In Valencia, day 4: Alto del Garbi

December 14, 2019

There’s nothing like ending the tour on a high note. We have Rachael to thank for the last ride of the tour, a mountain climb to a dramatic viewpoint she read about: the summit of Muntanya del Garbí, a high point in the Calderona Range north of the city. We’re following a recommended route she found on Kormoot.

We’re lucky with the weather. It’s still quite windy, but not ferociously so; and it’s a fair morning when we start out so we’re hopeful that we’ll get the views when we reach the summit.

The ride out of the heart of Valencia is very easy. We ride a bike lane all the way to the Turia River, cross it over the San Jose Bridge, and about a mile later are outside the city biking through orange groves and vegetable plots. Once we leave the more sheltered streets of the city we’re biking against a stiff westerly wind - strong enough to keep our attention, but not so bad as to leave us fighting it to maintain our course.

Leaving Valencia, crossing Turia gardens over the Saint Joseph Bridge.

Looking down into Turia Gardens one last time. Where else can you go for an unbroken five mile run or bike ride through the heart of a major city?

So it’s going to be that kind of day! For the next ten miles we battle strong head and crosswinds.

This is so fitting. It really seems like we should see a bit of this stuff on the last ride of the tour.

A bit over three miles from our hotel we break free from the city and enter an agricultural belt.

Oranges are of course a huge crop here, but persimmons are also widespread. I wonder if much of this land was in mulberries during the silk era.

About eight miles into the ride our route starts bending to the northeast, and gradually the wind starts working in our favor. By the time we reach the base of the range it’s funneling into the pass ahead and giving us a real boost.

The pass, when we come to it, isn’t bad at all - a pretty steady grade that climbs to 2,000’ over the next ten miles. There are a few stiffer stretches, but nothing bad - particularly with the help of a tailwind. As we climb we’re passed by a steady stream of bikers racing down the pass going the other direction. They pass in ones and twos, or in groups of ten. After awhile it becomes obvious that this is an organized event of some sort, not just weekend recreational traffic. I think about five hundred bikes must have blown past as we climbed.

Beyond Mercada our road bends eastward, we pick up a fine shoulder, and the winds are a bit less unfavorable. A couple of bikers approach, two of the roughly five hundred we will pass going the other way between here and the summit.

After about a dozen miles we’re finally leaving the Valencian plain. Our climb to the Galbi summit begins just ahead.

I was surprised to see that we’re on a marked climbing route, with markers every kilometer showing distance to the pass and metrics for the coming kilometer. We’re about three k’s into the climb at this point. Very steady climb, with a tailwind boost.

Surprise! It’s a two pass ascent. As soon as we reach Port d’la Oronet, we see the first marker for the climb to Galbi.

Near the summit we come to a large crowd of cyclists, spitting out bikers in small groups to blast down the pass. Obviously we’ve been biking into the flow of a large organized event for the last seven or eight miles. Rachael is a bit ahead of me at this point, and when she biked through she received a hearty round of applause and shouts of encouragement.

At the summit of Alto del Garbi, we end our Vuelta a Iberia on a respectably high note.

At the summit of the pass a side road branches off and continues climbing a bit more before dead ending at the parking lot for the short trail to the summit. We lock up our bikes and walk up, thinking we’ll enjoy a quiet lunch in a dramatic setting. That’s not quite how it works out though.

It’s not at all quiet - there must be thirty folks at the summit scrambling around on the rocks, basking in the views, taking selfies. Most of them are part of an organized youth group apparently from Cantabria, and once they clear out it’s quite a bit quieter. It’s still not conducive to a relaxing lunch though. It’s too windy, and there’s too much traffic for such a precarious spot. With all the folks hopping around the rocks, we stay on the alert so no one rams against us and sends us tumbling down.

The final approach to the Galbi mirador is rocky, a bit precarious, and crowded.

The views from the mirador are vast. Here we’re looking up the coast north of Valencia.

The view from the Galbi mirador. We’d have eaten our lunch up here, but it’s too windy and chilly.

After perhaps twenty minutes we’ve had our fill. It’s two o’clock, we still have the ride back ahead of us, and we’re hungry. We walk back down to the parking lot and sit on a wall in the warm sun, eating lunch and enjoying the views. Surprisingly there’s almost no wind here - we’re in a bit of a depression, sheltered by a ridge to the west.

The ride back is of course fast, with the first ten miles being all downhill And the final ten being a bit downwind.

For dinner we walk down to the neighborhood of the cathedral for a satisfying Italian meal. It must be about time to change our diet - two of the last three nights here we opted for Italian. We came to this restaurants partly because they claimed to open at seven, which they did; and for once we weren’t the first diners. Fifteen minutes later folks were being turned away. Overall, our experience with mealtimes has been different than expected - usually we can find a place open by eight, and sometimes even sooner.

After dinner it’s still pretty early. We make a half hearted stab at walking around to look at illuminated monuments, but the crowds are enormous and our hearts aren’t really quite in it. Our thoughts are on packing for departure and the long flight back to San Diego, by way of Istanbul. Time to move on.