Aranda to Pedraza

In addition to the Spanish phrase "mal tiempo" (bad weather), I soon learned "muy frio" (very cold) and "mucho viento" (lots of wind).

Overnight the weather had turned nasty. Really nasty. It was cold, raining and worst of all a powerful, constant wind blew from the west. We headed primarily south out of Burgos, but anytime the road turned the least bit southwest, we slowed to a creep.

It was unpleasant just being outside in that weather, let alone trying to get somewhere. We sheltered in the lee of old churches and shacks when we stopped to rest.

We followed very small backroads with almost no traffic. The very small towns we went through appeared completely deserted. Everyone was sensibly inside.

I don't remember much of what I saw except wind. I regret not being able to photograph the wind. I was hoping to find a pigeon that had being forced through a two-by-four, or a piece of straw stuck through a steel mailbox like an arrow but I guess the wind wasn't quite that strong.

We climbed a lot of hills that day as we approached the foothills of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains. Our final altitude was 300 meters higher than where we had started in Aranda.

The bright spot of a long hard, wet day was lunch - lots of sausage, cheese and hot coffee in a town called Uruenas (located just this side of Pluto). They look at you funny in Spain when you order hot coffee with olives etc. (You are supposed to eat olives with beer, not coffee) but we were cold and damp. The hell with normality.

We ended that day at Sepulveda. (You must heavily accent the 'u' or no one understands you when you say the town.) It's located on top of a dramatic cliff at the confluence of two rivers. The houses and churches cling picturesquely to the hills.

The town caters to tourists and we saw a couple in the plaza as we rode in. I thought that in Europe we would blend in a little more than in Asia. But I was wrong. The other tourists, like us, were wearing bright colored clothes and coats with words like "Goretex" and "North Face." They amble through the plazas instead of walk. We can pick 'em out easy as crabs in a plate of paella.

There weren't enough tourists in Sepulveda that night. We were the only guests at our hotel and the town was ultra quiet. We stepped into a couple bars. Each had two or three large local men in heavy dark coats planted several feet apart at the bar, drinking. It was like they were at their workstations. When we opened the door, they turned and stared. Not particularly welcoming. I thought for a second we had interrupted something but I don't think anything was going on to interrupt.

About 7:30 we found a place that looked pretty good for dinner. We were rather hungry. But they didn't start serving any food (even simple sandwiches) until 8:30. So we got beers and waited.

This happened a lot in the little towns of Spain. We'd arrive around 5 p.m. and be ready for a big meal by at least 7 p.m., if not earlier. But dinner time here isn't until around nine or even 10 p.m. (Actually, the biggest meal of the day in Spain is lunch, and it's usually eaten around 2:30 or 3 p.m.)

Fortunately in the larger towns we could get tapas (snacks like sandwiches) any time.

In the morning there was a light dusting of snow, a fierce wind, and two bummed cyclists. Actually we kept a pretty good mood. We had an unspoken "never a discouraging word" pact. At least it had been unspoken until the night before when I had briefly complained that our somewhat expensive hotel room had somewhat tepid water in the shower.

"Don't get me started," Joan said. Then she listed about a dozen things she could have complained about but didn't. After that we both shut up and watched soccer on TV. (By the way, even when you can only tune in five channels on TV, at least one of them will be dedicated to soccer. And Spain's TV news goes on for a whole 15 minutes about soccer highlights and scores. Newspapers too: I counted 14 pages of soccer pictures and stories in a 50ish-page Spanish newspaper.

(France is the same. I'm starting to think Europe is a one-sport continent. If the U.S. ever won the World Cup (of soccer), it would be a shame because few people in America would really appreciate what a big deal it is. Most of us would say, "So what?")

We really enjoyed the ride out of Sepulveda. The wind was irritating but now and then the sun broke through and we found the rolling bare fields attractive. Seeing the massive clouds moving around was a break from the bland greyness of the sky the day before.

We later heard that this part of Spain is referred to as the Castillian Steppes and is known for being cold and windy. I would have believed these were the steppes of central Asia in winter.

Our first town out of Sepulveda was Pedraza. The two are a lot alike. Pedraza also sits on top of a big hill at the confluence of two streams. It's really old and still completely surrounded by city walls. It's a great place for a medieval fantasy: lots of extremely narrow, confusing winding streets that never meet at right angles; all the buildings are made of stone and huge old timbers.

Since it was stormy we saw almost no one on the streets, though I remember seeing a telephone repairman wandering around. We had lunch in a cozy tiny place, sitting on small wooden stools at old wooden tables. It would have been a good place to order a mug of mead and eat a big turkey leg with your hands. Instead we had coffee (from an espresso maker) and tortillas (an omelette with potato in it).

Next: over the Guadarramas in the snow

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