Spring weather in London earlier today. Why do people go abroad huh? We have it all here.Book yourself a well deserved, comfortable seat on a charabanc and get out into the country...or maybe somewhere else.
Prologue
So it's that time of year. Spring puts a spring in your step. So, whip out the atlas and check out a route. Tickets have been bought - in and out of Malaga at £95.50 return each on British Airways from LGW.
A circular route from Malaga to El Chorro then over to Antequera and freestyle from there.
London is not very hilly, mountain ranges are. From Chalk Farm Haverstock Hill rises to Frognal Rise and a sharp bit up to Whitestone Pond and is about two miles of hill. You can't keep doing that all day as people will talk. Also, going back down to start again doesn't count as cycling as you just freewheel.
Taking a bend towards Swiss Cottage
That work out is better than nothing at all. You can go east and do Muswell Hill and Ally Pally, both short and sweet like those opposites down around Sydenham and Crystal Palace. Shoot Up Hill, named after a very short gunslinger, is hardly worth the effort, while Shooters Hill Road, on the other hand, is steep. They are all, however, main roads and packed tight with cars, red lorries, yellow lorries, etc. So it's either that or just circuits of your local park, or, failing that, your local car park. Parks are full of all kinds of traffic - joggers, skaters, other cyclists and those darned pedestrians wandering all over the place. Even worse are the dopey air head Sunday cyclists who drift from one side of the cycle path to the other.
'Out of my way, t***ers!'
The trick is to get used to being in the saddle for longer periods of time to extend your endurance. Throw in a hill at the end for a laugh. Do a few miles in the evening with a couple of 25 or 30 miles outings at the weekend. Just watch those thighs grow!
he thighs are bulging. I look disproportional; an ill fitting photo-fit. There is a month to go. D and I have met our companion to be, L, who will land at Malaga an hour after we do. She has cycled across her native US, deploying the wild camping option and generally doing it large. She cheerfully recounted the story of her altitude induced lightheadedness as she crossed The Rockies. Her bike is in the post.
My mileage hit the 100 mark last week with two trips out to High Barnet and Enfield and monotonous circuits of the park. Cycling the suburbs of London is not as dull as it sounds. There are hills, all manner of buildings, parks, farms, cultures, communities and mile upon mile of dainty terraced, semis and detached houses. Charles Holden's tube stations seem to have landed from outer space.
On both occasions I cycled The Bishops Avenue where houses start at £5million. On the second, I cycled along Beech Hill in Hadley Wood. If you have ever wondered where all the money is...
The butterflies are emerging from their chrysalides and excitement is beginning to tickle my fancy. It is now that the important matters are broached, the big decisions are made, the hard choices are chosen. It is time to go shopping. It is time for Bits and Bobs. We have our bikes, our tents, our stuff. What we need now is those little extras. I quite like these:
The epitome of cool. The enigma smouldering behind the smoked glass: who are they watching? what are they thinking? what drives them?
Choices, choices.
The neat, clear map I had gave no warning of the muscle sapping relentless hills of the previous day. L also had a brake problem on her bike that, combined with her reluctance to fly down 's' bends like a suicidal lunatic, slowed her down. In terms of time it wasn't that big an issue but it meant more stopping and starting on top of the miscellaneous other stopping and starting and the consequent lack of rhythm. But more of an issue was the heat. There was very little wind to dissipate the similarly relentless heat. We decided that Granada and beyond was too far and would be too painful.
But there was the West. There was a route from Malaga to Ronda that would compensate. First we'd pop over to Alhama de Granada then back around to Malaga.
We had met Tom, another Dutchman, at El Chorro. He was very similar to a Dutchman we'd met last year who would recount his latest mileage then laugh, and then talk about his extraordinary route onwards and laugh. Tom had a good laugh when he arrived at this campsite. D had told him how long it had taken from El Chorro and windows shook, trees bent, birds took flight as Tom's guffawing resounded around the valley. 'It wus so eecee, ha.' What D neglected to tell him how we got here. When I told him, his face sank: he had indeed taken the easy, short route, while we'd taken on the tougher alternative .
First up the big hill, fun coming down at breakneck speed, but we got back up it in only 40 minutes, then sped down in to Villa Neuva. What we'd walked in an hour took 5 minutes to get down. 
