This 17 day series of Amanda’s first ever multiday bikepacking trip is exclusively available to Singletrack World Members. It gets more scenic as the journey unfolds, so stay tuned for more updates! See Day One here.
Day Two: Valls to Caseres
- Distance: 123.5km
- Ascent: 2,000m
We enjoy a continental breakfast in our air conditioned hotel, and I proudly present Rhys with the airport security zip lock bags for carrying buffet sandwiches for today’s ride. An unplanned hotel stay has nudged into the holiday budget on day one, so we might as well cancel it out with a ‘free’ lunch. As always, there’s not much choice for a vegan at a European breakfast bar – so it’s marmalade sandwiches for me and a loaded cheese and ham baguette for Rhys.
Final baggage and spoke checks are completed and we quickly grab a shower before setting off for our ride to Caseres. The baggage checks this morning include a challenging game of ‘where can we put a shoe?’, since I am now wearing my shiny new Bontrager shoes, my favourite Specialized mountain bike shoes need to be carried for the duration of the trip. Silently it has occurred to me that I can donate them to a suitable bike shop, but I’m not willing to just ditch them, so we agree to a shoe each. Rhys goes for a Tailfin mounted shoe, I squeeze mine onto Jack The Rack, and we’re off.
We make it as far as the hotel carpark before needing to rearrange the shoes. And we’re off! The first 10km today are a gentle descendulation* to Alcover, where we had planned to end our Day One ride.
*Descendulation: An undulating descent
I’ve got a niggle of pain in my knees that is nowhere near as bad as I expected it’d be, but my relief to not be slowing us down is short lived when I find myself totally distracted by trains of caterpillars on the ground. I shout ahead to Rhys, who is preoccupied with glancing down at his rear wheel every 30 seconds to check if it is still true after the hotel room rebuild. As he stops to borrow my Leatherman pliers and tighten some spoke nipples, I point out some hairy caterpillars that in my mind are rather cute, all walking in a row. In one swift motion he breaks my pliers and tells me the caterpillars are extremely poisonous. Best getting all the negative information out at once, eh?
Pine processionary Caterpillars are a huge threat in Spain. They are highly toxic, particularly to children and dogs, by way of harpoon-like spines that cause a major skin irritation. It seems that as soon as we’ve identified them our eyes adjust to the landscape and we realise they are everywhere. Snakes of caterpillars along the roadside, crossing the road, squashed in the road, crawling up the pine trees… We don’t hang around too long, and make more considered line choices to avoid squashing them and having spines splatter up our shins.
The route out of Alcover is a beautiful mountain pass taking us up and over our highest point of today’s ride at 981m altitude, at a place called Mont-ral. The ride up is scenic enough to keep us cranking along, and has several false summits to catch a breath and cool down. The descent down the other side is one of the more luscious green routes Spain has to offer. Perfect tarmac, twisty route, lined with trees and red dusty earth. As we descend out of the walls of woodland we’re greeted with such a breathtaking view that even Rhys decides to pull over and breathe it in. He’s an efficient rider, and by that I mean he’s disciplined with how often he stops moving on long fast sections of a route, so pulling up on a sharp switchback to admire the layers of blue mountains in the distance is a rare treat.
Back down to the denser air at 100m altitude we wiggle our way through farmland for at least a couple of hours. It’s so quiet, there are barely any houses for almost 70km, so as we cross a bridge into a town called Mora d’Ebre, the booming sound of a street festival catches us off-guard. It feels like a hallucination, navigating through quaint tiled Spanish streets having to dodge children in fancy dress, a house sized blow-up dog, and a small sumo wrestler running from a side street. You’ll have to take my word for it that it happened, as we didn’t stop moving to avoid getting lost in the crowds, and by the time we’re free from the hustle and bustle the sun has started setting.
Adding the 10km and a laid back hotel morning onto our day has finally caught up with us as we roll into a quiet rural town at 7.30pm feeling conspicuous and unwelcome. It’s not tourist season yet, so we appear to be turning the heads of locals sat outside the one and only bar. We poke our heads in to see if they have any food on offer, receive a negative response, and sit outside to weigh up our options. We’re roughly 25km from our intended destination for this day, it’s very dark, there’s no sign of habitation between this small town and our unknown wild camp spot, and we’re tired. Rhys scans Air B&B and we experience our second hallucination of the day. A beautiful house with a stocked kitchen available for the equivalent of a meal in a restaurant, a stone’s throw from where we’re sitting. In fact, we’re sitting directly across the road from it! We break through some language barriers with the host, get shown to our rooms, and have our third shower since landing yesterday. This bikepacking business is just too easy.
Coming Next…
Pizza, snow, entirely uphill for 135km?
