Day 81: Sagunto to Valencia

October 29, 2024

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The lady at Domus Atilia brought forth just enough buns and cheese and yogurt to give us the necessary start for the day. She also included the ham and sausage seen below, but we are just not in to meat like that.

Sort of raw and sort of mystery meat. We are in Spain!

Something the lady had lots of was mandarin oranges and pomegranates, all from her own trees. She encouraged us to stuff as many of these in our packs as possible, for the road. This was great, though I must admit that pilfering these items from trees along the trail is more exciting.

This is what real pomegranates look like.

The idea for today was to toddle on in to Valencia, along 30 km of flat, mostly bike paths, enjoying the soft air that we had fought 4000 km to reach, before checking in to our luxury hotel for a well earned rest.

With this intro, you can probably guess what is going to happen! It began before we had even gotten going, with a drenching rain, that actually was quite exciting as it fell in the inner courtyard of the Domus Atilia. I made a video of it, to impress the grandkids back home, but sadly the video didn't work out. Too bad, because it featured our hostess assuring us in Spanish that this would continue all day.

Well, we do have all that rain gear, so off we went. One of the anticipated things was in fact there - the soft air. The heavy rain was at least not freezing us.

Here were are setting off along the lower streets of Sagunto. I notice in the photo the bicycle designation. Good to see.

As we came to a street corner and paused to wait for the light, we greeted/were greeted by a charming young man, who like us was looking with concern at the amount of falling rain. He said that he was from Africa and that his job here (and today) was in picking oranges. The young man decried the cold and windy conditions today, and on seeing that we were from Canada he teased himself by imagining the ice up to the knees that must be part of our lives. This fellow was so friendly and well spoken that he gave a lift to our just starting out day. We didn't think to catch his photo until we were well away and across the rail yard. The shot below is anyway just of one of his colleagues.

One of the orange workers hoping for the rain to stop.

We had to cross the train tracks to get out of town. It was a matter of circling up and over.

In the mist, and balancing the bike and cell phone camera on the ramp, here is our best shot of the Sagunto castle.

A little rain or maybe even a lot of rain does not (exactly) ruin a day's ride. But within a km our other nemesis, a blocked EV route, had struck. As you can see from the photo, the barrier is quite convincing. That is not to say we could not have jumped over it, but we were sure other muddy trials would await beyond.

The thing about this blocked route was that we really had no answer for it. We found ourselves in a soulless industrial zone, and one from which we were not seeing an exit.

We were just getting nowhere, except further and further from our original track.

Finally Dodie spotted that Service Road, V23, which became our ticket to freedom, without having to get on the AutoVia.

Here is the picture. Our proper track would have been something like the green line. The yellow arrows show where we got shunted to. It was a 10 km detour!

Even after the service road, things looked like this for us.

And even the most optimistic interpretation would not characterize this as a "walk in the parc"!

Eventually we left the industrial zones and got back to the type of trial we are a little more used to: flooded dirt roads.

Or maybe this. There was one of these that I went through first and realized it was a 50/50 proposition for ditching the bike. I stopped quickly at the other end to warn Dodie not to try it. But she was already in the middle. This time, fortunately, she made it through!

It's a bit blurry, but I like this shot showing the dramatic palm grove. Does anyone know the type?

At Pucol, I would think, we finally rejoined our proper track, and with that the bike way which was supposed to be our joyous ticket into Valencia.

For a bit the route was fairly joyous. We had the painted bike-type surface, and we ran not only into a pomegranate orchard but also a persimmon one.

It was interesting about the persimmons that some fruit still on the tree was so soft as to be almost rotting, and some were rock hard. I had to choose the just a little soft ones to pilfer!

We had written about this bike and walking way last year that runners were tending to hog the bike portion. The weather must have been dryer then, because here in the photo is one of the few walkers or runners we encountered. True to form, though, they are in the bike way.

Also last year, we told of how high winds had prevented us from cycling, even on the flat bike way. In fact, on that day we each had been blown over once. Well guess what, it was the same today, except that we avoided being blown over, somehow. The photo shows Dodie pushing on the flat, and the reason is wind gusting to 66 kph, hitting from the left. 66 kph is "gale" force, and it forced us to walk a very long distance. Even as I write this, hours later in the hotel room, we can hear the wind howling, and we can not open the window, because a gale then blows in.

This sign of course gets our attention. It only means "Cattle Crossing" but is still strange because there are no cattle around here.

I took this shot to show that everywhere in Valencia there is a bike lane to get you where you are going.

We soon intersected the Turia park. The Turia River used to run through the centre of town, but due to a tendency to flood, it was diverted to west of town. That left its former bed, for which there was a proposal to put in a highway. That was beaten back and instead we now have an absolutely stellar linear park.

Buildings by the park - what we saw before diving down to the park on one of the many ramps.

Bridges that used to span the water are still there. This is Pont de la Mar.

There is a circular pond around Pont de la Mar.

Ceiba trees in the park. They have those characteristic spikes coming from their trunks.

There is (of course) a cycle way on each edge of the park. We popped up and out as we approached our hotel. (see the ramp to the right?)

Our hotel does not look like much, but it's great!

Once we had stashed our stuff at the hotel, we walked out for our idea of an adventure: a look in Decathlon. At some points we had to cling to each other to avoid being blown away.

Valencia is a big city, with a lot of different neighbourhoods. From a tourist point of view, there are at least 30 sights to go see, but looking out from our window (and not in the direction of downtown) we just see a diverse mosaic.

The weather forecast suggests that we might get a bit of a break tomorrow, and we are excited about that. Our first adventure will be in the subway, to go arrange for the bike storage. But then we will return to the part of the City of Arts and Sciences with the aviary, and with the "living river" full of ducks. That will be 10x more fun than even Decathlon!

Today's ride: 40 km (25 miles)
Total: 4,043 km (2,511 miles)

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Sue PriceSo glad you are ok! Just saw Valencia on the news and there is so much flooding in that area! Stay safe and dry!
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2 weeks ago

Scott AndersonI just read about the terrible rainstorm there and in Andalusia too. Glad you made it into the city safe and hope you’re both ok.
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2 weeks ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Sue PriceOddly the news stories seem to be worse than what we encountered. We are fine, and if we encounter too much water across the road we can always turn back and try to find a different way through. Swimming with a loaded bike is not our idea of fun.
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2 weeks ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Scott AndersonWe are fine, although the wind was a bigger problem for us yesterday than rain or flooding. We are still hoping to look in the Albufera, but the weather will have to be the final decision maker.
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2 weeks ago

Scott AndersonTo Steve Miller/GrampiesI would be very hesitant about biking out to the Albufera. We were there a few years ago and it was badly flooded out and a challenge to get around: https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/iberia2019/in-valencia-day-1-la-albufera/. I can’t imagine that it’s not much worse now. I’d wait until you come back in the spring.
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2 weeks ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Sue PriceWednesday morning now. The wind has died, but news reports people died in Valencia from flash floods. Today it's just the bird park, but tomorrow we'll throw caution to the "wind" and head for the wetlands!
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2 weeks ago

Sue PriceTo Steve Miller/GrampiesCrazy to be right in the middle of big news, eh? I know you two will stay safe ❤️
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2 weeks ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Sue PriceWe will certainly try. Although a little adversity is always interesting for the blog, too much of a good thing is....too much.
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2 weeks ago