Then I took the wrong road. We should have been on a yellow road. The road we were on was two lane, with white lines down the middle and sides - it looked like your run of the mill yellow road - yet it turned out to be just a 'white' road on the map. So I missed the turn to go east over a ridge and, instead, we carried on south. This was a nice ride but we needed to double back. After cycling down the steepest road ever built we made the decision to go back to Malaga and then onto Ronda over the next three days.
The campsites near the Med have been there for thousands and thousands of years. Camping was invented by the Mesopotamians, largely as a response to high hotel charges in resorts. They have been rebuilt over the millenia. There were Iron Age campsites - lots of iron everywhere, then the Bronze Age but it was the Romans who left the biggest mark on campsites as it was their wont to make everything out of stone and mortar. You will note the straightness of the pitches - in a line - yes, the Romans did that for us on top of everything else they did. And nowadays, as one arrives at a campsite, particularly cream-crackered, we are faced with penultimate of the day's challenges of driving alloy tent pegs into hard, stoney ground. The final challenge is sleeping on it. I have tried those self-inflating mats, the ones that unfortunately don't self-deflate. What an invention. Imagine a TV you can't turn off - or a lawn mower. At 9am in campsites all over the world, frustrated campers try all manner of means to deflate their non-self-deflating mats. It is a morning ritual like Tai Chi except it brings out the anger. Mats fly, hurled over hedges. You lie on it, roll on it - all the time in fear of hearing that dreaded sound - the sound of it re-self-inflating. Why can't they make bike tyres like that? Surely it is against some natural law? Forget them, they are the betamax of airbeds. I'm going for one of these: Light, straightfoward and £9.99 down at Millets.
or this one for fancy-pants types. The Thermarest neosomethingorother at £75 or more. Don't wear yellow, someone might sit on you.
The epitome of cool. The enigma smouldering behind the smoked glass: who are they watching? what are they thinking? what drives them?Then beyond cool...the Xanadu, the Acme, Nirvana, the penthouse of 'it', the 99th floor of cool...the helmet.
Choices, choices.4.40am and I am freewheelin' down Park Lane with a fresh breeze on my face and the scent of Hyde Park wafting about.
An hour later and D and I enter the check-in hall at Gatwick. We are about to use the check-in machines when L from BA appears as if by magic, armed with her walkie-talkie set to stun and a smiling, beguiling henchman. Gently but firmly she tells us that the bikes are not going on the plane like that - in bags - because of BA's new policy. It's a killer blow. The other L will be airborne by now and we will be back on the train into London, our bikes between our legs, contemplating humiliation. She'll have to do it all by herself. I ask her what can we do? She says we can buy a box on the level below. I go down to a concession that does big baggage up like a kipper. A box? "We only got one, £17.50," says box man. But he has a bulky item shrink wrapper type thing at £5 a pop. I go back to L and tell her. I say, surely we can get it wrapped up. She calls N at excess baggage. She describes our plastic bags, she says, "yes, the pedals are off." N, hero, has told her our bikes can go. Good old BA.
The bikes were in one piece. This excited me so much I pumped my back tyre a bit too eagerly and had to change it. It was 1 O'clock. We got a text from L - her flight was late leaving Amsterdam so she'd missed the connection and would be on a flight due into Malaga at 5.
El Chorro - what a crack.
We carried on up a valley full of pine to the lakes, all part of the Guadalhorce river basin and man made for the thirsty coast and orange groves.
D and I cycled down to the sea, popping, on the way, into the cathedral for outdoor pursuitists, Decathlon. Aisle upon aisle of gear; gorgeous, lovely, shiny, sporty gear. They need a campsite inside as you can't gorge yourself on it in just one day. I bought an inflatable pillow and left.
I rediscovered my taste for continental coffee - café con lecche - as we sat in the shade watching the fishermen fling their lugworms or whatever into the churned sand of the grey blue sea.
We returned to the aeroporto, which if you are on bicycles, is quite treacherous to get to and from and you can't take a bike on the airport train. The aeroporto is hemmed in by a three lane dual carriage way that has to be used to get to Malaga. To the west, though, there is a sneaky route around a golf course that can get you to Torremolinas but still involves the hairy dual carriageway that provides access to said aeroporto. Change of underwear roads.
Here we met 63 year old A, an ex right-back in the Israeli national side, who was cycling from Gibraltar to Nord Cap - well, he would have been had his bike arrived with him. His flight had come from Madrid and his mislaid bike was now supposedly on the same flight as L. The arrivals board showed that flight to be 35 minutes late. She arrived at our bike rebuilding spot at 5.45. After faffing about we left the terminal at 7. 'A' would be spending the night at Malaga as his bike failed to make that flight as well.
