February 22, 2025
Day 5 Valencia to Albacete
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Yesterday I developed the notion that available ten jammer breakfast or not, I was instinctively using the offerings to create my habitual Egg McBagel (like egg McMuffin but made with a high quality bagel). But today I noted what actually landed on my plate, and while yes - one could sort of create a McBagel from it, it was was a different and much more varied breakfast. I mean - fresh guacamole, and quince paste, potato-peppers stir fry, and grilled tomato! How boring that bagel seems in comparison!
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11 hours ago
8 hours ago
The bagel, especially Montreal bagel, does have benefits that the Turia breakfast can not approach. We learned of it on Whatsapp this morning with the news that son Joshua in Montreal fell on the ice and injured his hand. Lacking any ice packs, he pulled a frozen bagel and effectively used that. And when the bagel warmed up - breakfast!
This was our day to jump on the first of the hard to find Spanish trains we need to get to the beginning of our actual ride. To go over it again - we are trying to get to Plasencia, on the other side of Madrid, to then begin cycling south toward Seville. But we are taking one train to Albacete, languishing there one day, then to Madrid, and finally to Plasencia. We think and hope that we bought all the right tickets to get us and the bikes onto the needed trains.
Since our train today was only for about 2 o'clock, we had hours that we could still use frolicking in Valencia. Our choice for this was to ride down the linear Turia park, once again. Of course, we were on the lookout for any bird species we might have missed, or for the chance of a better photo of one we already had. The first one up was a Wood Pigeon. Normally we would ignore a Wood Pigeon, because after all it's "just" a pigeon. But still I took out the P-950, and captured the rather coy, soft focus image below:
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11 hours ago
This turned out to be a historic photo, because when I went to shut off the camera after this shot, it refused. The lens was again jammed. Although I did try punching it in the nose a bit, it was clear that we could no longer trust this camera. So we turned around and headed for Cortes Ingles. I knew they in principle had the P-950, because I had seen it there last year. And I also knew that their price was over 1100 euros, from the same visit. Back in Canada, I had paid the equivalent of 670 euros for the now broken one, and that included an extensive accessories kit. That of course was neither here not there, because I needed the camera NOW. More to the point was whether the branch would still have it.
Of course the photo department clerks had little idea of what I was talking about, while blithering "Nikon P-950". But with some help, they looked it up in their computer and admitted that theoretically they had one. Of course, they could not find it. The young man that eventually got stuck with helping me went off to find more help. That left me to paw through their stuff, and by the time the fellow returned, I had the box on his counter:
I had left Dodie out on the plaza with the bikes. When I came back with the booty, we used a table from a closed pizza restaurant to pull everything from the new box and to assemble the replacement kit. We rejected the new manual, the lens cap, lens hood, and the charger, because we had already replaced those with superior after market items. We threaded a neck strap onto the new body, and set up the date/time and other controls.
Then came a real crunch decision. Should the less than a year old previous camera join the charger and other parts in the nearby garbage can? This was not about recycling technique, this was about could I part with over $1000 of gear into a garbage can, just like that? It turned out that Dodie had the courage, but I didn't. I sent her to the post office to see about mailing the hulk back to Canada. She went, but found that it was Saturday, so Correos was closed. The heavy, dead camera has landed in a pack on my back, at least for now!
An hour and a half later, we were ready to resume our ride down the Turia park. There was no way to feel glum about developments, because the temperature was ideal for cycling, and also the public had come out to enjoy the park, not only by cycling and running, but with exercise classes, and organized soccer and rugby games, on the fields that are right inside the park boundaries.
Very quickly (compared to walking or even the bus) we were down among the buildings of the City of Arts and Sciences.
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5 hours ago
We had already spotted a couple of birds, new for this year anyway, like these:
But as we drew closer to the "notorious" Oceanografica, some birds more like what you see inside popped up. I call Oceanografica notorious, because it is the only place I know of where eBird specifically cautions not to gather bird sightings. They controversially (to us) consider the birds there as captives, even given that they are free to leave, and also often are native to the nearby Albufera lake area. Had we had the time, we would have been in Oceanagrafica snapping away at all the birds. But as it is, we only saw these, before having to turn toward the train station:
That was it for birding this day. We were satisfied, though, having actually added four species to our total for the year, bringing it to 91.
A track that we had earlier put into Dodie's phone easily took us back to the train station. It was not so simple to figure out where to go inside. I was impressed by Dodie's ability to both spot the needed signage, and lacking that, to ask all sorts of officials for directions.
As you can see from the screen below, our "Media Distancia" train (in purple) is a rare bird. Also, in the photo, which was taken at 13:22, the track for our 13:53 departure is not yet known. Even when you know the track, of course, with a train you still have to guess which carriage. The agent that we asked about this gave the wrong answer, but we figured out which car it had to be once we got down there.
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9 hours ago
Our car did not have a screen indicating the progress of the trip, or where to get off, but we could still track things with the GPS. When we did get off, at Albacete, a nice man welcomed us to the town and asked if he could help in any way. But we were fine, since our hotel was right down at the end of the street leading to the station.
The hotel and the area around it looked pretty plain. But the bikes got their own large meeting room, and our own room was very comfortable. We had shifted to Castilla-La Mancha region (known as an "autonomous community"). This is the setting of 17th-century novel "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes. It encompasses plains dotted with vineyards, castles and windmills, plus mountain ranges. At the nearby roundabout and also inside the hotel were statues of the famous "man of La Mancha".
Our immediate surrounds were otherwise quite plain. But in our forced layover tomorrow, we plan to check out the botanic garden shown on the city map, as well as a linear park by the train station, and the cathedral. We are looking forward to it. Albacete looks to be a really nice smaller town.
Today's ride: 15 km (9 miles)
Total: 35 km (22 miles)
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