a couple of weekends ago we got all motivated, packed the bikes in the back of the car (no mean feat i might tell you - two mountain bikes in the back of a hatchback) and headed off to la rioja to try out some of the vias verdes that i'd seen in a program on television...
the vias verdes (green routes) form part of a wonderful initiative that converts disused and decommissioned railway lines into a network of cycling and walking path that stretches right across spain... 1,700 kms in total, according to the website... obsessive compulsive girl got very excited about the prospect of starting a project that involves cycling all of them and checking them off the list as we go... sitting on the sofa girl is currently having words with her...
anyway... on the saturday we got up at some ungodly hour and drove to casalarreina, the starting point for our first via verde: Rio Oja... after reassembling the bikes in the middle of the town, and arguing the whys and wherefores of special bike riding gloves under the bemused stares of early morning locals heading out to buy bread, we headed off...
things did not start very well... following the rather vague instructions on the official vias verdes brochure, we cycled about aimlessly in search of the start of the route, up and down streets and through vineyards, it was nowhere to be found... the brochure said that we would have to pass through a stand of poplar trees about 1km out of town, and scanning the horizon we located the only poplar trees in sight, so we headed off again through the vineyards until we finally encountered the trail... which was under construction!
now dear reader, when i say "under construction" i don't mean a couple of pothole patches i mean that the whole path was littered with craters, mounds of earth and plastic tubing... it looked like it had been carpet bombed... we saw a man working in the fields a few hundred meters further along the track and decided to ask him was this a temporary obstruction or was the whole route like this... so we hobbled, half riding half walking up to the man to get the real dirt from a "local"... when questioned he looked dubiously at us, the bikes and the field of exploded land mines that was our via verde, and then informed us that it was pretty bad for about a kilometre, and then it got better... as he warmed to his subject he got positively cheerful, we'd have no problems passing through on bikes, he assured us..
so we pushed on, half riding, half walking and trying not to fall down the side of the embankment... the "kilometre" of bad conditions seemed to be stretching on a bit, and then in the distance we saw another man coming towards us walking his bike... we asked again about the conditions of the track and he shook his head mournfully... no it was like this all the way to Santo Domingo de la Calzada (about 10kms further on), he said, and continued on his way...
we contemplated our options and decided to double back, pack the bikes in the car and drive to Santo Domingo and start again from there... which we duly did... at Santo Domingo the trail again proved elusive and after cycling around aimlessly tempers were fraying... habm encountered a cyclist washing his bike in a petrol station and decided it was time to ask an expert... i may or may not have made some choice comments about the previous "experts" we had encountered and left him to it..
habm returned with the bad news... the whole route was under construction and impossible to cycle... all 28kms of it... apparently it had been that way for the past 2 years with no signs of nearing completion... cursing the previous two men i made a mental note to myself to remember that spanish people will always stop and help you when you need directions - even if they don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about...
the cyclist informed us that you could cycle to ezcaray (the end of the line) along some backroads that ran parallel to the route and gave complicated instructions about how to get to the first turn-off... based on the advice received up to that point i viewed this information very suspiciously... habm assured me that he could get us to the next town on the route following the cyclists instructions and then after that we'd ask someone else for further directions... i wondered how someone could remain so overwhelmingly optimistic in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary... unwillingly i allowed myself to be persuaded that this was really our only option if we wanted to cycle that day, we'd already wasted more than three hours with all the mornings shenanigans...
so we headed off, and miraculously the cyclist's instructions proved to be correct... we did the 5kms or so to the town of santurde and stopped to look around...
old farmhouse, santurde
ruins of a medieval defensive tower, santurde
husband-acquired-by-marriage taking a break
heading out of santurde, disaster struck again - habm got a flat... which wouldn't be such a disaster in itself (we had a spare inner tube & etc) but he's been repeatedly getting flat tyres in the same wheel for the last few months, which suggests that there's an underlying problem that hasn't been fixed... inner tube changed we continued on our way, but the tyre started to slowly deflate... big problem.... by this stage it was 12.30pm and we'd so far completed 5kms of the anticipated 56kms... remember that this is spain, where the shops shut on saturdays at 1pm and don't open again till monday... a bike with a flat tyre and no more spare inner tubes was about to ruin not only the day but the whole weekend...
leaving me with the dud bike in a roadside stop habm rushed back to Santo Domingo in the hopes he could find a bike shop before 1pm... i could feel a migrane coming on, and lay down for a sleep on a park bench... some time later habm returned in the car with the good news, he'd arrived back in the nick of time, found a bike shop still open and managed to buy what he needed... we ate lunch and i tried to sleep again while he repaired the bike... by this stage the migrane was really closing in, and accepting defeat we decided to complete the rest of the route by car...
we stopped at the pretty little town of ojacastro where for some reason i have only taken photos of doorways and windows:
and then we continued on our way to the final stop - ezcaray...
ezcaray is a ski resort town that while quite pleasant, wouldn't be up there on my list of must visit again places (although that could be the migrane talking)... it does feature half a medieval bridge that goes nowhere (the other half was washed away by floods)...
and some more doorways and windows..
after wandering around the old centre for a bit we headed across the river (on a bridge that went all the way!) to the end of the via verde, where the former railway station has been converted into a restaurant... and a bit further on we headed up the hill to the Ermita de Allende, a lovely little church which to me seemed more portuguese than spanish in it's style...
and thus concluded our less than successful first day on the vias verdes...
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