What a palava
I had figured on making it to El Chorro - 35 miles north - had we gotten away on time. Now we had just enough light to make to Alora. We picked up what would be the regular supply of goodies for each night: pasta or rice, tomatoes, onion and tuna and couple bottles of vino. Despite the heavy groceries we made good time to Alora to find that there was no campshite. We'd have to get to El Chorro afterall and in the dark.
The road to El Chorro at night
El Chorro revealed itself in the bright morning - a massive sheer rock face hung above the campsite and the adjacent reservoir. We ate eggs at the campsite bar run by a dutch biker who liked to have loud guitar music on the sound system first thing - 'I like de bloos' he confirmed, as we entered the twenty-fifth minute of a guitar solo.
We had a choice of routes out of El Chorro - directly east through a valley, or, a circular trip of 20 miles around the lakes - as recommended by the dutch bloke. We took the latter. We left, passing over the dam and around the lake in full view of the gorge that El Chorro is famed for। An unbelievably precarious pathway clings to the sheer face. D had wanted to walk but I had no interest in bringing up my eggs.
We had a choice of routes out of El Chorro - directly east through a valley, or, a circular trip of 20 miles around the lakes - as recommended by the dutch bloke. We took the latter. We left, passing over the dam and around the lake in full view of the gorge that El Chorro is famed for। An unbelievably precarious pathway clings to the sheer face. D had wanted to walk but I had no interest in bringing up my eggs.
We carried on up a valley full of pine to the lakes, all part of the Guadalhorce river basin and man made for the thirsty coast and orange groves.
The trip around to the lakes called for many photo ops so we were on and off our bikes like triathletes with diarrhea. All kinds of posing and directing meant we dawdled to the pretty hamlet of Pantano del Chorro before heading back east on a 'white' road. These 'white' roads were simply ungraded roads on my Michelin Map. While the care and attention was given to good representation of major roads - twists and turns and gradients, the 'white' roads gave just approximations of their nature.
This particular 'white' road, on its way to the A343 was full of severe inclines and nasty bends. This disparity with the map should have been a warning. We got off that road and had a nice descent into Valle de Abdalajais where we stuffed our faces on whitebait and fries.
We left there and took another innocuous looking 'white' road to heading to Villanueva De La Conception. Not a tourist road so why bother indicating the knackering, muscle draining, head spinning, soul destroying hills on this road. Going up one long hill then going down the other side getting into a campshite was one thing, going up a long hill then down then up then down then up etc etc really does your head in and your stamina. We eventually got to the top of the hill having passed through quaint little mountain villages such as La Torre and it was getting late on in the afternoon. Villanueva was turning into Shangri La. I kept geeing everyone up with 'we're nearly there,' etc when I had no right to, and by constantly referring to the fantastic amenities of the campsite we were headed for.
We eventually arrived in the town, exhausted. We hurriedly ransacked the little supermercado and loaded ourselves down with goodies and jollied up for the 3 km to the campsite.
But we were informed that there wasn't a campsite there. The campsite was 12km away and not just any old 12 km. I looked at my sheet of addresses and indeed I had messed up: we were on the wrong side of El Torcel - a massive ridge of 1300m. L was knackered, D was dizzy and nauseous and I was oblivious. A local cyclist said there was some sort of camping area 4km away but it was not a campsite and it was up a tough climb of 350m up a bendy hot road. Spirits fell away like an England team's World Cup hopes. We walked - struggled - courageously up waiting for the camping area to appear. Before it did though, the road got flatter, and we were by now in the shade of El Torcel. D had got his guts back and sped on leaving L and I cycling along slowly. We passed the camping area - a table and a patch of patchy grass - but D had gone on. L wanted to stop, I mumbled that we should carry on and catch up with D who we found waving down a motorist who confirmed that we were at the top and that the campsite was down the other side. We hit the other side and an extreme downhill rollercoaster ride of 7km and hit 35mph, leaving L way behind. The campsite, the real one with its fancy amenities, waited for us at the bottom of the downhill. L eventually appeared. We dragged ourselves to the stony pitches and put our tents up in silence. I was totally spent. L helped me fix my broken tent pole. L went off for a shower while D and I confided in our guilt at having gone too far and of having left L behind. We were going to cook for her and make it alright, oh yes! Instead she came back glowing and so we hit the bar stuffed our faces and got drunk. We also decided to stay put spend the next day enjoying the campsite's pool.
