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!
Catch-up:
La Puebla de Valverde – Utiel
- Distance: 160km/178km
- Ascent: 2,820m/3,320m
It’s getting harder and harder to spring out of bed and rush out of the door. This morning is a flop towards the bathroom, a John Wayne style swagger to breakfast, and a pathetic attempt to drag the morning out by me as I pretend to be really invested in the cross-stitch artwork on all of the bedroom doors in the hotel.
Today is the day we have the optional extra of riding to Javalambre ski resort at 1,850m. If we want to tackle it, we need to decide straight out the door as it is within the first 20km of the day. My usual desire to touch the highest points available has been drained from me, especially given that I need to find 160km in my already well worn legs. Rhys on the other hand can’t resist an extra challenge, so after a lot of reassurances that we will relocate each other in the next town, we part ways.
Amanda’s Day Five Opener
I do some rolling maths and calculate that I have loads of time to play with. That is a summarised version of about 15 minutes worth of ‘he’s adding 18km on, 9 of them are uphill, 9 of them will be freezing cold…’ and so on. I’m confident I can take my sweet time getting to the town we’re meeting in, and I take every opportunity to stop and enjoy the view of the valley below, gradually getting smaller as I climb away from it.
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My route is breathtaking. It’s a narrow road with a wall of road to the left and a sheer drop to the right, and it snakes up the mountain creating blind bends and stretches where I can look back down on where I’ve just pedalled from. There’s no traffic, no caterpillars, and no end of places to safely pull off the road to look around.
Rhys’ Goes Skiing
An optional climb to a ski resort and potential high point of the trip so far was just too much temptation. The relatively mellow 5-6% gradients offering the perfect opportunity to give the legs a good run out. Some of you might find this a strange statement, a fully loaded bikes climbs well. Providing you have adequate gearing of course. The sheer inertia of the bike beneath you resists those fore/aft micro accelerations you get on a light bike as well as offering some resistance side to side when climbing out of the saddle. It’s like having something firm to push against, the mass working as a flywheel to keep the whole movement smooth and flowing. So off the leash, I buzzed up a couple of gears, got out of the saddle and enjoyed a good hour, at a solid tempo effort. The legs felt good, heart rate stable. I felt at one with the bike in a way that only riding all day, day after day can offer. A rather large wild dog on the road interrupted my heart in its rhythm but no attack ensued. I was closing in on the skin station with only a few hundred meters to go. I nudged the lap button, changed down and unzipped my gilet as I rolled into the ticket office. The bemused looks from heavily dressed Spanish holiday makers were abundant.
I’ve been aimlessly noodling through the tiled streets of Camarena de la Sierra looking for a shop for what feels like an hour thanks to the heat, my exhaustion, and the absence of Rhys to tell me I’m wasting time. I’ve ridden past a bloke with a souped-up Ford Ranger one too many times, and he’s taken my navigational errors as a keen interest in his obnoxious truck, so he’s now revving the engine and giving me a smarmy look. I decide to scoot down a narrow street to swiftly get away from him, and lo and behold, there’s a shop at the end of it. What looks, from the outside, to be a disappointing newspaper and tobacco shop is more like a tuckshop. Racks of pick ‘n’ mix, fridges full of sugary drinks, and Double Stuffed Oreos! I take my picnic to a bench in a quiet courtyard in the centre of town and wait for Rhys.
Reunited and having exchanged stories of how wonderful our alternate routes were, we make our way out of town toward a long twisty single lane through a vast hermitage area. It’s dense with pine trees, and it doesn’t take long to realise this is the highest concentration of processionary caterpillars we’ve experienced so far. I stop for a wee behind a tree and make the mistake of plonking my bike on the ground, and watch a train of the little beasts heading for it. We decide to make haste and get out of this beautiful yet treacherous area as quickly as possible, but around the next bend we’re stopped rather abruptly by a herd of goats and a farmer failing to herd them.
We finally squeeze our way through the chaos and try to hold some speed whilst simultaneously trying to avoid trains of poisonous caterpillars that stretch from one side of the road to the other. The realisation that running over them would result in spines splattering up our legs is enough to slow us down a bit.
We approach a roadblock with no specific signage specifying what it’s for, and looking beyond it we see no sign of any road works, nor any collapsed roads or half built bridges (both of which are surprisingly common in rural areas), so we scoot around it and carry on our way. After around 10 minutes, we’re yelled at by a bloke in a huge dump truck on a road above the one we’re riding on. We realise that he’s on the new road, we’re on the old one, and ours is about to come to an end. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a very smooth undamaged road being resurfaced or replaced. They must have a huge budget for the roads to be able to justify rebuilding this one, out in the sticks with nobody but goats and lost bikepackers using it.
We’re diverted back on ourselves and then off onto a river path, just as it starts to rain. This is OK, until we reach the next section of the construction… the part where all the red clay material is heaped alongside the road and is turning into a paste that is being sprayed all over us.
The sun returns just in time to enhance the most incredible red and white stripy rock formations alongside another high quality, very remote road. We’re in awe of our surroundings for the best part of an hour before more rain hits, this time heavy enough to force us to find shelter. We’re 55km in to a 160km ride, it’s 2.50pm, and we’re covered in red grit paste. Somehow we’re not discouraged by any of this, and have a good giggle about our day so far, and eventually get rolling again.
A lot of time passes
We’ve been climbing for a while. The road is gravelly and falling down the hillside in places, and it’s one of the most jungle-esque areas we’ve been so far. Huge trees overhanging, creating cooling pockets of shade, and gorse bushes sprouting up through cracks in the road. It’s wild, and it’s suspiciously quiet. Come to think of it, we haven’t seen a single car, hiker, cyclist or caterpillar on this road. This wouldn’t be such a surprise if it weren’t for the sheer beauty of the place. There’s a viaduct up ahead and we’re currently at 800m altitude, so it must be close to 1,000m above sea level with the most mind boggling drop to the turquoise river below.
The viaduct is dizzying. We have to stop on it, both to enjoy the view and stabilise our inner spirit levels having looked over the edge. There are holes in the ground and looking through you can see the river below – really far below! I’m not sure what possessed him, but Rhys decides to drop a sweet through the hole and watch it fall. It’s quite hypnotic, so I do the same with some nuts. This goes on for a minute or so, until we realise we’re throwing our food off a bridge for no good reason.
The climb continues. I feel like I’ve been pedalling up this very road for a lifetime, and it’s not showing signs of levelling off anytime soon. Somewhere along the way we spotted some signage that we bothered to translate, and it turns out this road is closed. That explains why it’s so quiet. There is an alternate road to this one, a fast motorway that doesn’t bother going up and over the mountain, and the result is a beautiful isolated road for hikers and cyclists.
It’s dark now, and we have an 18km ascent before dropping down into Utiel. We’re well stocked after a quick supermarket sweep in the last small town we passed through, but my body isn’t accepting anymore food. I’m not worried about how bad I feel, but I am worried it will tip over into a dysfunctional level of pain. I actually lose my resilient shield for a brief moment and stop turning the pedals, unclip a foot, reboot, clip back in and carry on pedalling. Rhys is very vocal about how relieved he is to hear my clip back in – he was certain I was a goner for a moment then.
This was a 12 hour day, we tackled various obstacles and dealt with a turn in the weather. The scenery made the day bearable, and the lighthearted approach to any misdemeanours we had helped keep us motivated. Today felt like a huge achievement.
Coming Next…
Survival, another rest day, and a visit from Charles
