One would have thought that with the excellent Spanish cyclists, (Alberto Contador) Spain should have an excellent network of cycle routes and cycle ways.  Well it doesn’t.  However, what it does have is an excellent road system with wide shoulders and very little traffic.  Spain has a huge network of motorways and the roads that they have replaced are still in place and can be used by cyclists very safely.  The Spanish car drivers gave us plenty of room and we didn’t worry about being run of the road.  Spain has the 1.5 metre rule – meaning they have to give cyclists 1.5 metres when they pass and it is generally adhered to.

We really enjoyed cycling through Spain, pick your routes carefully, and you can enjoy great scenery and safe riding.  Of course cycling through big cities like Bilbao, Valladolid were more of a challenge, but still relatively safe.  What we couldn’t find was cheap camp sites.  Most of the sites were expensive and we resorted to staying in cheap hostals/hotels.  The food was not too expensive and the beer and wine was incredibly cheap.

They have a great network in place for people who are walking the Camino de Compestela.  If they could do something similar for the touring cyclists it would be wonderful.  However, at the moment their thoughts and finances are on other things.

Spain has not recovered from “The Crisis”.  Along our route we noticed many factories and stores that were closed.  The towns were a little run-down and in the major cities lots of graffiti, although the rest of the countryside was very clean, not too much roadside garbage.  Most people live in the cities and live in apartment blocks that are not very attractive. The unemployment rate is about 26%, very high. Our two warmshowers hosts were both unemployed, but could not have been more generous with their time and their hospitality.

The people we met along the way were very friendly, although the immediate response to our loaded touring bikes was dumbstruck faces.  We would pass them with a friendly wave and a greeting of Hola, they would often stare at us with mouths wide open.  If we stopped and checked the map, we would very quickly be surrounded by people giving us advice on what route to take.  They often didn’t want us to take the Carreta routes, saying they were too busy, we found them very quiet because everyone else is on the motorways.  One of the funniest things was the greetings in different areas, Hola, buenes dias or both.  I would start of with hola and get buenas dias in response, I would then switch to buenas dias and get hola in response.  Never knew which to use.

The Spanish siesta, eating and sleeping habits took some time to get used to and I don’t think we really got our heads around it.  They get up late, often we seemed to be the only ones on the road at 8:00 in the morning. They eat their main meal at 2:00 in the afternoon and then snooze for a couple of hours, everything closes between 2:00 and 5:00.  Then the stores reopen and the people do their shopping or often go back to work for a few hours.  At 9:00 everyone is out even when it is not fiesta time, they are in their village or town squares chatting having coffee, drinking and eating small meals (tapas).  They stay up late usually well past midnight and seem to snack all the time.  We noticed a few more chubby people in Spain, especially the children.

We saw a lot of cyclists, who would wave and wish us good day and good luck.

Dog poop was as bad as in France.

I will do a Part 2 Thoughts on Spain when we come back into Spain from Portugal.  We will be visiting more of the central and coastal areas, it will be interesting to see the differences between the areas.

Thursday September 11, 2014

We were up early and ate our small pilgrim’s breakfast of toast, biscuits and coffee.  I forgot to mention the Pilgrim’s Albergue’s are very cheap, usually between E6 to E8 or on a donation basis – this Albergue was on a donation basis.  We paid E15.00 for both of us and breakfast.  Of course we did share a dorm with 10 other people, but it was cheap and clean.  We were on the road by 7:45, it was still dark.  Part of this route follows the Camino into Portugal.

What a great ride today.  We found our way out of the City quite easily and headed towards the busy E82/N122, we hoped we would be allowed on it.  Fortunately, at the point we joined it going west, we were allowed on it – going east we would not have been allowed.

It was quite a busy road with a lot of transport trucks, including gravel trucks, they didn’t give us a lot of room.  Almost as bad as New Zealand logging trucks, although the road is wider in Spain.

We came up to a gas station that had a restaurant, Ralf suggested we have a second breakfast, it was only 9:30.  We had no idea if we would be able to find something to eat later as we were going on to a smaller road at the 23 km mark.  We had a huge toasted bacon and cheese sandwich, it was lovely and kept us going for the rest of the day.