Today started off picture perfect and finished with a bit of rough and tumble between the three musketeers. It was new ground.
On the previous trips D didn't have a camera other than his mobile fern. He did however do some very nice quick sketches.
Shepherd with hat and animal
On the other hand I have always been well-equipped.
However this year, D was in possession of a fancy digital box of tricks. Gone are the days when you took a couple of 24 shot films and an Instamatic. You got home, sent them off to Torquay, eagerly waited three days to find out that you your thumb was in every picture. But now, both of us had massive memory cards capable of storing several hundred pictures of complete rubbish. Back in the good old bad old days you had to make an effort with your valuable snap. Anyhow, D was like a kid with a new toy and constantly stopped for additions to his picture diary.
The neat, clear map I had gave no warning of the muscle sapping relentless hills of the previous day. L also had a brake problem on her bike that, combined with her reluctance to fly down 's' bends like a suicidal lunatic, slowed her down. In terms of time it wasn't that big an issue but it meant more stopping and starting on top of the miscellaneous other stopping and starting and the consequent lack of rhythm. But more of an issue was the heat. There was very little wind to dissipate the similarly relentless heat. We decided that Granada and beyond was too far and would be too painful.
But there was the West. There was a route from Malaga to Ronda that would compensate. First we'd pop over to Alhama de Granada then back around to Malaga.
We had met Tom, another Dutchman, at El Chorro. He was very similar to a Dutchman we'd met last year who would recount his latest mileage then laugh, and then talk about his extraordinary route onwards and laugh. Tom had a good laugh when he arrived at this campsite. D had told him how long it had taken from El Chorro and windows shook, trees bent, birds took flight as Tom's guffawing resounded around the valley. 'It wus so eecee, ha.' What D neglected to tell him how we got here. When I told him, his face sank: he had indeed taken the easy, short route, while we'd taken on the tougher alternative .
Tom finding something funny
Tom finding something else funny
Then I took the wrong road. We should have been on a yellow road. The road we were on was two lane, with white lines down the middle and sides - it looked like your run of the mill yellow road - yet it turned out to be just a 'white' road on the map. So I missed the turn to go east over a ridge and, instead, we carried on south. This was a nice ride but we needed to double back. After cycling down the steepest road ever built we made the decision to go back to Malaga and then onto Ronda over the next three days.We followed a yellow A7075 past a lake and dried up river beds until things started to flatten out, becoming more built up and we were in the
outskirts of Malaga.
We were heading towards the A404 and a campsite as I described as being 'somewhere along it.' The map was very vague when it came to campsites, though probably not as vague as me. I had seen the campsite on google earth so it was there, really.
Getting to the A404 itself was a challenge, First we had to cut through vast deserted high rise housing
estates and once through those we had to to take a 'white' road that cut a diagonal across to the A404.
On our previous two trips, D and I had always conspired to find ourselves having to cut through some dodgy urban wasteland.
This road got dustier and dustier, passed an old factory, some shanty town like dwellings, over the railway then it turned into a bumpy earthen track as it descended to a ford over the Guadalahorce River.
By now we were at the north west end of Malaga airport and had the uneasy felling that we hadn't got very far at all in the last three days. L and D
hesitated as I trundled over the ford. This crossing was on the map, so I knew where we were, but the map hadn't described it as a ford.
The others followed and we continued through the airport extension's construction site until we found the hard road again.
By now it was getting late. We hadn't stopped for food so we had no provisions or drink as we set off along the A404. We were all tiring as the evening got hotter and the road just carried on and on. We stopped an extremely unhelpful cyclist who thought he was being extremely helpful by telling us that we were not on the A404. F*ck him: we scratched our heads and carried on.
We eventually found the Morales/MontParc campsite, down a turn-off a mile west on from a big roundabout where the A404 meets the A366. It was run, like many campsites, by English ex pats. This was very cheap - 22 euro for 3, and we got there just in time to buy goodies, water and a load of booze.
I don't like some things. Sometimes I can be a thorny, impatient, curmudgeon prone to fidgeting, sighing, tutting and all the other annoying mannerisms employed to communicate that you are not intending to 'join in'.
