March 18, 2025
Day 29: Castro del Rio to Los Rios
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We left our street at the top of Castro del Rio in the rain, of course, descended past the little grocery we had visited yesterday, and were soon out in the countryside. The hills and dales hereabouts, covered with olive trees, are a huge physical feature, and the town is just a blip in it. So getting out into the country was really quick.
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The hills of olive plantings here are so many that they form a rather mind boggling phenomenon. Here below is Dodie setting out among the olives. You can also see another feature about them: tidy geometric planting.
We passed several villas set among the olives, which put us in mind of Gerald Durrell in Corfu, and the various decaying villas he describes there. The villas here are very isolated, and the whole region seems to have scarcely any population. It would not be fun, we think, to buy and restore one of these places.
Our route lay on a Camino, this one called the Ruta Mozarabe. We met a couple of walkers and briefly wondered where they were coming from or going to, since the area seemed so remote and empty. But it actually was obvious - they were on the stage from Castra del Rio to Baena, which is about 20 kms - a good walking distance.
We came to a spot where water was flowing over the road. There was no way around it, so we sent Dodie through it!
A Camino walker on the other side watched Dodie's progress, and realized he would have to walk through as well. But he had the idea of taking off his shoes and socks. It worked for him, though at one point he slipped and almost went down.
In our turn we arrived in Baena. Baena is usually photographed as an attractive white town on a hill. And ok, I could do photos like that:
But frankly this was not my experience of Baena. After we proceeded into the centre I realized that the place was rather jumbly, and that the traffic flows were a bit annoying. So I snapped this, to show just what I was seeing:
Next we made our way to Lidl, and from there my world looked like this:
But yes, you can peek under the LIDL sign, and it looks like this:
And I could show a picture like this:
But in truth that full scene looked to me like this:
So in short, Baena - meh. Maybe if we had climbed to the church at the very top?
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Our route took us right through the town of Fuente Tojar. Since the town is built on a hill, this meant going right up and over it. It did look rather quaint along the way:
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2 weeks ago
It was about here that we looked ahead, and saw one road going straight up, more or less, to a white town perched on a hillside. Our own road went slightly to one side, and straight up over the shoulder if a large hill. Had we stuck with this road, it would have wandered out west and eventually, in a zig zag sort of way, would have taken us to our target town of Almedinilla. But the track we had, from Google I think, was more direct, taking us fairly straight south east to where we were going. We opted for the track.
This is where the story gets harrowing. It took all our skill and experience to make it through what came next. We entered a region where the hills were sitting close to each other, with deep valleys between. They were still all covered with olives, so we are not talking the Everest region or anything, but this did not stop our road from going down, down, down. And then it crawled back up to some extent, and down again, except that it had turned to a mud track. Google cheerfully said, yup, just carry on. But I have only felt such isolation in Appalachia - like on the Blue Ridge Parkway (which is at least paved). Our ability to make progress was almost nil. We had had to start pushing long before, but now the muddy tracks went up at insane slopes. Leaning into my bike from beside and behind to get the most push, I could just get one foot in front of the other. Then I would come back for Dodie's bike. That bike has quite a bit stronger "walk assist" than mine, and that was a boon. In fact Dodie was able to conquer most of the hills without me. But even walk assist burns battery power, and our batteries were none too happy. What's more, once we had been pushing for a couple of hours, daylight was set to become a problem. We sent a message to our guest house for the night, and warned them that we might not show up before the light failed. But we assured them (and ourselves) that did have lights.
The next bit really gives me the heebie-jeebies. In just about the loneliest valley you can imagine, we pushed by the only house in it, seen below. It's the only photo I have, because in my hand was not a camera but the biggest stick I could find. The house featured a minimum of 12 large dogs, some German Sepherds, and some larger. All went berserk as we pushed by on the muddy uphill track. They were mercifully behind a fence, because no people were about, and even with my big stick it would have been a massacre had the dogs gotten to us. Ripped apart by dogs in remotest rural Spain would have ruined our vacation for sure!
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We carried on, wondering if we would ever see any kind of pavement. The voice in Google maps, meanwhile was glibly blithering, for scenes like the one below, "turn slightly left". Dodie was ready to strangle the lady that lives in the phone!
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2 weeks ago
I hypothesized that improved pavement was coming our way, because surely it would not be mud and such right up to the door to our guest house? This turned out to be correct, and we did arrive before the sun went down, because a bit of road that we could pedal did pop up, a few kms before the guest house.
When we arrived we found the proprietor, Mark, to be quite concerned. He had been frequently looking down the road, wondering where we might be. Mark is from the UK, having moved here 22 years ago. So we could converse easily in English about the situation.
One part of the conversation was that our wheels and brakes were coated in grit. Mark did not have a hose, but he got out a bucket and brush.
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So here we are, safe and sound once more, and not sleeping under our bikes in the mud. But we are done with anything that could be a track, and are going to stick to real roads, (without hopefully getting trapped on Autovias). Notably, this had been our strategy up to today, when we did some extensive detours to avoid possible flooding. Tomorrow we are back at it. Wish us luck.
Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles)
Total: 963 km (598 miles)
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| Comment on this entry | Comment | 8 |
2 weeks ago
SO glad you are in a nicer locale for now!
2 weeks ago
2 weeks ago
Well, that’s not true. I went back and reread your narrative, and we’ve had many experiences like yours of folks with menacing, scary looking guard dogs barking at us to move along; but they’re invariably fenced. We’ve never had one out loose and actually chasing us that I can recall, which we have seen in Sicily and Greece a few times, and of course many places in America (Canada included) -and I’ve still got the scars to remind me.
It makes me wonder whether Spain has effective rules and enforcement mechanisms that lead to such uniform compliance.
2 weeks ago
2 weeks ago