We made our left turn on to the N218 to Muelas del Pan and the scenery changed dramatically.  It went from rural farmland on the plateau to granite and glacial lakes, almost at the blink of an eye.

The rocky outcroppings were very ancient and if it wasn’t for the paved tarmac road, it felt eerily prehistoric.

The scenery was absolutely stunning going through the small villages that made up this part of Castille y Lyon.

The road dipped down into the gorges where the River Doura was and where huge hydro dams were in place.

We zoomed down and pedaled up the side of three gorges like this.  The last one dropped us down and then a switch back road into Portugal.

I thought we were going to be two more days before crossing into Portugal, but here we are.

We crossed into Portugal without any border formalities.

This is the first country where we do not know a single word of the language.  France and Spain we had at least a smattering of the languages – Portugal nothing, not one word.  We stopped in the Tourist Information office to ask about the campsite, which was shown on the road signs.  No, it was closed.  I asked about cheap hotels, and we were directed to this cheap hotel.  Once again we are staying in a cheap hotel E30 per night.

Surprisingly even with all the hotel/hostel stays in Spain we came in under budget.  Hopefully, we can carry on saving money and recoup our budget breaking time spent in New Zealand.

I now know how to say hello, goodbye, thank-you and please in Portugese.  Ola, Adios, Obrigado and por favor.  Some words are similar to Spanish, but the emphasis and accent is different.

We had plenty of time to have a wander around the old part of Miranda du Douro.

Miranda has preserved its old walled city and has some interesting history, unfortunately all of the plaques were only in Portugese.

I have been bitten by some nasty bugs, not sure quite what they were or when I was bitten, but I have a multitude of big itchy blotches on my legs and arms.  Ralf wanted to leave the windows open during the night for some fresh air, but I said no.  He hadn’t realized how badly bitten I was.

This sculpture was on the hill as we came into Miranda du Douro.

Wednesday September 10, 2014

We had a good nights sleep, and left the hostel at 8:45.  Salamanca is a big city, but we were able to find our way out of it very quickly (28 minutes) our quickest time ever of finding our way out of a big city.

Today\’s route was much the same as yesterday a few more rolling hills, but still on the empty highway.  The plateau is becoming a little boring, I need a change of scenery.

As we came down this hill, we spotted this small Tower.  It has religious significance and as we are on the pilgrim\’s route, we stopped to take photos.

I tried the gate to see if we could get into the Tower, there appeared to be a couple of wasps in the lock and one stung me.  There were a few choice words, which weren\’t very religious.

We arrived in Zamora at 12:30 and found the albergue straight away.  This albergue opened at 2:00pm.

While we waited for the albergue to open we went to the Tourist Information office and had some lunch by which time the albergue was open and we were able to get into our shared dorm room and settle in.  There were 10 other pilgrims on bicycles and 2 pilgrims that were walking.

The ladies shower room only had one working shower.  While I waited for the shower, I decided to do a hand wash and used a spin dryer.

For those people who do not know what a spin dryer is, it is a small cylindrical machine.  You put the clothes in to it, put the lid down, put a small bucket underneath the spout at the bottom, you turn a lever to lock the lid into place and then it starts spinning.  After about a minute or until no more water is coming out of the spout at the bottom, you unlock the lid, allow the machine to stop spinning and there you have spun dry clothes.  Of course they still need to go on a line, but it is much better than trying to squeeze the water out of the clothes with your hands.  The lady Dutch cyclist, who was about my age, was very happy about being able to use it, but the young Spanish guy decided he wouldn’t risk his clothes in it, obviously had no idea what it was.

We then went for another wander around another beautiful historic city and got some groceries for dinner.  Breakfast is included at the albergue.

\”The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music – aaaahhhh\”.  Many years ago Lynne my co-worker at Lehman & Associates (as it was then called) went to Toronto, dressed as nuns, to a Sing-a-long Sound of Music show.  Our habits had this kind of winged head dress – this one is for you Lynne.

