Carboneras to Aquadulce – Lifeday 25,312

The first 17 miles or so were pretty tortuous for me with seemingly a never ending climb to 900 feet made worse because I had forgotten to fill up my water bottles 🙁 Excellent scenery though, once you leave the cement works & power station behind in Carboneras, and quiet roads

Just after Fernan Perez I heard a group of cyclists behind me (first time on this trip) and unbelievably they were speaking English 🙂 It turned out it was a group from the Cyclists magazine in London out on a jolly with a local cyclists club. I had a very interesting chat with Pete Muir their Editor, they then all shot of on their uber lightweight bikes. I continued on up the hill that had a 10% sign on it, although t felt way steeper. Imagine my surprise as I started down the other side to find the group having a group shot at the Mirador Las Amatistas, they cooly invited me into the shot, so who knows I might make a guest appearance in Cyclists Mag 🙂

The day wore on a bit after that excitement but eventually a Repsol petrol station hoved into view so I could get a drink and fill the water  bottle up, then it was on to Almeria where I stuck to the lovely cyclepath along the sea front so didn’t see the city at all. It was a bit of a shock to get on the exceptionally busy road out of town, compounded by the right lane I was in peeling of to a motorway thus making me cross it to get on the coast road,  times like that make me realise why I like biking on my own!

The coast road has loads of tunnels 🙁  but no steep gradients so pretty good except for the traffic. I eventually found the Hotel Mirablau and its very miserable guy who refused to believe I had a booking, even after showing him the email from booking.com. Eventually I phoned booking.com where upon he miracolously found his printed email.

I didnt have much success with food in the evening either, with my first attempt turning into  nouveau cuisine – tasty but very small dishes. My second attempt was worse as I failed to pick up on the Spanish word  lomo – another word for bacon (loin) so the menu now has bacon, jamon and beicon, work that out.

Strava made it a 58.8 mile day with 2,895 feet of ascent all done at 11.2mph 🙁

The pictures on dropbox are here