To an Olive Grove, about 9 km north of La Vinuela

October 14, 2017

I was anxious to get going in the morning. I rolled out at about 9 am, after daylight which shows up around 8, and some time to eat breakfast and get my bike loaded up. I was so excited to be moving, that I naively followed the GPS track I had loaded at home, without double checking it against what I had learned about the city since my arrival. Before I knew it I was climbing hills on the far side of the city rather than following the flat coast. Along the coast I would have had to go through some pedestrian only areas, but I knew now that is accepted.

I road up some hills into the newer area of the city.

Looking back at the hills I had ridden to get out of Malaga, and the contrast to the flat coast.

Before long I was down at the coast, admiring the sand and the boats. The bicycle infrastructure was great.

I stopped to take a picture, and this dog started howling at me, so I turned to take his picture. His walker wanted to be in the picture, too, but not so much her friend. She tried to correct my pronunciation of "perro", but I couldn't explain that in 4 years of high school Spanish (a long, long time ago) I never learned to roll an r.

I turned off the coast after about 20 miles, aiming for La Vinuela, where I thought I might spend the night. There was a fancy campground on the lake that I really didn't want to use, and another site marked "Acampada con permiso" about 5 miles past the town. I thought I might find something else closer to town, so that was my last resort. Besides, I wasn't sure if I had to somehow get permiso. I was also open to getting a hotel room if I found something reasonable, and rinsing the salt stains from my heavy sweating out of my shirt.

The road climbed steeply and steadily. I had used cycle.travel for the GPS track, and it said there would be only 500 feet of climbing. I'm not sure where that number came from!

I was pretty beat when I reached La Vinuela. I think my GPS said I had climbed 1800 feet, and most of that had been in the last 5 miles.

I stopped for food there, and ordered the special of the day, ham with melon. Except they were out of melon, so I had ham with apple. I left town looking for a place to stay, but got onto the road north that would take me to "Acampada con permiso". It got even steeper. There was a little town where I stopped at a bar and asked about accommodation. The guy there, who was British, didn't have any suggestions. I went into the store, which was a British store, and picked up a few provisions. This area turned out to be more British than Spanish!

Somewhere along the way I reached a section of road that was closed for construction. There wasn't an alternate route, and it looked like I would have to backtrack several miles. Not one for backtracking, I looked at the construction, which was a fairly deep and muddy ditch, and noted the ledge along side of it, and decided I could make it. It worked fine for a few feet, when the ledge collapsed under me and I went down into the ditch, pulling my bike down on top of me. I can't say I wasn't warned. I managed to get myself out from under my heavy bike, not too much the worse for it, but with some scrapes and bruises on my leg and a lot of mud on my shoes.

I continued on, pushing my bike up the hills that we're over 20% at this point. As I pushed on, with less than a mile to "Acampada con permiso" I noticed that I was passing an olive grove that wasn't fenced in. With no energy left, I turned in and set up camp.

Campsite in the olive grove. The big rock was a handy cooking and sitting place.

Olives, on the olive tree. They were still small.

My choice of campsite turned out to be closer to homes than I realized. I waited until about 7 to pitch my tent, but then I noticed a dog walker in the olive grove who had noticed me. Wanting to be up front about it, I went to explain the situation to her. She turned out to be British, too, from Yorkshire but living here. She seemed amused that I was camped there but said it was no problem, and that when she noticed me she thought I was one of the men who come to gather olives. When we parted ways, one of her dogs tried to herd me. It was pretty wild. He was spinning circles in front of me and nipping at my feet. His owner ended up tossing a ball to distract him so I could get away.

Back in La Vinuela, my Garmin had locked up. A soft reset didn't help. I thought it might be due to a low battery, and plugged it into my power bank, but it seemed to be sucking too much juice from the power bank, so I unplugged it. From my campsite, and with my carefully acquired data SIM card, I googled the problem, and ended up doing a factory reset. It fixed the problem, but reset all of my personalization. Fortunately my maps and the routes that I have loaded are on an SD card, not the internal storage, so they're okay. I was worried that I had depleted my power bank, and needed to recharge my phone, so I was careful about using my phone more than necessary.

Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 91 km (57 miles)

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