Zamora is another walled city. It lies on a rocky hill near the border of Portugal and crossed by the Duero river, it has 22 Roman (christian) churches.

We had an early dinner and Ralf went to find the sports store for some electrolyte and met some locals.

Ralf had a lovely wander around the City, he was a little late back because he found the medieval part of the city that we hadn\’t found earlier.

It was getting quite late by the time he came back to the albergue and I had forgotten to tell him that it closed the doors at 10:00pm.  He made it back before curfew.

I updated the blog and we were going to check our route in to Portugal but Ralf didn’t get back to the albergue until 9:30 and I was already getting ready for bed.

Tuesday September 9, 2014

Fiesta in Aleajos carried on well into the early morning.  I didn’t get very much sleep and when the alarm went of at 6:15 am I wanted to turn over and go to sleep.  Unfortunately, the fiesta revelers were still awake and a brass band started up at 6:30 am.  We got up and showered and were on the road by 8:00am.  I was exhausted, I do not do well on little sleep.

However the legs knew what they were supposed to do and they went up and down on those pedals, and eventually the sleep deprived headache disappeared and I began to enjoy the scenery.

It was a lovely ride again.  Plateau lands and on a very quiet road with a wide shoulder.
The scenery is primarily farmland and most of the crops are already off the land.  It looks very dry and barren, but stunning.

As we came into Salamanca, we wondered what all the fuss was about.  The outskirts of the City are very industrialized.  However, when you get into the inner city it is beautiful.  Hector told us about the Albergue’s (Hostels) you can stay in, if you are cycling or walking the Camino de Compestalo.

We figured we had already cycled sections of it and were now going to do another part of the route from Salamanca to Zamora and may be beyond, so we  bought the Camino Pilgrim’s passport which allows you to stay at the Albergues.

We went to the tourist information office who gave us the information on where to buy the “passport” and where the pilgrim’s hostel was.  We could not find the hostel, we went around in circles for about an hour.  We eventually found the YHA and decided to stay there – we got the pilgrim’s rate E16 each per night instead of E22.

We found out if you follow these signs, it directs you to the hostel.

Our room at the YHA would not be ready until 2:00, (it was 12:30) we could come back then and they would let us into our room.  We left our bags at the hostel and had a short wander around the City.  When we went back to the hostel it was locked – with a note saying it was closed from 2:00 until 4:00, I almost went ballistic and I thought Ralf was going to explode as well.  Our bags were inside the hostel, we had paid for the room and now we couldn’t get into it.  Fortunately at about 2:15 a young man showed up with the key and told us that the private rooms were not in the hostel, but in a separate apartment building behind the hostel.  His hand waving and mutterings of where the apartment buildings drove me crazy. I, with gritted teeth asked him for a map.  He looked at me and looked at Ralf and said he would take us to the building, we may have scared him.

After a nice hot shower we both felt a lot better and went back into the old city for a good wander around.  It is a beautiful city with amazing architecture and history.

Salamanca is a walled city, its old city was declared a World UNESCO Site in 1988.  I can understand why.  It is mostly pedestrianized and they have maintained all of the old architecture and very little new building has been allowed inside the walls.

The main square also had a stage set up for more fiesta celebrations.  A band was doing a sound check, glad we are not staying close to this area tonight.

This is the library, we are not sure of the significance of the shells, but a lot of the Camino walkers have a shell on their backpacks.

The Roman bridge has been maintained as a pedestrian bridge.

We had an early night as we have a longer ride tomorrow.

Monday September 8, 2014

A good nights sleep and an early start.  We left Hector’s house at 8:15 and after a small climb out of Valladolid we were on the plateau heading towards Torsadillas.   As we climbed up towards the plateau, I could see what looked like apartment buildings.  As we crested the hill there were hundreds of solar panels.

It was a great ride. Although if we had started later,  riding on the plateau would have been unbearably hot.

As we cycled through Torsadillas a small band came down the street.  We stopped to watch them and I noticed that this was part of the fiesta in this Town.  We decided to have a second breakfast here, while we listened to a mad bell ringer ringing the church bells.  There didn’t appear to be any rhyme or rhythm to the bells just a lot of clanging.

