Tuesday: Puente de Genave to Olive Grove Camp 25km before Jaen.

August 19, 2014

The morning is tranquil where I sit at a big round table out on the terrace under verdant low palm branches, gazing up at the white pillar and arch fasade of the hotel front. The woman who broke off from mopping the floor inside when I came downstairs carrying my panniers, comes out with a tray and set on the table a plate with warm toasted baguette and a basket of butters, jams and honey. Placing a cup on the table she asks "café con leche si?" before pouring coffee from a decanter and placing the half full decantor to the side. The tray is empty when she sets a small jug of milk down and returns in.

I don't all that often eat toast, at least not that industrial sliced bread variant, but yesterday's baguette sliced into two sides and toasted, that's a completely different thing. So wholesome with melting butter and jam or honey for sweetness, and a good cup of coffee which it was. Seems an age since I had coffee making me crave more as I ride, that on reaching the day's first town I stop at a café for another cup and sit outside and watch cars park, vans make deliveries and tractors drive along the street.

I am now well into Andalucía and this morning I've not too pleasant reflections on the time I was here three years ago. The sun is shining yes, but the countryside is incredibly dull being all straight rows of olive trees in groves that stripe every hillside pale green and white-the soil being whitish dry and dusty. I think I commented then that if they could grove olives on top of the mountains here they would, as even the steepest slope going high up the sides of the valleys have rows of olive trees. And the terrain is incredibly difficult. The roads nightmarishly hilly.

Welcome to Andalucia. Olive Groves all the way.

I pass picnic tables in shade of beech trees midmorning and say to myself why do I pass such good lunch spots so early and when the time comes to stop there won't be any such well shaded places. The rest place as predicted is the last tree or shade of any type until I turnoff the highway and ride into the next town shortly before noon. As usual there's some riding fining a mercado. Descending a steep hill hoping there will be one down this way and I won't have to climb back up for nothing, I'm glad to see a mercado on the slope halfway down.

I load up my shopping and ride back up the steep hill to a shaded bench I passed. I slurp down cola. Then drink more slowly as a feeling of dizziness overcomes me to almost on the verge of throwing up. Am I becoming sick. I think of the big salad for dinner at the hotel the evening before. Salad the classic carrier of harmful bacteria. Then remember Brian the solder from the hostel in Carcassonne saying about dehydration leading to sunstroke when I told of the time I was sick in South America, frequent vomiting and diaharea lasting a couple of weeks. I couldn't understand why as I hadn't eaten anything untoward.

I sit wanting to get up but fail to gain energy to rise, nursing myself for half an hour until I'm not feeling too bad. Across the way is a sign to Jesus that I've been meaning to photo before leaving. Then do rise with the camera and unsteadily cross the street into the midday heat. Lightheadedness returns momentarily and once I've taken my sign picture I straggle back into the shade and sit a while more.

I know you're the son of god, but for my sins my penance today is too serve. Sir, that hill is too steep.

Once rested and feeling okay I get going. Rejoining the highway the way is steadily up. Then after a section of roadworks with a temporary detour road with steep gradient, a serious long climb follows higher and higher with a vista to the left off to the south toward a barrier of mountains. Reminding me there's a lot of climbing ahead in the days to come.

Eventually the road levels out. I believe it couldn't go on getting much higher as I enter Abeda, approached by industrial warehouses along the highway, then through the centre, a steep straight descend between weathered old buildings levelling out at the bottom where I'm glad to pull into a Repsol gas station. There I rest savouring a cold beer and snacking on crisps.

Its four when I move again. There's a big split in the highway after Abeda with many roundabouts. I want the way to Jaen and that road is a autopista, but with a nice cycle-lane on the inside of a concrete barrier and a couple of kilometres more I lunch late under an olive tree at five. Afterwards the cycle-lane ends at Baeza. Here the road reverts back to single-carriageway, but with an extra carriageway to the side partly built but looking like no work has been done for quite a while, perhaps due to lack of funds. Then coming to a section that has been finished, there's a service road along the new autopista onwards.

I keep riding until sunset at which point I catch up on a group of mountain bikers pausing. Concerned to where I'll sleep tonight they insist I ride on with them maintaining there's a hostel ahead. But soon I fall behind as I don't want to spend a second night in a row in paid accommodation. And as they ride on ahead and out of sight I turnoff into an olive grove.

Whoever it was that moved in, looks like they had a hell of a party, trashed the place and left.

The man looks tired too. His body-language says so, leaning slumped on the shovel.

View to the right: Pension Casablanca, reminding me not of Morocco, but a classic old black white film. "Maybe not today, but some day......"

Full English late lunch (5 PM) in the shade of an olive tree.

Today's ride: 113 km (70 miles)
Total: 4,211 km (2,615 miles)

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