Vitoria-Gasteiz to Estella-Lizarra

May 7, 2024

We managed to not get wet yesterday and hoped our luck would hold through today snd it did. There were a few spits now and then, but nothing worth putting rain jackets on for. Besides, the jackets were already on in windbreaker mode. They were on most of the day, actually.

Exiting Vitoria-Gasteiz was fairly straightforward, after we found the underpass to get past the train tracks. The route of plotted on RWGPS wasn’t crystal-clear on that, but it did indicate that there was a way near the train station, somewhere.

We took the Vasco-Navarre rail trail for most of the first 10 km but then switched to the highway. I’d plotted two routes and we had both of them on our Garmins, one red, one bright green. One route used the rail trail as much as possible, while the other was almost entirely on asphalt (including paved bits of the rail trail). What we actually rode was a hybrid of these—rail trail near the start and finish cities, highway between.

Mileage marker. Vasco-Navarre Rail Trail

I love these signs! I took the photo near the beginning of today’s climb, when I stopped to take off my jacket. I noticed later that even where the highway had a second climbing lane for trucks, there was still a nice wide shoulder. So unlike BC, where the addition of a truck lane means the disappearance of any paved shoulder.

Top-of-climb selfie. I had to remove my glasses because they fogged up as soon as I stopped moving and I couldn’t see my phone screen.

Sign on the rail trail about 3 km outside Estella, for those going the other way.

Flower of the day. There weren’t any real wildflowers beside the road today—except for a few like these also in bright yellow fields. Canola/rape? Mustard? (There were a few poppies but they will be FOTD another day.)

It took a while wandering around Estella-Lizarra to find a restaurant that served more than tapas or combination plates, even though it was 2:30 and well into what we thought was lunchtime. But we found a place and enjoyed some real food for lunch.

Later we went for an evening walkabout:

The stairs to Iglesia San Pedro de la Rúa

Entrance to the church. Our host told us that, due to vandalism, the church is now open only for masses. A pity, because the photos I’ve seen of the interior and cloisters look very interesting.

The street is part of a Camino and pilgrims form part of the city’s economy and have done so for centuries.

The “Prison Bridge” was a connection between two mediæval villages on opposite banks of the Ega River. It was destroyed in 1873 during the second Carlist war and rebuilt in the 1970s. Note how sharp the curve in the surface is…

…yet the supporting arch is a rounded Roman one.

Contrasts like this one are everywhere here.

Today's ride: 70 km (43 miles)
Total: 147 km (91 miles)

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