Marbella To Los Barrios (Via Belfast and Malaga)

Flight ready in Belfast: 

Unpacked, loaded and ready to go at Malaga Airport.

The journey really starts at Malaga Airport, or maybe Belfast. Remove the packing tape from the bike, re-inflate the tyres and straighten the handlebars; all this takes an hour or two, the bike unceremoniously having appeared somewhere in the baggage area. This being the backwards version of the initial ritual in belfast. All there is to do now is find a way to Marbella and get checked into a hostel. The buses that service the airport only take bikes by discretion. The first bus refuses me, a little later i'm on a local service to Fuengirola and settling for cycling the last 30km to Marbella. A little negotiation at a hostel to get a bike stowed for the night and everything is finally in place to set out from Marbella the next Morning. 

Ok - All that and finally, I'm in Marbella with a bike, two panniers, two water bottles and a rough itinerary. Marbella is well developed tourist region and retirement city. Setting out from Marbella lead me along walkways for a while tracking the seaside heading west for the first while. The path is paved most of the way. The going is flat and easy paced weaving around the occasional apartment or hotel development. 

The first surprises of the trip were in this leg.  Once you run out of idyllic seaside footpath you are road sharing or using service roads which tend to run quite close to the main drag. They are called roads on the map, but when you get to them, they look a lot like rivers. I stood here for a few minutes and after watching a few cars ford the river I went for it. More about weird roads later. 

A combination of small rivers, service roads and sharing with cars brought me along the coast to Estepona, I've not really left the urban area though traversing a few neighborhoods did slow the going. Estepona is the first time In my life I became a full blown Lycra creature stopping in a town for a coffee. The foreshadow of the climbs to come is starting to become more apparent, the kind people at Estepona have installed a mural to take your mind off this. 

Estepona is almost the end of the line for urban sunshine villages of the Costa Del Sol, shortly after this the road becomes more rural, just before it does though i did pass this most wonderful junction which carried the bikes and pedestrians well away from everything. 

Soon after this it was time to take a right along Camino del Penoncillo and as the steep climb reveals itself I'm very much getting my first look at rural Spain. The apartment blocks have been abandoned or are unfinished, and as it fades into greenery I hear goat bells. A farmer emerges from the road side with a herd of goats and crosses ahead of me with a slow motion relaxed spanish wave. The road gets worse and worse, slowly becoming a path. The maps is telling me I'm in the right direction, and I've climbed so far i'm not too enthusiastic about turning back. It becomes first a dusty track and then a rough worn patch through a cow farm. I'm starting to get a look over Andalusia in the serene quiet of the hills.

The road worsens and worsens, though I still meet the occasional hiker and local jogger. At this point the road is clearly falling away and I opt to walk the bike for a few sections. I'm in the middle of absolute nowhere and an injury or a bike fail really would put a dampener on things. Some parts are a dried up stream. A mountain biker would be having a great time, my 28kg backpack on wheels is more suitable for inching down on the brakes. The occasional turn reveals a little village in the distance and soon enough I'm back on boring tarmac.

If you don't like oranges don't come to this area, much of the trip from here was spend basking in the smell of oranges ripening on the trees which went on for an hour or two.

Once the mountains are crossed the route is A-Roads occasionally lined with these nests on poles. I'm not sure what they do, but they look pretty good and the birds liked them. The A-roads had cycling provisions for a good part of the distance. 

On approaching Los Barrios a huge bullring presents itself. It's really not my thing and I left our taking pictures. The village itself almost acts as a suburb of Gibraltar. A friendly man with London heritage greeted me at a restaurant and I deemed it as good as any to eat in. I ate my first Spanish dinner and checked into a hotel on the main street. It was friendly and good enough for me. 

Next: Los Barrios to Cadiz