Los Barrios to Cadiz

The man in the restaurant in Los Barrios had assured me that I'd have the wind behind me going over the hills to get to Cadiz. At this point in my life I've never cycled 100km in one go so I decided to take that as comforting. It is what it is, I have to climb over a big hill If I want to be in Cadiz today and I have to do it in the sun.

Breakfast in spain is not breakfast in Ireland. That's no problem to me, Let Spain be Spain. You'll get a slice of toast and a coffee but large breakfasts are not the trend and its usually 10am before you can buy one outside of a large city. Maybe they do have one in Los Barrios, but in the amount of time I had to deal with things, no eggs existed in Los Barrios or any other small Spanish Village before 10am. This posed an unforeseen problem which made food and sunshine become entities which were to be in conflict for the duration of the trip. To cycle you need food, water and to keep cool. To keep cool in the peak of Spanish sunshine, you need a lot more water, so late breakfasts and extra water it was to be.

So leaving Los Barrios was a little later than hoped. A slow climb through Alcornocales National Park and then break for the coast. The park is named after it's cork trees but has many wonders beyond that. The uncompromising rocks that make make it up provide some wonderful views and harbored water features. It has a distinct ecology owing to its 'pointing at Africa' location. 

My first hours are spent on service roads enjoying the mountain range, always in parallel with main road. I meet a car on these maybe once every 30 minutes, It's tough climbing on a heavy bike and everything is happening at crawl speed. I'd mentally mapped the day as 'pass two water things, take a left, pass villages, go to sea'. Already its starkly different to the orange groves and the crowded promenades. I'm not using live maps on this trip so my general approach is not to try too hard in case there is something steeper coming up later in the day, or week. 

The first water thing is the Charco Redondo Reservoir, silty and sprawling this man made pool dates to 1983. Even in this quiet hinterland there is a cycle lane. 

I wont say the climbing is done, but from here, the worst was over. The landscape started some kind of transition once more. I'm getting towards the part of the peninsula more related to the west, to Cadiz. There are fields of horses and the service road has come into its own, I get a sense of leaving the Alcornocales. 

It was downhill so I stopped taking photos till I got hungry. Eating on the road isn't exactly as instagram might tell you. It's not all sitting outside cafe's in mirror sunglasses being a lycra creature. A lot of meals were basically this or a minor variation of it. 

As the mountains drifted off behind me things got lusher and greener. This is one of those moments you want to take a picture but realize later it was the sound you wanted to capture. These stiff grasses rustled like leaves in the breeze and their uniform color revealed the wind as the grass bent in the sunlight in the light gusts. 

I leave the park and find myself approaching the beautifully quiet town of Benalup-Casas Veijas. Almost feeling as if the bike is too loud for the town. I lock up at cafe in the town centre for a quick look around and a bite. From here what becomes more apparent is the tougher part of cycling is what you can't stop for. Although the worst of the climbing is over, It's still quite a distance to Cadiz, so bypassing the very curious looking Medina-Sedona and arriving somewhere near San Fernando to make the final approach to Cadiz is really all I can afford.

Towns tend to be in pretty logical places, or at least until the popularization of mass transit and private motor cars. Towns in this area seem to be mostly on rocky outcrops leaving the surrounding land to agriculture, which seems like a pretty reasonable way to sustain humans to me. Medina-Sedona is the last rock I pass between here and the coast. My camera battery dies so i'll have to make do with a few words. 

From Medina-Sedona to San Fernando the air becomes more and more coastal, the general pitch of the land is dropping in altitude continually and the roads are well developed. Its fast and not very hard work. I pull into San Fernando's extended town centre with a sense of victory, completely ignoring that i'm still about 13km from Cadiz. Great confusion descends in the region on how I might actually cross the spit of land which connects the two towns and no obvious path between San Fernando and Cadiz emerges to cycle no matter how I look at the interchange. I spend an hour wrestling with junctions to no avail. It became clearer later, but the entrance to the cycle path from San Fernando to Cadiz is actually at the supermarket beside the train station, which you'll find by following the tracks along the park area inland - look for San Fernando-Bahîa Sur!!! 

I 'cheat'. I find the local train station, jump on a train to Cadiz and I'm there in minutes. A few other leisure cyclists are using the train too, which only costs a few Euro. Cadiz is ancient, friendly and beautiful, while being a little confusing. I find my hostel - Summer Cadiz, check in and the first 190km leg of my self guided Spanish Trip is done. Go me. The hostel staff are great, my bike is locked and safe in minutes and I'm free to go and enjoy the City. Pass two water things, take a left, pass villages, go to sea.

Next: A Cycle round the edge of Cadiz