September 18, 2015
Family Break Up: Seville to woodland beyond Huelva.
I share a four bed dorm with a couple from New York, Hooch who originates from Korea and Kimberly who hails from South Carolina. He is a road engineer and she, a bridge engineer and they met through work.
I mention them because they invited me to join them on the hostel roof terrace, where they'd just opened a bottle of wine. I am sitting getting things together to get back on the road in the morning; namely searching for a flight to South America. It has long gone time that I should have it booked by now. I've put it off through procrastination for so long, but now my search has narrowed down to a direct flight from Madrid to Buenos Aires with Iberia Airways.
Having finished I join them on the roof terrace. The sky is still grey and damp, it having rained most of the day, but the table they sit at is undercover; where there are also two cool Australian girls that have just checked in. One is speaking about cycle-touring as I take a seat. I think this is the reason Hooch asked me to join them: he having relayed the story about the cyclist in their dorm, so there's no need for me to go through the whole tour itinerary I've done again in introduction; instead, she who introduces herself as Alexi, comments that you've to be especially fit to ride so far. Not everybody could do it. I counter by saying "Anybody could do it. They just have to start small and build up with a short tour of a few days. Then do a longer tour of a week or two. Then they are fit to ride across Europe". She seems to see my point.
Alexi is only on a short break visiting the other Australian, Alaura who is the real traveller, having been in Southern Europe since February. Also present is Michael, originally from Texas but his accent has soften through living many years in Washington D C. Presently he is leafing through Lonely Planet, planning his way ahead.
I drink one glass of wine, then have a second which empties the bottle and Hooch decides to go down to the small Chinese shop round the corner for another bottle of wine.
Oli from England turns up with new socks: a pack of five in different colours, one pair will surely match the rest of his outfit, a blue blazer he already has, but still has to buy trousers, for a wedding he and musician friend James will play at. They were busking on the street and the happy couple came over and asked them could they play at their wedding, which they gladly excepted.
Anyway, as it rains again and Alexi comments that the day is good for nothing else but drinking; and as the gloom of day approaches dusk, mentions also that we should soon go out and find some dinner and Oli having been in Seville longer than any of us, says he knows a great tapas place.
We file downstairs pass reception out into the street where it is stopped raining. Oli leads the way. We are joined by three Canadians of Indian origin. I ask one "You are from Indian?" and he retorts in an Indian accent "I am from Tor-ron-to!".
When we get there, there is a small queue at the door waiting for an available table. A good sign of good food and service. But the waiter at the door waves us in out of the rain which has started again, and shows us upstairs to a long table for our group of ten.
We go through the menu and each of us decide to have something different, then have a taste of everybody else's food. I order meluze, which is cod-like fish deep-fried in batter; papa bravas, fried potatoes; and, charasco, a fillet of pork. We order a bottle of red wine, the first of four bottles we would consume. And when the waiter starts coming out with our food and very soon there is every type of food on the table: chicken, octopus, seafood, vegetables, salads to name but a few. My Meluze is a good starter and the pork is a slab of well brazed meat filling a dinner plate, which I cut slices off and share out among the others in exchange for a small piece of all the other offerings. We all eat until we can eat no more. We had been talking about American accents a little earlier; now Kimberly from South Carolina, in a southern drawl asks "Are ya al finished?" as she reaches along the table to lift dishes, to hand up to the waiter at the head of the table.
Alexi and Alaura wanted to go to a Flamengo show and Michael Google's one, then we get a little lost in the narrow alley-way streets in Seville old town trying to find the address, eventually finding it after asking a waiter at a restaurant. The place is a large bar-room with high ceiling and long tables and benches with a clear area of floorboards for a stage, where one man plays acoustic guitar and another sings. This kind of thing I could take or leave it, while Australians and Americans get very exited over it.
Afterward when we are outside about to go home, a sleazy type of man with an expression-less face and a permanent painted on grin attaches himself to Alexi and Alaura and takes them to another bar playing flamengo and we tag along. He never once takes any interest in us and when we get to the bar, his friends buy the girls drinks, which is as well, because I couldn't believe it when one of the Canadians beside me is asked eleven euros for a German beer. I ask for a small bottle of local beer. The woman behind the bar takes the cap off and I ask how much. When she replies three euros fifty, I outright refuse to have the beer. So remain seated on the bar stool without a drink. It would seem they have a price for locals and a rip-off tourist price for us.
