March 10, 2025
Day 21: La Puebla del Rio to El Rocio
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Now that I had come to know Valerie our hacienda owner better, I ventured some outlandish breakfast requests. It's not that I dreamed up anything she had not mentioned as a possibility, it's just that I asked for it all: Pancakes with Canadian maple syrup, fried eggs over easy, ham, Dutch cheese, bread, homemade peach jam, fresh orange juice, coffee. It was not necessarily excessive, because we were looking out the big windows to the lovely grounds, on which were falling at times an absolute deluge.
In fact we waited a bit before leaving, giving time for the deluge to moderate to a normal rain. Then (after saying adios to Canestero the horse) we rode down the long driveway, finally sending Valerie a Whatsapp to get her to open the gates. Yikes, a property where you need telecommunications to manage opposite ends of the driveway!
This let us out onto the horribly potholed road, where the potholes were now also water filled. Yesterday I had cleaned the bikes and swapped out brake pads, and on the driveway it was great. But now both bikes set up a chorus of grinding sounds, as sand from the road played hell with my finely tuned brake adjustments.
We pushed through the potholes and ultimately onto the paved road. This was the same road we had used yesterday to reach the Canada and the Dehesa Abajo. We passed these two sites and carried on, in a way that would take us to El Rocio in short order. We could then rest up for our big tour in Donana National Park tomorrow. But none of it would come to pass. We are coming to that...
Initially things were looking good. This began with a Hoopoe that flew to a post right in front of us. They are such pretty birds!
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There were of course many many storks about, and we noticed how smaller birds like to shelter in the storks' nests. Like this Spanish Sparrow:
To one side of us were rice fields, which I guess like being flooded, and they were:
And on the other side was flooded dehesa, like this:
We cycled gaily along, reveling in the fact that the flooded areas were bringing us water birds to photograph. Like these:
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3 weeks ago
We were having a whale of a time, but had we been reading the news we would have known that, like last year, southern Spain was suffering flooding, landslides, floating cars piled up, Malaga airport closed, and suchlike. The news got delivered to us without the need of internet though, as we came upon our road - totally wiped out.
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We backtracked, of course, and chose another way. That way presented not flooded dehesa but a more upcountry landscape of Stone Pine. "This forest is immune to flooding!", I crowed. Actually that was not quite true, but there was also another problem. By rights our route could now head fairly directly toward El Rocio, passing somewhere south of Villamanrique de la Condesa. But we looked at the roads, and could not trust them to be free of water or to not be dirt, so now mud.
The result was that we got driven further and further North, toward Pilas. Not only was this a major detour, but it took us away from bike routes and onto roads with a lot more traffic. To boot, there was another feature of what was going on in Spain - high winds, that of course for us were head winds. And finally, the roads tended to rise for us, at least in the middle part of the day.
Slowly, but inexorably, we fell into a non-tenable situation. We were cycling on busy road with narrow shoulder, often uphill, and being buffeting by high winds, while sometimes being chilled by rain showers. There was also one more hazard - quite aside from the traffic to our left, there were deep ditches to our right. So that was disaster to the left and right, and straight ahead was not all that great.
We got off the worst of the busy road and hills as quickly as possible, but just the powerful headwind was enough to make us, not to mention the bikes batteries, struggle.
We were lucky that we were not on a busy road, and not with a deep ditch beside, but indeed with no shoulder, when a gust of wind just blew Dodie off the road and into a bush. She was able in this situation to abandon the bike from its right hand (bush) side, and before going down flat on her back in the bush, to push the bike away to the left. The bike crashed that way (into the road) and the handlebar contents spilled out. These contents were quickly taken by the high speed wind, and Dodie called out from her position of flat out repose in the bush to not lift her or the bike, but to first chase the stuff. So the order for me was the stuff, the bike, and last, the Dodie.
Dodie was bruised, and maybe pulled her back a bit, we'll know more tomorrow, no doubt. The bike got its handlebar twisted, and importantly, its mirror broken off.
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We continued to struggle on against the wind, all the while watching the bike batteries dwindle. Now without a mirror, Dodie pointed out that she routinely checks to see that I am still behind, about every 30 seconds. So Dodie asked me to say something, about every 30 seconds. Now that is a big switch. Dodie usually has to deal with me nattering away, from behind, and can be glad when I finally shut up. But now I found it hard to find things to say!
When we finally approached El Rocio, Dodie's bike was giving a range of something like 5 km, and it looked like we would end up pushing. But El Rocio is a town famous for having all its streets made of sand, and with narrow sidewalks equipped mainly with hitching posts for horses. Now with the the rains, the sands were mainly puddles. There was no way we were riding in any event.
Like the cars, we wove around down the street as well. We ultimately came to El Rocio's famous church, and from there went to the paved lakeside walk. The lakeside path was still ok, but the lake was super high and being whipped by wind. There was not a single bird to be seen here, where at other times we had seen many, and with many panels on the side describing what birds ought to be on offer.
Along the way we got an email from the man who was to take us on a guided 4x4 tour into the National Park tomorrow. Access was flooded, he wrote, and the tour had to be cancelled. We could sure see that from the lake and our own flooded surroundings. We were half glad, because we were now beat and battered, and not necessarily up for a 7:15 a.m. tomorrow excursion into the wilderness.
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Along the lake path we encountered a group of students from Madrid, who were attending a kind of international school, where for example they had learned German. We had brought along some handfuls of Canada flag pins, and had kept missing chances to give them out. But these kids were happy to receive this little gift.
Their teacher also said to me that she hoped Canada would be ok, and she chipped in some appropriately negative comments about the American administration. In this she joined the almost 100% of Europeans sharing this assessment with us. (There was one guy in a park in Madrid that said maybe Trump would find a way to deal with Putin.)
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3 weeks ago
Our hotel is called the Donana Palace. While not quite (or at all) a palace, it does have a nice staircase:
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Our Palace features a stained glass representation of the Virgin of El Rocio. Pilgrims come from far and wide to see this. So we will drop in to the church for a look, tomorrow.
As I write this, about 10 p.m. it is absolutely pouring rain outside. It is quite exciting to listen to, but it is wrecking our plans. The forecast has some dry spells and some wet spells in the coming week. We will of course just deal with it as it happens.
Today's ride: 73 km (45 miles)
Total: 600 km (373 miles)
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| Comment on this entry | Comment | 6 |
One definitely has to be flexible cycle touring.
Lis
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