Day 77: Amposta to Benicarlo

October 25, 2024

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We cycled out of Amposta without crossing the Ebro, so there was no easy chance for another photo of the bridge. Next time. We did cycle through some back streets of town, and while we could not call them exactly gorgeous, they were at least way different than our own home town.

Amposta is a low key and not glitzy place.

Our initial roads were narrow and quiet, but with the main feature that they were climbing. The name of the game for us was that we were going up into the Montsia mountains, at least a bit.

Before long we had views down to the delta below.

Before too long we began to descend, toward Freginals. The track shows that it was actually up and down for us in the early going, with a descent to the sea only at the end.

From Freginals it appeared to be a further descent, into a fertile looking plain.

We found ourselves among many olives and oranges as well.

Many of the olives were very old and large. Some had trunks divided into two trees, a sign of age, we learned.

The road worsened, and we found ourselves pushing a lot. We were thinking that having to ditch a bike again in the gravel would not be nice.

It was entertaining to look at all the orange trees. I put about four fruits in my bag before realizing that I was not going to be able to harvest the entire valley.

There were two roads off to our right, but both were clogged with fast moving traffic.

It's not really a road. More like a stream bed, we were saying.

We reached Ulldecona, with its 13th century church. But the building across the street attracted our attention.

Inside the church (of St Luc), it felt suitably ancient. This was helped by recorded music that was playing.

The fort, of course, was up a hill. It appeared to be terraced now. The fort once marked a line between Muslim and Christian kingdoms on this coast.

This kid enjoyed a ride, and the ladies enjoyed seeing it.

There were several fruit and vegetable stores along the way. These mushrooms were in a couple of them. They could be wild? any ideas?

We ran into several pomegranate trees, and naturally a bunch of these went into the bag as well.

We had noticed a total lack of Eurovelo signage, and were just commenting on it when we crossed a stone bridge and ran into this:

Very nice, and see how fine the road is!

As is so often the case, Eurovelo lures you with a nice path, and when you are well committed it lowers the boom, in terms of rocks or sand or hills or holes. We were well aware of this, so when EV8, after about 1/2 km of beautiful road, indicated a left turn onto a rocky mess, we balked.

We sailed along straight, and look, we had nice landscaping in addition to the smooth road.

We passed a gate into a huge golf and villa development, and were a little surprised when the guard just raised the gate for us without comment.

Cruising along in the golf/villa development

The only thing, we noticed this rather sturdy fence

It was a fence that went on forever, standing between us and the direction we needed to go.

We stopped at a bench and had lunch, plus some second thoughts and a closer look at the GPS. Yes indeed, the fence surrounded the entire huge development, and there was no way out, except the way we had come. So we saddled up and came all the way back.

Back past the entry gate where we had been sucked in 5 km earlier.

and all the way back to that EV8 turn off!

It's not like EV8 was suddenly the good guy. It was waiting as expected with its endless kms of rough road.

Violating the unofficial policy, we pulled out Grampies 2023 to find out what was going on. Grampies said that they had taken the EV 8 turn and cursed the rough road. But, they said, EV 8 had surprised them with a beautifully paved path further on, followed by one that even had a striped painted dividing line.

We kept looking for the promised Grampies 2023 path, but things only got worse.

We knew Grampies to be reliable, so we began to wonder if the way had been changed.We ran

EV 8 just continued with its traditional optimism.

We ran into a crew that was picking oranges. It was surprising that their bins were filled with green ones, and that they seemed to be picking random trees.

I snapped this without looking as we swept past. Didn't want to make the workers nervous by obviously focussing on them.

Finally, about 5 km further on than we had predicted, the Grampies' path appeared.

The bikeway ran beside a curious very dry river bed

The river bed is paved with large blocks

and look, there is the sea, and the extent that the river is running "up" the bed

We had arrived in Vinaros. Now most of our problems were over, as it was flat seaside promenade.

And another had this. We had been here before, and I had liked the premise of the painting.The small girl is creating the large girl, who is creating her. In the case of both murals, I think a lot of junk and distraction has piled up in front of them.

Our hotel had sent us messages in the Booking app, which we are scarcely equipped to look at during the cycling day. Properties love to do this, and then they get all indignant when you failed to realize that they had messaged you about an entry code that they left with the pharmacist a half block down the road, and with that code you can open a lock box, where you will find .... and so forth.

One thing our hotel had messaged us was a telephone number for contacting them. This of course differed from the one quoted on their locked door. But no matter, our phone did not want to connect with either number. I finally succeeded, using Skype. But testing later, I found that for my phone, +34 (code for Spain) is not the same as 034 or 0034. My British SIM only worked with 0034, while Skype liked +34 just fine.

So now, the road frazzled Grampies think they are in charge of a huge empty hotel. It's quite glitzy, actually, and we hold all the codes and keys - parking garage, front door, internet, room key. Can we be trusted with all this responsibility? We only expect to see any staff for breakfast tomorrow at 8!

Today's ride: 67 km (42 miles)
Total: 3,858 km (2,396 miles)

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