Geoff Jones

Brevet Randonneur 200K GDR Murcia 2018 Villena Yecla

t the start

Yesterday was the big day for my brevet Randonneur 200K GDR Murcia 2018 Villena Yecla, one of the main reasons for venturing a thousand miles South from the UK to escape the icy conditions of my previous two UK Audaxes in December & January, the weather in Murcia turned out as 9°C and 500m up it went down to 6°C so a close call 🙂

I applied for the Audax on Murcia’s Ultra cycling site and managed to transfer the €20 to them from my Barclays app (after working around its errors). However, imagine my dismay when I received an email saying “Don’t forget your cycling license.” Obviously being from the UK the idea of licenses is a bit of an anathema, since Audaxes are specifically not races a Race License at £80 didn’t seem a good investment. My post on the Facebook Audax forum suggested my AukUK membership card & Cycling UK card or even as a joker suggested, my Cycling Proficiency Certificate maybe would do.

So I turned up with 30+ others at The Bike Shop at 7.30 am (the previous day they had adjusted my gears and oiled the bike etc), to find all I had to do was to sign my Brevet Card and an A4 closely typed sheet of paper, who knows what it said, a bit like the webs T&Cs. so totally no problemo.

I was agog at the machinery & bikewear on display nothing like any UK Audax I’ve been too, plus everyone seemed my kid’s age (late 20’s to 40’s). We lined up for photos at 8.14 and then shot of, crikey it was like being in Taiwan again, instead of scooters at traffic lights it was a peloton. By the third set of lights, with my speedo having shown well in excess of 32km/hr, I knew I would be doing the ride on my own and so no need to worry about not knowing Spanish for chatting! Climbing the first hill I caught up with the only girl and her partner, he was peeing in the centre of the road! a few yards later they flashed past in turbo mode.

The Audax had 4 Control Points. At the designated distance/town you have to find a bar/cafe/service station and ask them to rubber stamp (sello de goma) the appropriate section of the card and add the arrival time. I chose the first cafe as it was full of cyclists alas none of them knew about Brevets or Audaxes my fellow riders had disappeared hours ago. I was dismayed to find I was within 30mins of the upper time limit. Oh dear mild panic set in as the bars/cafes don’t seem to do cakes etc and the service is usually very slow, the waitress pointed down the street to a churro van but I decided to just have my banana and gulped down my €1.20 cup of coffee.

BREVET Allowed TIMINGS
Km	Min time	My time	Max time	Top speed mph	Slowest Speed mph
55	09.37	11.11	11.45
121	11.34	15.26	16.04
147	12.19	16.44	17.48
202	13.57	19.00	21.30	21mph	8.15mph

The wind was pretty strong once I gained some height and always seemed to be in my face especially on the long straight never-ending section between Villena & Yecla. In Yecla I stopped at the service station to fill up on junk food their rubber stamp was inkless, no doubt though earlier overuse! 🙁 After leaving, it’s a 90-degree left-hand bend so with a strong wind up my rear & downhill – 40kph was soon reached and joy returned to my heart.

It was pretty good from then on (the difference the wind makes) except in Pinoso where the first bar I went in was run by English folks so of cause no rubber stamp 🙁

I caught the sunset and so arrived back in Murcia in darkness the finish was at Hotel Nelva they stamped my card at 7 pm and then retained it for the organiser to collect and send them for homologation with the Audax Club Parisien.

The roads were very quiet and Spanish drivers seem to be very courteous certainly compared to the UK. The road surfaces are very good apart from one small potholed section which required careful negotiation, but coming from England I’m quite used to that!

An enjoyable but very different experience to riding UK Audaxes especially with the Control Points, End Hotel and dare I say it the youthfulness of the riders 🙂

Here is the Strava which also contains a few pics:-

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Licence for lolling around Murcia

Fri 9th Feb 2018

I’ve now had two very relaxing days in the sunshine here in Murcia preparing myself for the 200km Audax tomorrow if they let me do it without an ‘official license” whatever that might be.

St Mary's Cathedral Murcia — St Mary’s Cathedral Murcia

Murcia is a very pleasant University Town, 63 years younger than Cambridge but much larger with 38,000 students so it has a very young feel when roaming the streets, as I love doing and mercifully it seems to be off the main tourist circuit even though it has the fine St Mary Cathedral.

My hotel for 4 consecutive nights, almost a record for one of my solo trips, is Hotel El Churra Vistalegre the room is OK but the WiFi is really annoying as it refuses me joining Flickr and a few other sites, it isn’t the ISP as Reception on a hard-wired connection can access them. Also, the bed is a bit on the soft side but I still love living in a hotel especially at €40 per night 🙂

I had the bike gears fixed in the appropriately named shop The Bike! The guy also dismantled & regreased the front hub of my nearly new noisy Racing Quattro LG Wheels. Whilst he was doing this I had a bit of a cold sweat as to what would happen if I broke a spoke or two, since it would appear to have to partially dismantle the wheel coupled with their profile would make it nigh on impossible to do on the roadside 🙁

The other purchase was a high viz jacket from con2pedales for night riding, not the all white one for obvious reasons and some less obvious ones, paradoxically I found them hard to see on other riders due to the sheer blanket brightness. So I bought the Nightrider in Orange with many hi-viz reflectors and space for the Proviz rear light.

