Day 16: Almeria to Adra

February 22, 2024

Beauty, and the beastly greenhouses

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Almeria struck us again this morning as a really pleasant city, something like Valencia. It has lots of quiet plazas containing cafes, narrow streets downtown with little traffic, and often paved with slate or tile. In our time there, we only travelled on bike paths or on streets with a bike symbol in the middle.

At 7:30 a.m. the square in front of our hotel is getting swept.

This church is kind of hemmed in, and also surrounded by construction, but still nice.

The route out of town was lined with trees like this.

Our bike route out of town ended at the municipal boundary, but there we realized that that west end of town was a spectacular landscape of towering sandy cliffs and headlands. The roads went about dealing with this with a series of tunnels, switchbacks, and cliff hugging curves. We were glad to be going the direction that put us against the cliff and not hanging in space. There was a bit of a shoulder, but it still did take concentration to stay on target and not wander into traffic on one side, or the ditch or cliff on the other. In due course, we could also look down on the town of Aqua Dulce. Our route was through Aqua Dulce, so we had to spot the not so obvious turn, that then took us down from the cliffs to the town.

The bike lane ends here, and the spectacular cliffs begin.

It was a short but nice visit. The shot shows that the cliffs begin where Almeria ends.

Living up there would make it tough to nip out for a coffee.

The light rectangle shape at the left is a hotel. It seems like a strange location. We soon cycled right by it.

The second last tunnel. No shoulder, really, but seemingly no traffic. We hoped to zip through before anyone came from behind . No such luck, two busses buzzed by before we made the other end.

This will be our road, and those are our places.

From our height we could look down to the sea, and to wonder about these structures. They must be fish farms.

Somehow we have enough attention/focus to be looking at and photographing cliffs and gulls.

and here, to look out at Agua Dolce, still far below.

We had to take a turn, into this little canyon.

Here on the beach beyond Aguadulce, we can end the tale of the beauty of Almeria, and its cliffs, ad begin to describe the amazing phenomenon of dusty greenhouses, covering almost all the land surface from the distant mountains, to the sea. These are the same style of greenhouse that we have been passing for some days - totally sealed up and enclosed, so that you can only barely see at times their contents. Surprisingly, their contents are very good looking tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. However, with such a concentrated form of agriculture, the plants must be living on liquid fertiliser, and you have to wonder about their nutritional content.

Through the photos below, we follow through about 30 km of wall to wall greenhouse. For a lot of the time, only the GPS had any idea of where we were in the maze of them. Had we gotten lost, we would have had to subsist on tomatoes!

One lone living large bird. (A Cattle Egret)

It wasn't all greenhouse - here are some ancillary pallets being stored.

There were some little birds in this landscape, but it was so sealed nothing much could really be inhabiting the place.

And this one, below, never turned around. Any chance of an ID?

There was a temporary break in the greenhouses as we came to El Ejido, an area of very heavy traffic. There were some bike lanes to help, but also not. When we came to the sign below I asked Dodie if she knew what it meant. She did, and replied "It means we're screwed" (Actually - "end of bike lane").

With greenhouses from mountains (north) to the sea (south), we thought we would pass beyond them as we headed west. But no, were among them all the way to Adra, our stop for the night. Something else going on was a super strong headwind, and randomly angled gusts (up to 54 kph, according to the weather network), that buffeted us and made riding unpleasant.

We did spot one of our favourite birds that we have been seeing in this area. He was a welcome break from the monotonous landscape.

Crested Lark (again, not the Skylark we are trying to spot).

One slightly different thing to look at was a cliff side that contained some caves. Steps had been built above these to a wall, but we have no idea if this was a defensive idea, or something else.

In places to stay, we generally favour hotels, ones preferably with 24 hour front desks. But occasionally we land up with a AirBnB type apartment, listed on Booking.com. We dislike these because thee is always some kind of treasure hunt for the key, or for which door is actually our apartment, for where to put the bikes, and what is the wifi arrangement. The apartment owner will also invariably send an email, containing clues to the treasure hunt, and also generally demanding our arrival time, which we never can be sure of. The email will arrive while we are on the road, and will then get buried in Cycleblaze comments.

That's the overall "good" version of how it goes with an apartment. But for the one in Adra, there were some special twists. The owner insisted we register though the web site of some third party company, demanding a pile of personal information, and he wanted our passport images sent to him via Whatsapp. Beyond that, he wanted our European phone number, and the deal was that while standing outside the apartment door we were to phone a certain number with our specific phone, and this would cause the door to open. Oh yah? Also, to get into the building, so we could try to open the apartment door, we had to hit a certain button on an outside panel. Well, none of it worked, at all. And when we phoned, we of course could neither hear no understand the man on the phone. It was everything we hate about these apartment arrangements.

Fortunately the man (who I think was in Madrid) sent along his (maybe) sister in law, who arrived with an actual key! Once in the apartment, she found that the tricky high tech door lock stuff was unplugged, and that anyway the circuit breakers in the apartment were off as well.

After that, also as usual, we are enjoying the extra space and equipment that is found in an apartment. We are also listening to the wind howl outside, and hoping it dies by morning.

Today's ride: 64 km (40 miles)
Total: 726 km (451 miles)

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Bill ShaneyfeltFun (type 2) day...
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9 months ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Bill ShaneyfeltIt really feels like most of the last week has been type 2, but for the most part the scenery makes it worthwhile.
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9 months ago