After our second breakfast we headed out on N620 towards Salamanca.  Again, this is a parallel road to the motorway.  Today is a stat holiday, there are no cars on this road, and with the wide shoulder it is a great route to Salamanca.  A couple of little hills and we arrived in Aleajos at 12:30.  Another Town enjoying fiesta.  We arrived in the Central Square where all the bars were open and full of people drinking and eating tapas.

We spotted two touring cyclists who were cycling the Camino de Santiago Compostela and asked them if they were stopping here.  They said no and advised us not too as there were already a lot of drunk people around.  We found the hotel Hector had told us about, I checked out the room which was very clean and big.  Ralf and I discussed whether we should carry on towards Salamanca another 54 kms.  A total for the day would be a record of over 125 kms, although it wasn’t hot we decided we would “risk” the drunken fiesta guys and stay the night.

We settled in to our room, and then headed out into the small town.  We noticed strange gates and barriers throughout the downtown streets.  Ralf asked a younger woman what they were for.  It turns out that this morning  the bulls were released through the Town and there was going to be a bull fight this evening.  Several people joined in our conversation about when the bull fight would happen and how much it would cost.

After a short siesta for us we went to the bull fight at 6:00.  I personally do not agree with bull-fights, but to experience one in a small town during fiesta time was definitely an interesting experience.  We were the only foreigners in the crowd.  A small town enjoying their traditions.

There were four bulls that were killed that night. They really do not stand a chance, but I was hoping that a bull would get a good shot in.

One of them did catch the matador off guard and caught him on the hip, but didn\’t do any serious damage.

The horse rider was very skilled.  I really didn\’t like this part, as I didn\’t think the horse should be part of it.  If a man wants to play with a bull, then go for it, but don\’t involve other animals.

We ate dinner late at 9:00pm.  At 9:30 a transport truck arrived in the square and a stage was erected. We thought they were getting it ready for the next night\’s entertainment.  No such luck at 10:30 the music started.   Although our room was at the back of the hotel nothing stopped the noise of the music and the revelers. We went to bed with ear plugs firmly in place.

Sunday September 8, 2014

A long lie-in and a lazy breakfast.  We eventually headed back into the city at 11:30.  Valladolid is a city of churches and convents.  We wandered the streets of the city, went back to some of the places that Hector had shown us last night, ate more tapas, drank some beer and eventually headed back to the house at 4:30.

The doors in Spain are incredible.  We spotted this one last night and had to find it again today.

This door is on a building that houses some military offices.

Last night Hector had shown us this octagonal plaza, apparently it had been a bull-fighting area.  Now it has retail on the bottom floors and apartments on the upper floors.

This is the square where the music was playing last night.  We are amazed at how quickly everything gets cleaned up.  The street sweepers are cleaning streets all the time in the cities in Spain.

There are some very nice buildings in Vallodolid.

We had caught the #18 bus into the city.  We saw a # 18 bus near the cathedral where we had got off the bus and stopped the bus.  We had assumed that there would be one #18 bus going in one direction.  Not in Spain there are two buses going in opposite directions of the city. When we realized we were not going in the same direction as we came into the city we thought maybe it would do a figure of 8 loop.  No we had to pay again to go back into the city and then switch to the other 18 bus and pay again to go to La Overula.

We arrived “home” at 5:30 Hector texted us to say he would meet us again in the city at 9:00pm.  We explained that we had an early start tomorrow and could not meet him that late.

He understood and he emailed us a route to take out of the city.  Our second warmshowers host in Spain and they are wonderful, generous people.  The saying “mi casa, su casa” – \”my home your home\” definitely holds true.  Hector had put beer and wine in the fridge told us to make ourselves at home and showed us his city.  When we were in the city at fiesta with his, he would not allow us to buy any drinks or tapas.  We found that a little difficult to accept, but he made it very clear to Ralf that we were his guests and would not allow us to buy any drinks.

