THE SUN! At last we had a nice day and it was perfect. The sky was brilliant blue from horizon to horizon. We hadn't seen such a perfect day since we took a day ride in Bayonne, almost two weeks before.
Getting out of Bilbao was pretty simple after I studied a couple of maps for about 20 minutes. We just had to go the wrong way down a couple of one-way streets.
In a few hours we got a very memorable lesson in Spain's geography.
We started climbing up a long, pretty valley. At first the climb was very shallow. Gradually it got steeper and we got warmer. At a pretty spot along the road we both put on short pants -- for the first time since Nepal. Joan almost put on her Teva sandals. It felt so great to be in warm, dry weather. I felt like I could ride forever in this weather.
Several cyclists passed us, all going the other way (downhill) on road bikes and all dressed to the hilt in lycra.The climb continued. We saw huge mesas in the distance that looked exactly like mesas in New Mexico with steep sides, vertical at the top, and a flat table-top. A cloud poured over the top of one like a slow-motion water fall. It was the only cloud we saw all day and it disappeared about 30 minutes later. At this point we didn't see any more of the fashion conscious rode bikers.
The climb went on. Peaks that had looked really far away were just above us. We had some amazing views looking back down the valley. The pine trees were short and stubby, more like shrubs than trees really. The soil was rocky and dry.
The top of the hill was about 800 meters above sea level. We were all braced for the great descent on the other side but it never came. There was a short descent, very little really, then it flattened out. We descended less than 500 feet over the next 30 kilometers.
The lesson was that the middle of Spain is a high plateau. We will never forget.
The plateau lacked trees. We rode through wide, plowed fields with red soil. It was not at all what we had expected. A mild breeze blew in our faces.
We hadn't passed any towns in quite some time so we were getting rather h
ungry. We stopped at a gas station and chowed down on cookies and potato chips.We stayed the night in Trespadernes. It had one hotel and it was really great for us - cheap and nice.
While we slept clouds came in and in the morning it was raining and cold. We were a little disappointed but the first 10km was so pretty we didn't mind the rain. We went through a very narrow, very deep gorge. We saw lots of rock pillars where the top of the pillar was actually bigger than the middle. At places the gorge was no more than 50 feet wide with hundreds, maybe a thousand feet of steep rock on either side. And somehow the road stayed relatively flat.
(Road note: the road
itself was in very poor condition in the gorge. All the day before we had excellent, newly paved roads. They hadn't gotten around to this section yet.)It rained and stayed cold all morning long. We found some really nice, empty back roads that we loved despite the weather. For lunch we got lucky. We stopped at Poza de la Sal which sits perched halfway up a mountain and found (after several false starts up wrong roads) a very cozy, friendly little bar/cafe with lots of tortillas (like an omelette with potatoes - filling and good) and lots of coffee. T
he best part was that they had a stove on which they TOLD us to stack our wet gloves and hats, etc. By the time we left, our gloves were dry.From there it was a long cold push on into Burgos. Burgos has a lot of history. It was once the capitol of Spain. It has a very impressive, very old cathedral. It's an old center of Castillian culture.
We read all this ahead of time and were anxious to see it. But the way we entered town, all we saw were miles of construction, a shopping mall, lots of new and old apartment buildings. Nothing that looked older than 1970. Stranger still, there was almost no one around.
Finally we found someone, a kind of scary looking guy with a limp, and asked him where the cathedral was. He was quite nice and pointed down the street. The old part of town, about 1500 years older than where we stood, was only about six blocks away.
Next: Miracle Meal in Burgos
