February 23, 2025
Day 6: Albacete
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We had high hopes for an entertaining day at Albacete. After all, the map showed a linear park we could cycle, a botanical garden, a cathedral, downtown shopping, and so forth. The rather plain appearance of the place, that we mentioned yesterday, was surely only out near the train station, where our hotel was.
But no, it became quickly clear that the whole darn place is plain. Well OK, we got a couple of photos of interesting buildings, but these were cherry picked. Mostly it looked like the town had been built in the 1960's, by people with no architectural imagination at all. Have a look:
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The day also started off at just 3 degrees, so we put finding the cathedral high on the list, in hopes it could be heated.
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Having wandered about the town without seeing much of interest, we sort of gravitated to getting out of town. We crossed over the train tracks and one big highway, and struck off along a canal or ditch, that turned out to be called the Ma Cristina. Not wanting to be too negative, but before I found that this was a canal, I thought from its smell that it was a sewer. And the gravel road we were following - turns out to be the nature route, of the canal.
This is not to say that it was all boring, because we did spot a few birds. These included European Moorhens - some walking on the road, which seemed unusual, one European Goldfinch, a Spotless Starling, and most exciting for us (because it's yellow), the European Serin.
We have been entering the birds each day into our "eBird" account. It's quite handy, because it tracks what is new - for life, for this year, by country, and more, and gives us the totals. But it is also driving us crazy. For example, today we entered a "House Sparrow". eBird put it down as a new bird for 2025, yet the 2025 total did not advance, while the order of the list for 2025 changed. We just spent the last hour trying to figure this out, and that included some harsh words from our team member who does not believe in using computers. What it was all about was that we had already seen a "House Sparrow", back in North America. eBird does not favour that listing, because it claims House Sparrow is an "Exotic: naturalized" back home where we first saw it. However to be "nice", it put it on our list. But as soon as it saw us report a "real" one, it dropped the exotic one from the list, decreasing the count by one and also changing the list number of each of the other 91 or so species for 2025 so far. So confusing, and also infuriating the lady here who is also trying to maintain a paper bird list! Anyway, for the "record", as long as history does not get re-written, we saw three new species today, plus the House Sparrow, and the 2025 list stands at 94.
On the way back into town, still looking for something noteworthy we followed a sign pointing to an "Ecoparque". We did find it, but rather than featuring plants or animals or water or hills or other "eco" stuff, it turned out to be the cleverly named municipal dump!
That was it then, for our day's adventure, unless we include that we found a small market and bought some chocolate wafer cookies. We will drown our sorrows in those, before rising around 4 a.m. to catch our train to Madrid. We will have most of the day to look around Madrid. We know for sure it will beat out Albacete for interest, since GPS MyCity lists 40 things to see in the town. For example, though there were some "Man of La Mancha" statues in Albacete, Madrid was really the city of Cervantes, and he is buried there , at the "Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians". There has to be a story behind that, and indeed there is. Stay tuned.
Today's ride: 20 km (12 miles)
Total: 55 km (34 miles)
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