Many Roads: Palas de Rei to near Luintra.

December 3, 2014

I thought of Neil when I saw Guntin on the sign. The spelling is kind of similar to the creator of CGOAB.

A clear sunny morning with lots of fluffy cotton wool cloud which would go on improving as the day progresses; though as you would expect with such weather at this time of year, extremely cold on the road first thing. Another characteristic about today is the number of road number changes; and, by day's end I finish off a short fifteen kilometres from Ourense with mixed feelings, having passed through the city a week earlier: a kind of feeling of not having progressed much during recent good weather and the thought that the weather mightn't be as kind in the time ahead necessary to ride to Santander.

I pass through many sizeable towns too, barely shown on the map as more than a dot or blank circle. The first Montrose I reach after eight kilometres on quiet road and arrive in morning rush hour. Once I find the right-turn for my road, signposted LU221 to Chantada, I turn off the slow barely moving traffic street onto a relatively empty street; it is here a white van coming up behind and pulling in to the curb toots its horn at me. Once it has parked, the driver jumps out and asks inquisitively: am I on my way to Santiago. I say I'm on my way back. About an hour later as I ride along the street of Taboada, upstairs windows swing open and an old woman pops her head out and shouts down at me "Sesenta kilometres!" Supposedly meaning seventy kilometres left to Santiago. No, senora, I've already been.

A day also when everything goes right. I reach Chantada around eleven thirty. The last few kilometres was on N-540, which beyond the exit for town has a motorway no cycling, pedestrians, animals or slow vehicles sign. The turn for Monforte de Lemos, my road ahead, comes shortly after the exit and needing to be passing a supermercado but not having seen one, thought here we go, I'm going to have to do a detour to the town centre to buy food for lunch and later. Remember supermercados close at one for the afternoon, meaning either I shop here or go hungry. My intention then is to ride along the street, the start of the road to Monteforte and if I don't see anything on reaching the end of town, turn back and head to the centre. I do and come to a small Dia built into the ground floor of the row of houses on the right. As it is cold out I spend extra time inside and put lots of sugary stuff like cookies and a bar of milk chocolate in the basket, things I normally avoid these days as they are expensive and leave a sickly-acidy taste in the mouth.

A lot of thought has gone into creating this rest-place.

The road onwards to Monteforte de Lemos is a long descent into a river gorge with near vertical pine clad slopes, but only a short way down I come to a nicely placed rest-place with picnic tables and vines trained on a framework overhead providing shade, though not much needed today. Here I decide to lunch. When I get going again and the road below bottoms out there follows a long climb.

Once in Monteforte, I was going to follow a small road continuing south from town across to the Sil valley, but looking at the map again, see a place on the Sil marked "Guaranta de Sil" and assume I'll be able to see a great waterfall. This is west on N-120, not far from Ourense. It'll only set me back a day I think. So I ride west on N-120 on the level along a valley to start with, then up a five kilometre long incline followed by an even longer descent with a tributary of the Sil, a reservoir below on the right; eventually pass a great concrete hydroelectric dam blocking the end of the flooded valley; beyond which, the road crosses a bridge over the Sil flowing out of a deep valley on the left. The waterfall if that is what it is, I kind of expected would be a fair way upstream from this point and a ride up a dead-end road. I continue a kilometre further to a turnoff for Luintra, a small white road on the map that would take me out off the valley across to a road going east. The road is narrow and next to traffic-free and the climb is gentle as the sun sets and dusk descends and soon there's a dark silhouetted view through the Autumn trees down into the two gorges where the rivers meet. I keep going well after dark eliminated by a rising full moon as there isn't much level ground to the side, until coming to the wall remains of a house; the garden of which is level and plenty big for my tent.

Today's ride: 103 km (64 miles)
Total: 9,032 km (5,609 miles)

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