizzling as I descend towards a second reservoir; which, once down at, I continue across a long suspension bridge over open water in a cutting raw crosswind driving horizontal hail, blowing into me from the left, making it a struggle to ride straight until reaching the far side and the incline up to Riano. On leaving town there's a left-turn, straight on junction: a choice of routes: the straight on option not only is the more direct, also toward clear sky; and, alternatively, turning left is into the horizontal hail, meaning there's no contest in it: I continue straight on.
It is now dusk as the part of the reservoir on the right-hand side of the bridge stretches along the right of the road and long shards of dark broken clouds fanning the sky and hills on the far side of the open water light up in the sun's afterglow. And apart from two campervans that passed, there is little traffic.
Further on with the reservoir behind me and back to narrow valley with livestock farming to the side, there isn't much scope for camping. I pass through an area of many farm houses, then a village, then where every small field has cattle out-wintering in trampled fields with mucky gateways, as dusk turns to twilight. I pass a picnic area which would do, but decide to ride a kilometre more and see what's ahead; if I don't see any place I'll return. A half kilometre on I come to a pasture point whereupon the road meets the river at a bridge. I push the bike off the road down through an open gap in a hedgerow and find a field sloping towards the river, but level alongside the hedge at the road; a place where animals have left cowpats, but there's enough clean grass to pitch the tent.
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Today's ride: 88 km (55 miles)
Total: 9,455 km (5,872 miles)
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