Spanish Bikepacking Diary – Days Six – Eight

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:

• Day One
• Day Two
• Day Three pt1
• Day Three pt2
• Day Four
• Day Five

Utiel – Almansa

• Distance: 110 km
• Elevation: 1,264 m

Yesterday was tough, so a relatively flat ride is welcome today, and our planned day off tomorrow even more-so. It takes less than 10 minutes for me to declare the day impossible, and I stop on a bridge over a dry river and wonder if I could fill it with exhausted tears. I am terrible at riding flat miles. I need gravity to force me to put some effort into the pedals. Without a gradient I either spin my legs and make slow progress, or I’m forced to up my cadence and end up tired very quickly.

Though I am aware of my weaknesses, I do feel particularly out of sorts today. Weak in the mind as much as the body, which is often much harder to work through. Fortunately, the route we’re taking today is quite a contrast in scenery to what we’re used to, so I have constant distractions from the mental battle I’m fighting. Colourful layered rocks and dry crumbling river banks contrasting against the pastel green water make for a nice setting to quietly churn away and avoid looking at my Garmin.

For the most part, today has been remote and peaceful. Not even a goat to break the silence, and certainly no freehub sound as we’ve had to keep our legs spinning, and finally we have Almansa in sight. Reeling it in with what’s left of my willpower, buses pass us, there’s cars shooting out of side roads and junctions that don’t immediately seem obvious as to who has right of way. I feel a bit like Leonardo Dicaprio in The Beach when he goes to the main land for a big shop. It’s busy, noisy, fast, and unexplained mood really doesn’t like it. We’ve got an Air B&B booked for two nights, with a plan to wash all our kit and chill out tomorrow, but it is a painful process getting hold of the key and takes us an hour to get from pavement to bed.

Rest Day in Almansa

In keeping with our rest day fails, Rhys starts the day by taking all the bags off our bikes, removes the wheels and systematically washes the lot in the bath. Removing the red clay from our detour into a construction site two days prior seems like a good idea. (It’s not until later today that we’ll find out why it was a very very bad idea.)

Almansa is probably one of the busiest towns we’ve been to since landing in Barcelona, and the planned day off has encouraged our friends from Hebden Bridge, Charles and Catherine, to come over for some sight seeing and a coffee-crawl. They spend UK winters in their apartment in Dénia so it’s not as far out of the way as it may sound. They have Flash with them, one of the most pathetic dogs you could meet, and we enjoy a nice day out.

A few hours into the day, Rhys starts complaining of spicy hands. They’re itchy and burning, and they get worse by the minute. He’s never experienced it before, and we’re racking our brains as to what’s caused it. The washing powder we used last time we washed his riding gloves? Flash? One of the other dogs we’ve bothered today? Then it hits me. It’s the spines of thousands of dead processionally caterpillars from our tyres and downtubes that he so thoroughly washed this morning. I’d like to say it’s an exaggeration how poisonous they are, but the fact he’s only able to tolerate the discomfort when he has cold water running over his hands, despite it being a reaction from the remains of some dead ones we’ve ridden over, suggests they are just as bad as we’re warned.

Almansa – Elche De La Sierra

• Distance: 115km
• Elevation: 1,099m

Here are two photographs I took moments apart:

It is a 115km time trial to outrun a storm, and I’m still not feeling 100% right. So, more on that next time…