And so it came to pass that The Three Muppeteers here required wholesome nourishment and warm wet liquid. This feast of food for the soul was to counteract the hangover acquired, by accident, the night before. So three English breakfasts with tea were ordered and consumed. It then came to pass that certain subjects required discussion - how to beget a woman, and, the various qualities of men who'd done the begetting. There were some graphic descriptions of certain aspects of begetting used to provide a fuller image of the said acts. The English owners of the on-site cafe were sat a few yards away and did their best to ignore the imagery of begetting.
Then onto Coin. L and D bought food while I looked after the bikes under the watchful gaze of some local youf who may or may not have been planning to relieve us of some of our gear. We found an unremarkable alley way to act as our picnic area and proceeded to fart about for a couple hours doing very little. I fancied a change of scene and caught the news in a bar - by that I mean I looked at the pictures and guessed what had happened - AF447 went down in the sea somewhere between Brazil and West Africa.
We left the campsite at 8.00 the earliest we'd got going so as to bit hard into the road to El Burgo. No messing. 23 miles to Ronda.
We flew there in the cool morning and indulged in café con lecche before facing the mammoth hill over to Ronda.
El Burgo hanging in the morning.
8.30 is not a good time for me. I need to get used the light, the sounds, the general vibe of the new day. I need to smell the coffee gradually. So any little distraction from that process is met
with fieriness. L and I managed to have a little disagreement about the whereabouts of some fruit she had bought the previous day. I raised my voice and that was the end of the discussion. It would be a long time before L spoke to me again that day.
The road didn't hang about. It was straight into business climbing 400 metres in around 5 miles. The views were good. I stopped off to take it all in and decided I had to let it all out. There is something about just dropping your shorts and leaving one in the wilds. But, always make sure you keep a stash of napkins in those panniers.
A366 from El Burgo to Ronda.
It was a testing climb but it was only 10am and the sun was pleasant.
The night became just another night with plenty of campo cruz.
I was awoken in the middle of the night - the wind had picked up and the tents rustled and shook.
D and I, returned after pulling a few schoolboy pranks on our bikes, to find L no better, though she had adjourned into her tent, which could pass off as a fan assisted oven. Reception provided an address for a medical centre. We packed up the gear and tents and found the medics. They applied some ointment and didn't charge. We got to the station to pick up a train back to Malaga.
This was a drag as we wanted to get to a campsite west of Malaga and heading into the city meant coming out on the various motorways which was nuts. Anyway it took us through the ravines of El Chorro. L went on to rendezvous with a guy called Yeast. She and the Lorne sausage were heading to Morocco.
We eventually left as even the sun put its hat and shades on as well as a sensible loose-fitting, cotton shirt. We trundled towards Coin along the A404. A developing sub plot was the state of L's back. She and I had not put on sunblock on the first day: L was peeling and blistering. In Alhaurin el Grande we picked up extra factor 30 though it was a case of shutting the gate after the horse had bolted. Alhaurin el Grande had a novel way of dealing with the unforgiving summer sun - it covered parts of the town in sheets of blue tarpaulin.
Cool blue
Then onto Coin. L and D bought food while I looked after the bikes under the watchful gaze of some local youf who may or may not have been planning to relieve us of some of our gear. We found an unremarkable alley way to act as our picnic area and proceeded to fart about for a couple hours doing very little. I fancied a change of scene and caught the news in a bar - by that I mean I looked at the pictures and guessed what had happened - AF447 went down in the sea somewhere between Brazil and West Africa.
