Puértolas

This morning we were awake at 7:30am. A dog had barked most of the night, the same one that was relentless while we were watching tv last night. And another yappie mutt woke Ellie up in the early hours but I was sound asleep for that.
This morning I wanted to Cycle the Banardas Realas, I had found a route yesterday on the Komoot cycling app and saved it ready for this morning. It looked similar to the route I should have done yesterday and was the same distance of 43km. I hoped I would finish the route properly that we should have done yesterday and get a chance to see some more things.
After loading my bike up with new spare inner tubes and my new tyre lever, bottles and a little food, I finally set off just after 8:30am. I thought I would just be running on tarmac and gravel today passing the visitors centre, the Castildetorro landmark and circling around. The route did point out that the Castildetorro landmark was 32km in to the ride which I thought was odd because it didn’t seem that far when we drove there yesterday. However, we did stop several times before we got to there and maybe my sense of the milage had gone.
I cycled out of the airè in Aguedas and up hill towards the visitors centre. That was about 8km away and as I was on tarmac I pushed myself on the hills for some speed. This ride was estimated to take 3.5 hours. I couldn’t see I would take that long travelling at an average of 25kph. I thought I would knock it out in 2 hours.
Just before I got to the visitors centre the app told me to bare left onto a gravel track. I was a little surprised I was passing the visitors centre but I checked the route and I just thought it was taking me down the bike trails. Which it was.
Atleast to start with.
Around 10km in the gravel turned to clay and as it had rained the day before the clay was like ice, then for the downhill sections it turned to stones and shingle and with thick clay on my tyres it was like riding on marbles. It was sketchy to say the least. Then the route deviated from the well made tracks to completely off road and no tracks atall just a tiny little path. At this point I was slightly concerned where the route was taking me but again I checked and I was on course so I continued. The fact that there were other bike tracks did give me some confidence. Then the track ran out completely, it had been totally washed away by the flooding river so I did my best to follow the course and it took me right down into the canyon.
The track was completely gone but this was the way that someone had come previously to make the route and I was now annoyed because I knew that they had done a route, got lost and uploaded the route anyway.
I checked my distance and I was more than halfway through and obviously whoever made the route eventually found there way out because they got to the Castildetorro so I decided to just go with it and follow the route. It was a nightmare ride for 10km, I was riding over bushes, boulders and zigzagging over what is a river bed over and over again, and parts of had water in.
Finally after 10km of struggle I popped out of the canyon and there was a gravel track in front of me and I could see the Castildetorro about 2 miles away.
I was fuming at the route that I had followed, there’s no way or need for anyone to be riding through a canyon when there are hundreds of cycle tracks throughout the whole park. When I chose the route I specifically chose bike touring so I thought it would all be gravel and tarmac. This was an extreme mountain bike ride for the middle part of the ride. Something I hadn’t wanted to do or expected to do.
I took my anger out on the pedals and thrashed the bike at 40kph to the Castildetorro where I had promised myself a break. Once there I took some photos, sat next to an abandoned house on a concrete bench inlayed into the wall and took 10 minutes to recover. Then I was back on the bike and hammering it home. I was doing a steady 35kph on the flat gravel. Then I turned right onto the tarmac road and past the visitors centre I thought I was passing 2 hours ago and it was a steady 18kph uphill until I reached the final hill and as I went over the brow, I zipped my jacket up and pedalled to maximum velocity. I had just 5km to go and they went by super fast travelling at 60kph almost all of the way. I could see clearly ahead and I had no cars behind so I managed to hold the speed on the bends and push even harder on the straights.
I finally got back to Wanda at 11:30am. Half an hour later than I had expected but the path through the canyon had me down to just above walking speed most of the way.
I hooked my bike back on to Wanda then went in, got changed and sat down and drunk a well needed coffee Ellie had made me.
It was now time to leave Aguedas and head to the Pyrenees on our final push through Spain. Tomorrow we will be back in France and we think the weather will be a little colder. We will miss Spain, it’s amazing historical places, the church bells, signposts that point to nowhere, the free airès, and welcoming culture and the ability to be able to stop and park just about anywhere unless it’s a national park all for free.
We had a 145 mile drive ahead of now and I wasn’t looking forward to it atall after pushing myself this morning, but Ellie wants to keep moving towards home and neither of us want another night with that barking Collie. We were heading to a tiny little town called Escalona, and a road numbered the HU-631. I’ve had this road marked off on google maps for about 4 years ever since I saw the riders on La Vuelta use it back in 2020. Out of all the roads and scenery I’ve seen in all the bike races I have watched this road has always stuck in my mind.
We came here last year when we past through the Pyrenees but the thing is with the HU-631 is it’s a gorge road cut into the side of the mountain and goes down to about 6ft at it’s lowest point so you can’t take anything bigger than a car or motorbike. All big traffic has to take the mountain pass around which is the way we went last year. This time I’m going to cycle it and that’s why we’re heading there.
It was a painstakingly slow but beautiful drive of over 4 hours, as once we reached Huescar and passed into the Pyrenees we left the motorway and followed a small backroad that followed the path of the river for the last 40 miles, we passed through numerous villages and didn’t see any sign of life atall, and for that entire road we only saw 3 other cars. However it was very scenic.
Eventually at 4:30pm we arrived at our camp spot, a small patch of land that is relatively flat right at the entrance to the road I’m going to cycle and away from everyone. The first thing we did when we stopped was make a cup of tea and start dinner as we were both starving.
Quite a few cars have passed us sitting here, and what I thought was a busy road has now turned into a very quiet road so hopefully there won’t be much traffic noise tonight. There is a dog barking somewhere in the distance something that seems to be part of every Spanish town or village. For some reason barking dogs is a big thing out here and nobody seems to care or mind. Hopefully it will be quiet come bedtime, and hopefully the road I’ve had saved in my bucket list is all it’s cracked up to be.Read more