Saturday September 6, 2014

We were up early and ate our breakfast in our room.  We had decided to cycle along the Canal de Castilla to Valladolid.  It was flat and the trail was supposed to be good for touring cyclists.  After about the first 10 kms we decided the terrain was too hard on the hands and shoulders, as it was very uneven, and we came of the Canal route at Duernas.  We followed the N620 for about 4 kilometres then it merged with the motorway and we were left with farm roads until we could find the canal again.

The canal route was nice although a bit rocky and the surface was uneven.  The Canal de Castilla was built as most canals were in the 1800’s to transport goods (mainly wheat and grains) from the hill country to Valladolid.

There are still the remnants of old buildings that were used to collect the wheat and grains from the surrounding farmlands.

In one area along the canal there were four modes of transportation – the motorway, the canal, the bike route and the train.  About 5 kms outside of the Valladolid we stopped at an area where we could come away from the canal and checked on our hosts address.  The garmin said turn left here and 1 km you are at the residence.  Our host’s house was about 4 ks outside of the city centre.  We cycled towards La Overula a suburb of Valladolid and stopped at a little bar for something to eat and drink.  The bar owner was very interested in our bikes, especially Ralf\’s as he has a Trek. We had a great conversation with him about our trip.  He was very impressed.

Hector was waiting for us at his house.  He introduced us to his two cats who “own” the house and said he would be back later to take us into town.  He would stay at his girlfriend’s house and we had the house to ourselves.

This gave us the opportunity to do some washing and for me to clean the bikes.  Ralf checked the next days route.

Hector came back at 8:00 and we went into Valladolid for fiesta.  We had arrived in Valladolid at the start of fiesta.  A celebration to some Virgin or other.

Hector used to work for the tourist information and was able to show us around the city and gave us some history of the city. After we had our history lesson and visited some of the churches we enjoyed tapas at different areas in the city and then went to the central square where we met his girlfriend and friends, we danced and listened to the music until 12:30.

It is the latest we have stayed up at night for ages.

There were a lot of people drinking in the streets, enjoying tapas and generally having a good time.  There was very little police presence, and no bother – just people enjoying themselves.

We had a great time, and fortunately Hector said we could stay two nights at his house so we are able to have a lie-in tomorrow.

Friday September 5, 2014

We left the hotel early after a free but small breakfast.  Toast and jam and a coffee was the free breakfast.  We bought 2 sandwiches and 2 more coffees to keep us going, even though we were only going to the train station.

I am not sure why we had decided to take the train to Palencia other than we didn’t want another day of hills and we had a warmshowers host for tomorrow and we would not be able to cycle to Palencia in one day.  Anyway, I had checked on the train times and we had decided to take the second train of the day out of Aguilar de Campoo, mistake. The second train didn’t have any space for bicycles we had to take the third train which left at 5:30 pm and arrived in Palencia at 7:00pm.

We spent a day at the train station.  We arrived at the station in plenty of time to catch the second train.  The second train left at 10:44, we arrived at 10:00am. We then waited for 7.5 hours to catch the next train.  I made sure the bikes could go on the train.  When the 5:30 train arrived we put the bikes on the train with the conductor complaining bitterly about bicilettas.  \”Too big bikes, too small space\”.  He wanted us in the last carriage not the carriage where we got on.  At the next station we got of the train and got back on in the last carriage, he still complained that our bags were too big, but too bad we had tickets to say the bikes were allowed. Apparently regular bikes are allowed but not touring bikes with large panniers.

While we were waiting at the train station, we reserved a place in a hostal near the station. We found the hostal quite easily once we headed in the right direction! We  had a shower in the smallest shower cubicle in the world even I banged my elbows on the side of the cubicle.

Palencia is supposed to be a really nice place to visit but we unfortunately didn’t spend any time there at all except to sleep.

Thursday September 4, 2014

We left Reinosa and continued climbing.  Will we ever go downhill again?  It was quite chilly this morning, but we soon warmed up.  The mist in the hills was very pretty.

We have been following the N611 it is a parallel road to the motorway.  As I mentioned in yesterdays post it is a good wide road with a paved shoulder and no cars on it.  Spain has built new motorways and left their old major highways in place, it is such a quiet road great for us.