So I’m ready for the Audax in the sunshine and 14 degrees tomorrow. License permitting…

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Day 25,762 biking Alicante to Murcia

Wednesday 7th February 2018

What a relief, a day of wall to wall sunshine along super bikeways and quiet roads between Alicante & Murcia all be it with a bit to much chill in the air for my inadequate clothes 🙁

I left The Esplanade Hotel in Alicante after an OK breakfast and retrieving the bike from the left luggage store. Excellent to see that the narrow streets have the cycle lane clearly marked down the centre of the road giving space for the parked cars doors to open and more importantly letting cyclists set the speed of the cars! What a great idea no need for ridiculous 20mph limit signs all over the place plus infinitely safer for cyclists.

Once I reached the new roads what a joy to see wide dedicated bike tracks alongside the dual carriageways even cunningly using storm drains to cycle under the cloverleaf junctions a great dual purpose, although they could have adjusted the gradients slightly to allow the last 1″ of water to drain away! The cycleways went on for about 20 miles outside Alicante and then the route reverted to minor roads through miles of lemon groves interconnected with very short sections of tracks.

The bikes gears kept jumping all over the place no doubt from all the carrying and knocking about on the marathon train journey here. I oiled it up and fortunately the road was pretty flat so I only had to pull the front changer wire once to get it into the big cog. In Orihuela, I also stopped & rotated the handlebars up as my left hand had developed an annoying pain where I hold over the hoods.

The La Dama cafe was incredibly busy and not surprising given a coke, bottle of water & a couple of biscuits was €1.50! Later rounding a bend I nearly ran into another English cyclist who is living in a camper van over here & going out on his classic bike every day said he did Audaxes too! Loads of Spanish groups and individuals out too but very few acknowledgements when they passed.

After 53.6 miles and a dawdling 10.9mph I eventually arrived at Hotel El Churra Vistalegre which is going to be my home for the next 4 nights 🙂 Tomorrow I will check my bike into the local Specalized shop to get the gears adjusted (how lazy of me) as the Audax is a really hilly course.

Pakoras, Edamame, Quesadilla, Yakka Mars

In the evening, and how strange is it that restaurants only open after 9 pm, I used Google to find the Dragones Vegan Cafe excellent food & value for less than £18.

Unfortunately for some weird reason, I can’t access Flickr on the hotel network 🙁 and since I’ve already used 1.3GB of my mobile data allowance I’m limiting my mobile data usage 🙁

Here is the Strava for the day:

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Yet another 6 hours going south on a train.

I woke up and rode to Barcelona Station in yet more heavy rain 🙁 stopping for an excellent breakfast at Granier where I ate last night.

I booked the €40.70 ticket to Valencia on trainline.com last night it arrived as a pdf that they said needed printing out at the station ticket machine. However, the RENFE lady by the machine said I was OK with the pdf and wonder of wonders the train would depart from Platform 11, leaving me oodles of time to dismantle the bike by the escalator. I now have it down to a fine art, so 20 minutes later it was beautifully encased in the nylon bag, with even the derailleur tied in. The train guys were suitably impressed even letting me first down to the platform.

The train 1111 duly arrived and I was by the wrong door so a bit of a dash to find the pokey little luggage space was nearly full. I just couldn’t get the bike to fit in until a kind passenger showed me how to lift up the top shelf thus allowing the bike to squash in vertically, the rack is only 50cm wide by 1.2metre high thank goodness I had taken care to strap the wheels and derailleur to the frame!

Whilst travelling along I noticed the coach on the screen showed it terminated in Alicante which looking at my map was only 80km away from Murcia, my ultimate goal. A look at the hotels.com app showed I had 15 mins to cancel my hotel booking in Valencia at no charge, which I did 🙂 On trainline.com I booked an additional ticket for Valencia to Alicante at only €16.40 and then booked a hotel in Alicante all done from my seat – modern technology is magic although the train less so, as it kept coming to juddering halts! So just after 6 hours and 350 miles later I alighted in THE SUN at Alicante to reassemble the bike.

The Esplanade Hotel is a bit faded but OK especially for €42 a night although the shower is only 2-foot square which is very tight for me and my scrubbing techniques.

So that should be the end of the trains for a while. It’s been an illuminating experience but I don’t think I will be in a rush to repeat it! Easy to see why people flock to planes with there generous luggage allowances, cheap & very fast flight times.

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