Again I got an attack of the fidgets and huffed and puffed while the other two took it easy. We had to make Yunquera 18 miles away - not just any old 18 miles, but 4 mile an hour kind 18 miles. The road to Alozaina went up then down and up and down and up and down which is very hard work in a tough sun. The downhill bits are irrelevant; if you go up and down 4 x 300 metre hills you've climbed 1200m - going downhill does not restore what you lost getting up. The big difference between this relatively low land and the Alps was that if you had a hill/col to climb in the Alps, that's what you did - you went up it then down the other side. In Spain, going up a hill meant going up and down several hills, gradually getting higher. So, the BP garage at Alozaina stood at 370m, Coin at 160m. From Coin the A366 went down 60m up 100m down 60m, up 40, down 25, up 65, down 20, up 170m. A total climb of 385m. We reconvened at the BP garage as I had lagged behind. We met a cheery guy from Suffolk, and got directions to the campsite in Yunquera. I must have had three cans of pop at the garage, on top of the best part of a litre of agua. Thirsty work, Dennis. But that wasn't even just the half of it. We had 6 and a bit miles to cover. Even Drive-alive routeplanner reckons this will take quarter of an hour in a car -25mph. Yunquera stood at 660m - the Suffolk man said they got snow there - another 285m. And so it went: up 95m down 25, up 115 down 25, up 25 down 60, up 60 down 70, up 80 down 20, up 100. A 475 climb in all. I was *ucking knackered. But the campsite was there. We asked in the town, just to be sure before we stocked up. It was just over there - reassuring nods of the head, waves of the hand, kindly smiles. For a change they all pointed in the same direction and so, for a change, the campsite was actually where it was supposed to be. So we picked up food from a variety of little shops - good wine, pasta, tomato puree, fruit, some fizzy pop to mix with the wine and even some yogurts for well-earned snack. We had climbed 860m in about three hours in the boiling heat. Needless to say, we were all extremely hot, sweaty and sticky - and that was just our lycra-wrapped crotches. Happily weighed down with the goodies, we cycled through the town towards the site planning our evening's bar crawl as Yunquera was a pretty little place. Before no time at all there was the sign - not a sign saying a further 12 km - but a sing announcing the site: it was around the corner and opposite a football ground and we had a ball so we could have a knock about too. Ups and downs all day. Paradise all round. And the biggest downer of them all? The campsite was shut, locked up good and proper.
The sense of disappointment and despair, the sudden awareness that you are cloaked in an impenetrable layer of scuzzy scum that ain't going no place soon, the hurrying dusk, the chance of a relaxing evening straight out the window, the uneasy feelings, the no-place-else-to-go feelings. These would have meant something had we not been in a large village with ample hotel rooms. However, the nearest campsite was a ubiquitous camping area 8 km up a bumpy windy hilly mountain sheep trail for nutters who like midges and dumping behind trees. D said we should jump the fence and pitch tents. I love it when D gets all Alpha. L agreed with him. I suggested the hotel option, but these two wanted the character building challenge of jumping the gate. We parked the bikes up outtasight and passed the gear through a hole in the fence. As this was going on a little dog spied upon us. This didn't seem to be one of the dogs that belonged to the howling pack in a house on a hill at the back. The campsite was one of the best as it harboured grass and moist earth. Though I also suggested we bed down in the toilet block that was open. Again my idea was poo-pooed - this time because the Alpha team were scared of what might scurry around in the middle of the night. We all got cozy, putting up the tents according to the Scaredy Pants Pitch Scheme. I envisaged lawless village vigilantes taking the law in their own hands as they might well have done in the Spanish Civil War when they captured some International Brigade Soldiers and hung them with piano wire. I looked around at the trees - all a perfect lynching height. The chiding howls of the pack of dogs accompanied our tenting. Was that bark nearer?! Was that snarl coming from behind the washing-up block?! So the tents all faced one another in a close knit, three-sided circle. We slid into our flimsy tubes and hit the sack. I could hear the air passing through D's nostrils, I could hear L's pulse. They could hear me hearing them. I was instantly stuck to my sleeping bag. I was trying to sleep in cling film. I just had the mosquito flap done up to lay on my back looking at the stars. We told stories to keep the fear away. Stories of our most embarrassing moments - these, in the main, featured a toilet and what we had managed to leave in one. Before long the stories stopped and I was left with the sky. There were sounds - whooshes; sudden frantic choruses from Dog Pack; and the worst sound of them all, the sound feared by campers throughout the world, worse than the sound of a non self-deflating, self-inflating sleeping mat re-self inflating. The sound that can etch fear on to a face so deep it stays there. People will remark in pub, restaurant or washing up block - "Look at his face! What happened to him?! It must have been horrible!" Yes that sound, the universal pants filler: The rustle. All those things that go bump in the night - if you listen carefully, they rustle beforehand.
It was a sleepless night. I was too hot, I was too cold. My sticky, dusty, sweat adhered me to my bag. The Dog Pack did howl. The wind swirled about the tent, shadows got bigger then smaller as the nylon billowed then shrank. The stars - The Plough, the Big Dipper, The Teapot (my own invention) spread across the sky, keeping me awake by its sheer enormity. The sky eventually greyed. It was 5.30. It blued; it was 6.30. I jumped out of bed ready to roll. I put on the stove for tea as the other two stirred and, like imagi, crawled from their pupae. I stumbled about, not quite awake. Something wasn't quite right. Things were not quite as we left them the night before.
Things had moved. My sandal was near the road. One of my boots was in the next pitch. One of D's sandals had also moved. D and L both suggested that the dog had had a night of it. What Dog? The dog. D then did an impression of the dog enjoying a sandal, then a boot. I almost wet myself.
We flew there in the cool morning and indulged in café con lecche before facing the mammoth hill over to Ronda.
El Burgo hanging in the morning.with fieriness. L and I managed to have a little disagreement about the whereabouts of some fruit she had bought the previous day. I raised my voice and that was the end of the discussion. It would be a long time before L spoke to me again that day.
The road didn't hang about. It was straight into business climbing 400 metres in around 5 miles. The views were good. I stopped off to take it all in and decided I had to let it all out. There is something about just dropping your shorts and leaving one in the wilds. But, always make sure you keep a stash of napkins in those panniers.A366 from El Burgo to Ronda.
It was a testing climb but it was only 10am and the sun was pleasant.We got to the top of a hill but by now I was equal to the map and told the other two there was a further schlepp around the bend.
This schlepp being one of those that is not too
steep but just goes on and on.
The top was only 1000m but tough enough.
And, in the distance Ronda. The road there was newly resurfaced so we clocked 35 or so.
Ronda took 15 minutes to get to down the empty, breezy road from the 1000m top. In Ronda, we got snarled up in the town's traffic and narrow, sun-baked streets. The signs to the El Sur campsite led us on a right old merry go round, or was it just my declining sense of direction. The town is a town of two halves - the non descript modern bit and the old town stuck either side of the famous gorge. Tourist prices and tourist service a way away from the friendly warmth of the countryside. We found a supermercado and stocked up as per usual before heading out of town for El Sur. If you're going that way - and it's worth it though the ground is like concrete - go over the famous bridge, heading south and keep on the A369 down the hill and out of town through a village and pick up the sign posts. As we rounded a bend a firmly shut iron gate looked ominous but, a hundred yards on, there was the ornate entrance to El Sur. Nice place, good pool, good ablutions block. The bar is good for alcohol and coffee but the food was pricey.
I was awoken in the middle of the night - the wind had picked up and the tents rustled and shook.
It is amazing alcohol - combined with sunfried brains. L had been living through a nightmarish scenario with her sun burned back. It had progressed from lobster pink to a peeling raw blistered mess. It looked more like undercooked Lorne sausage than human flesh. Of course I didn't tell her that. She had obviously had an uncomfortable night tossing and turning what with the wind and so her t-shirt had affixed itself to said peeling mess, both then drying, welded together.
I persuaded her to get into the shower to wet her back and peel the shirt off - so that we could apply some sensible ointment, or, as was the case, D and I could go off into Ronda and have a nice cup of café con lecche and a fancy sandwich and take a bunch of pitchers. We left L, her back drying off in a cool breeze in the shade beneath a pine.
D and I, returned after pulling a few schoolboy pranks on our bikes, to find L no better, though she had adjourned into her tent, which could pass off as a fan assisted oven. Reception provided an address for a medical centre. We packed up the gear and tents and found the medics. They applied some ointment and didn't charge. We got to the station to pick up a train back to Malaga.The barefaced fact of the matter was that in the whole darned week we never made it out of the holding area for Malaga Airport. Whatever time of day, whether up hill or down dale, we could look up and see an easyjet or whatever on its approach. D and I had gleefully looked down upon this landscape from the plane as we came into Malaga, thinking it was a doddle. That said, we knocked up 170 miles, and several blinding hills, albeit not 2500m climbs that, in that weather, would have been suicidal.
So, taking the train back to Malaga was no big shakes, just practical and scenic - honest.
We had to change at Bobadilla as they were not many through trains from to Malaga. We took seats in the breezy compartment as the train didn't hurry too much through the plains and olive groves. The bikes were stuffed in the guard's van. A short wait at Bobadilla then on the non -stop train to Malaga.
L was some adventurer, though she wasn't taking the bike.
D and I took the bike path towards Torremolinos but, before long, we were sucked onto a three-lane motorway. We hurtled past the Aeroporto dragged along by the tailwind from trucks and stuff. I took us on a waste of time detour to try and find another way that only led us back onto the highway from hell. Then all of a sudden, as if by magic, we happened upon a campsite nestled amongst slip roads. It was so far from the sea it may as well have been in Kazakhstan or at least Rugby.
168 miles