The morning mist was soon burnt of by the sun, until we came up another hill where the hills were shrouded in ‘mist’.  No that wasn’t morning mist that was smog.  What a shame, we came over the hill and discovered why it was so smoggy – welcome to your job, welcome to your house and welcome to your smog.

We soon left the “factory” town behind and finally began to swoop downhill like the eagles we were sharing the hills with.  Soaring up and down a great ribbon road.  For non-cyclists a ribbon road is a road that has rolling hills, you swoop down the hill and get all the way or almost all the way up the next rise – lovely road.

As we came into Aguilar de Campoo this castle sat on top of the hill.  This looked as if it could be an interesting Town. We had planned on staying here, but had no idea what it was going to be like.

We arrived in Aguilar de Campoo at 11:30 and found the Tourist office straight away.  It looked as if it was closed, although the opening hours stated it should be open.  I tried the door and yes it was open – saving electricity by not having any lights on!  The young girl was very helpful, but as usual would not call any of the hostals/hotels to see if they had vacancies.  We had to cycle around the Town.  We called the camp site which again was outside of the Town and up another hill, they wanted E28 for the pitch.  We opted for a hotel tonight, breakfast included for E45.

We really wanted to stay in the Town as it had a great history and the brochure the Tourism office gave me showed a walk that we could follow taking in all the main sites and entrances to the Town.   It was a Roman town and had many \”gates\” (entrances) to the town.  One of the quarters of the Town was the old Jewish quarter and the \”gate\” has hebrew writing on it – if you look really close you can still see it on the white stone above the gate.  This is the only remnants left of any Jewish occupation.

The following photos are of Aguillar, which we had no idea was going to be this beautiful or historic.

The main square was a hive of activity at lunchtime.

There are two monasteries in the Town.  Santa Clara houses 45 nuns who make various pastries and breads.  The other is a school and hostel that charges E75 for a night.

Amongst all the history in the town there are some commercial areas.  I loved the way this flower shop advertised.

We broke the budget and had pizza and beer for dinner.

Wednesday September 3, 2014

Certainly built some character today.  My garmin informed me that I had a new personal record for elevation gained.  Thanks garmin I already knew that.  We beat our previous record of 1,210 metres (New Zealand) of climbing by 64 metres.  Elevation gained today was 1,274 metres.  The hills can be hard when you are tiny cyclists with giant panniers.

We were up early and were on the road by 8:30 am.  We knew we had some hills today and wanted to be finished before it got too hot.  That plan didn’t work out.

Our morning ride included 2ks of 7% grade, but a great downhill to Los Corrales de Buelga for a pay off.  We made reasonable time and stopped for lunch in Los Corrales.  We found a café that made sandwiches and we had a baguette.  I was chatting to a policeman in the café who was trying to tell me about the Fiesta that was happening in Los Corrales.  His English was very limited and I thought he was warning me that Los Corrales had the worst crime rate.  What he was saying was the fiesta was a reenactment of a war (Guerra).  I had heard guerillas (bandits)!

After lunch we popped into a bookstore and picked up maps for the next Region and a Spanish/English Phrasebook.  I think we need it.

Our ride in the afternoon started to kick up almost as soon as we left the Town a 5km 5% climb, worse still we didn’t get the pay-off of a downhill.  We just kept climbing, all afternoon.  It was getting hot and I was getting slower, but didn’t get off the bike until we were 4 ks from our destination when the road then kicked up to a 9% grade – lots and lots of character building.

Even with all the climbing the scenery was lovely.  The morning was primarily through farmlands, we heard cowbells as we climbed.  I felt like I was in the Vuelta with supporters cheering me on every hill.  The afternoon was forested and rivers.  We could hear and see the river flowing in the valley, it sounded so cool and refreshing, while we were so hot.

We almost decided to wild camp here, but decided to carry on to Reinosa which was only about 13 kms away.  Once again the highway paralled the road  or went over it or underneath it.  The N roads can be completely devoid of traffic, but have wide shoulders, which is great for us.

We started the day at just under 200 metres elevation and ended it at just over 850 metres elevation.