We leave the girls sat outside with mister sleaze who is rolling a joint and it's late when I get to bed and the following morning, getting back on the road just isn't happening. It is not that I've drank much, more a combination of many nights not getting to bed until late, then getting up after only a few hours sleep. I'm feeling low and decide to spend another day in Seville.
I don't do anything much apart from rest. The only thing I do is finalise the purchase of my ticket to Buenos Aires; flying on the twenty-eighth of October. It's a daytime flight, meaning an early start that day, departing at 12.00 and arriving in the evening of the same day at 21.00 local-time. I must book a hostel and get a taxi-van big enough for a bike-box, from the airport into the city to the hostel door.
It is now Autumn and I can expect pleasant cooler cycling ahead of me.
In the morning quite a few of the other long stay quests are leaving too. Oli and James are off to Cadiz: the wedding there they'll play at is Saturday. Also Hollie from South Africa and Angela from Italy are off to Cadiz. We all sit around the breakfast table like a family. And then when we've finished and have gotten are stuff together, give a nice send off hug to each other.
My first port of call after leaving the hostel is the bike-shop. I want to buy a mini-pump. The internal washer of my old pump is worn and is un-reliable at pumping tyres up to full pressure. I had already bought a second pump back in Arles, but it fell off the bike carrier-bracket, somewhere on a bumpy street in Southern Spain.
Getting out of the city is straightforward. I follow the cycle-path from the bike-shop front to the riverfront, crossover a bridge and join a wide avenue which in turn leads to a big roundabout where I join an Autovia, riding upon an ample shoulder and following signs for Huelva. The only complication is crossing the many on and off slip-roads: then the place where I've to cross three traffic lanes for a left turn for Huelva, which I remember from a year ago riding the same road. Today all the traffic is filtering off left for Huelva and the three lanes have nothing coming when I look behind, so I zip diagonally over.
I am not sure it is permitted to cycle upon autovias, which are motorways. I didn't see any no-cycling sign. Two traffic patrol bikes zoom by on the outside, the rider on one waves distainly at me on passing.
Having left the city behind I take the slip off for road A8076 and continue through a string of villages with an awful traffic-lights where mini-roundabouts would do. In one I stop at an Aldi and stock up for the day.
Once out of the last village, the road goes down a dramatic drop, sweeping down to Rio Guadamar, with an extensive area upon the opposite riverbank of greenery where there's a picnic table rest area, here I lunch on sausages leftover from yesterday.
The road onward changes to A472, a single carriageway with ample shoulder though traffic is light, treeless and gently undulates over sun-scorched farmland. And apparently I've a tailwind as I effortlessly bowl along upon the big outer chain-ring. The whole bike feels very smooth, what with new tyres: Hutchinson Gotham, which are a lot lighter than the Continentals they replace. And of coarse the new cassette and chain is silky smooth. This one is a 12-34 10-speed instead of the 11-32 on there before. I believe this will mean I get to use more of the sprockets. The smaller sprockets go twelve, fourteen and so on in two tooth increments up to twenty-four; then there's twenty-seven, thirty and thirty-four.
I pass through Huelva earlier today than the October day I passed through last year. On the way out there's a long bridge initially over a river then the road remains elevated across the kilometre or so wide salt-marsh margin; it's like a motorway and a woman in a car slows and starts telling me in Spanish through the window that I shouldn't be cycling on this road. I'm cycling upon a metre and a half shoulder, while she is more of a hazard having slowed in the path of fast traffic.
On the other side I'm on A492 and before long I past the orange grove I camped in that evening, which was dark when I'd gotten this far. But then I remember the following day the road a little further being flanked by pine forest. And here I head for today, finding a spot for the tent with a couple of hours of daylight left.
Today's ride: 122 km (76 miles)
Total: 10,249 km (6,365 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 0 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |