Day 143
Record breaker #1
We were back on the road today. Our friends Mary and Ronnie were tantalisingly close, about 40 miles up the coast, but we couldn’t face a single more mile than necessary along that busy highway so decided to stick with our original plan and head inland to Granada. Another time Mary and Ronnie! Pam and David had prepared breakfast for us, made a packed lunch, so we were able to get on our way by 8.30 am. We had 100 miles to do over 2 days and we were heading for the hills!
First though was the small matter of the road to Malaga. We were no longer on the A7 and, though busy, it was nothing like the A7. Unfortunately, as we neared Malaga the road became a 3-lane motorway (where bicycles are allowed!). The worst part was when traffic joined by the slip road and we were stuck in the middle. After 3 ‘slip roads’ I could take no more. Sorry Marie and Tim, I was struggling to be a warrior! Tom worked out a better option and we were soon working our way our of Malaga and up into the hills. We climbed and climbed, 13 miles in one continuous hill. The views were dramatic and breath-taking, the road quiet. We got lots of support from other cyclists riding downhill, and past us on their lightweight bikes. The last 2 miles grew steeper and I started to struggle. A stop for lunch, thanks Pam, and I finally made it to the top! We had mountains all around us, views of the coast and the inland hillside villages. This felt more like it!
We rode on, down and up. Then near disaster, at about 4pm we came across a closed road. With a mix of Spanish, English and sign language we worked out that we could either go the long way round or wait until 6pm. We decided to sit it out. Tom opened our blog on his phone to show the very friendly lady who was guarding the road, where we had been. She was impressed and took pity on us. She decided to ring her ‘boss’, could we go through? The ‘boss’ said “yes, just walk when you reach the hot tarmac”! A slightly unnerving ride down hill but no melted tyres and we were back on solid tarmac. We saw the ‘boss’ at the exit. Turns out he is married to the lovely lady at the top! What a fantastic couple.
We managed a few more miles but stopped 5 miles short of our 50-mile target, but still broke our single-day climbing record with 4,425 feet. We wild camped in an olive grove, and after Tom got a star photo or two, were soon in bed, tomorrow is going to be another big day.
