Leon – Ponferrada
124.3km, 9hrs 17mins, 1725m total
climb
We left the little
apartment after a box of cereal and coffees. Who said you need a
varied diet!
We followed the
route back through Leon again, seeing more or less the same sights as
we did yesterday. The first section was more or less flat, taking
some main road routes up towards the hills, a gentle gradient all
morning. We stopped off in a small town called hospital de Orgibo to
have an early lunch of some of our Chorizo, cheese and rocket
sandwiches on rye flatbread (ooooh get us). It was apparently the
oldest hospital on the route. It looks like a church but was set up
hundreds of years ago to fix broken pilgrims on their way to
Santiago. There are quite a lot of them on the route. The small
village was preparing for some festivities, hanging out ribbons and
banners over all of the main streets of the town. It was a main sight
on the Compostella, and another of those towns that did not exists
before the pilgrims route came. There were a lot of other pilgrims,
but again the only other cyclists were Spanish guys riding in teams,
almost always wearing team colours, riding mountain bikes with no
luggage. We felt smug and hoped to pass the ones who left before us
later on :)
After 50km or so
we started climbing just after a town called Astorga. We stopped for
an espresso coffee there in the sun and took a couple of pictures of
the big cathedral. We listened to a group of about-town older Spanish
ladies having a 'chat' in the same cafe outside the bus station where
we sat. I admit we didn't understand a word of it, but I honestly
thought a fight was about to break out with the amount of raised
voices, over-talking and wagged fingers. The only bit we got was the
familiar 'no no no no no!' of disagreement, which concurred with the
opponent debators end of statement each time. Heated.
We also saw quite
a few shady pilgrims coming out of the bus station and sheepishly
scurrying off before anyone noticed!
Going up into the
hills we were treated to some great views back down over the
landscape and the weather even stayed good for most of it. The only
problem was the blasted wind again. On the open straights we
sometimes felt like we were on a conveyor belt such was the
difference in forward velocity versus effort exerted.
I having a whinge
today (what's new you may ask), but another thing we see a lot of is
the defacement of the road signs which are in Spanish, to revert them
back to the 'proper' way of spelling for the region – Basque. The
languages are similar, at least for place names and such, mostly J's
are reverted to X's as the Basque language prefers, sometimes the
Spanish words are just deleted. You also see a lot of large white
lettered slogans on the road surface, usually demanding separatism
for the Basque country or for 'Leon Solo' or other separatist
requests or threats. Today however, we saw a succession of signs
freshly modified to correctly spell the Basque town or direction.
Nicely done in a diamond black gloss spray, even quite tidy compared
to some other attempts. For 10km's or so they had got every sign.
Well done we thought. Then the corpus delicti. The next sign was on a
long straight and was simply a symbolic message showing a Stag deer
jumping into the path of a car and a warning symbol. This sign had
also been modified by the diligent
Basque-separatist-gloss-black-paint-preferring artist who thought
another strong message conveying the impending 'Revolucion'
was to draw a big cock and balls on the Stag, and for good measure a
big steamy dump coming out of the Stag's behind. Since then we don’t
take any of the graffiti seriously. They should get something better
to do, or just write the usual inane remarks instead of pretending
to have some important political agenda.
We enjoyed the
long climb up to 1500m and stopped at a cafe at 50 metres climb or so
from the summit. Just as we finished our drinks the weather got bad.
We waited a little while to see if it would clear but it was getting
worse. One guy was walking outside past the window and we noticed
that the rain was actually snow as it was sticking to his jacket!
There were a group of lycra clad Spanish middle aged mountain bikers
getting ready to brave it. We had to sneak a picture of these guys to
show how very seriously they were taking it. They headed out about 15
mins before us. They even had a support bus! Before we left, the two
young Spanish guys from a couple of days ago arrived at the Cafe
also. We spoke to them again and they seemed to be perturbed by the
fact a) we were still in front of them, and b) that we had started in
Prague. We wondered if we would see them again as we wished them luck
and headed out into the weather.
We ploughed on and
made it up and over the top of the summit and on to the next little
summit. It was very atmospheric and nice to push in this kind of
weather. We then glimpsed the group of Spanish guys who left before
us who must have made a stop with their support van, or had been
going very slowly. We crawled passed them, in 2nd or 3rd
gears giving the thumbs up as we passed. They looked surprised. I was
giggling to myself at the thought of Johanna passing them with a
friendly 'Hola!' with her massive panniers with the little
love-hearts on them and her big Nikon camera bag swinging around her
neck, wearing shorts.
On the start of
the downhill, we were flagged down by a German pelerin who was
distraught as he couldn't find the Auberge that he was supposed to
stay in. He had gone 4km the other way and turned around as he didn’t
find it. We couldn’t really help as he didn’t have an address or
GPS coordinates. As we were speaking to him the Spanish group came
caught up, minus a couple of members by now. I think they must have
had a couple of slow coaches that didn't make the grade. They helped
him a bit but he still wasn't convinced. The town actually was on the
same road, we passed it maybe 7km later on, but we had no way of
letting him know. We should have taken his phone number. I hope he
found it. The Spanish guys warned us that there was a steep and
dangerous descent on the other side of this mountain.
We passed the
Spanish guys again on the way down, they had stopped for a break.
We got to the tiny
campsite after 7pm and pitched up. There was one tiny shop in the
village or the option of a hotel on the main road that would do a
menu del dias. We opted for the shop as it was late and it would be
cheaper. 10 Euros got us pasta, tomato passata, onion, green pepper,
100g of excellent chorizo sausage and a few beers and some coke. We
found a covered spot in the quiet campsite and really enjoyed our
dinner.
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| Astorga's cathedral |
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| Please note: very serious cyclists in the background |
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