Leon to Potes via the Picos

Leon to Potes through the Picos at EveryTrail

Today presented a few challenges. Breakfast at the hotel was everything a hotel breakfast could be, huge variety and potentially endless, although much of it came in little containers that left a small mountain of litter on my table afterwards. Breakfast was deserted. I’ve been avoiding coffee for the last four days and it is definitely helping my stomach.
I had half a plan to head over to the Picos again and camp at Potes which Alan Rogers gives a good rating for. But the first challenge was to escape the underground car park. It presents a steep and winding concrete road up onto the street and not only that, you have to stop on the steep incline, press the button on the wall for the door to open above you and then spring out up the last part of the slope and onto the street.; OK in a car but a little tricky on a big heavy bike. I made it but with the odour of burning clutch in the air that seemed to hang in my nostrils for a while after I had ridden out of town.
I had an idea of the route, quite tight and twisty after a while and I found eventually I got into a new technique with countersteering and leaning the bike under me while I kept relatively upright. It was making corners feel much more under control. But havint just discovered this, I think we must have crossed into a different autonomous region because the road surface suddenly became much worse, full of potholes, tar banding and negative cambers. So I slowed down. Then I got high enough to be riding in cloud and at times I could only see a few yards in front of me, this combined with tight 2nd gear bends with sheer drops on one side and overhanging rock on the other. Now add the odd cow wandering over the road and you have the full picture.
After a while I reached an iconic biker location, the Puerto San Gloria, a lookout on a spectacular downward hairpin complete with a few sports bikes parked and their riders looking through the mist to the valley below. I did not stop to join them. I barely saw them and kept going down concentrating for grim death.

Eventually the mist cleared but the bends did not ease up for another 15k. But I made it down to Camping La Ilsa Picos de Europe campsite just out of Potes by 2pm. I could have revisited a site a stayed at on the way down but that would have meant another hour travelling so I decided to stay. I was initially a bit iffey about the site – it’s a bit featureless and next to a road (though behind a stone wall) but I warmed to it: English is spoken and the shop sells some fresh produce and chilled white wine. The wifi also reaches to me tent on occasions.
After tonight – just three more nights before the ferry.
Tonight I am cooking my most elaborate variation of a pasta dish: local organic onion and beef tomato cooked in olive oil with herbs, chorizo and pasta and white wine. Meanwhile a woman is playing an elaborate hiding the ball game with a large, lovely old dog. I have no idea of the breed. It pretends to growl at her and prance off as she tries to get something out of its mouth. Humans and animals. Maybe we learn something from them – or from our relationships with them.

From Leon

Thursday 5th September
I rode 265 miles today nearly all on motorways, on my journey back east toward Bilbao where I leave from on Tuesday morning. Motorways here are more twisting than at home and have only a fraction of the traffic. At some points, as they span deep valleys, the sense is vertiginous, with the valley hundreds of feet below and the other lane of traffic, hundred of feet above, high on its own stilts.
from Galicia to Leon at EveryTrail

I saw this hotel, Infantas de Leon on Tripadvisor. I fancied a break from camping and was expecting a wet day which it hasn’t turned out to be though it rained lightly for the first couple of hours and threatened with dark skies all day. So I’m here, in a rather smart place though the first three reviews I read all rated the welcome – two were from motorcyclists and one from a Camino walker wanting to give herself a treat. With breakfast and secure parking for bertha all for €60 (camping is about €18 a night). Finding my way on the big bike to a hotel in a city is a different experience to searching for a campsite in the country but in a way no harder. One review praised the view of the cathedral from the hotel but there is no cathedral in sight. The bed is comfortable. Its time to take a stroll. Let me fish out my cleanest smartest clothes.
Cathedral at Leon, Spain
at Leon, the walker's sign
Leon Spain

I had dinner in the bar, hearty with white wine at €1.40 a glass. I wish I had realised how cheap it was, I would have not said no to the third glass. I need to find a way to get out onto the balcony to have a camel now…

Deciding to move on

Weds 4th September part 2
I have decided to move on tomorrow. The weather forecast says thunderstorms for the next few days though it was, and still is at after half past eight in the evening deliciously warm and sunny. But I feel I have to take the forecast serioiusly. I swam in the sea today. The beach was so delicious, warm sun yet constant cooling by the breeze and no flies. But to turn back toward the ports feel like the beginning of the end of the trip though there are still 6 night before I sail home.
Having given up Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Being and Time, I’ve turned to ‘Venture to the Interior’ by Laurens Van Der Post. He starts off by writing about flying to Africa from Health Row Aerodrome (in 1949). The book deals with British colonialism, as the other Laurence did, though post second world war not in the lead up to WWI. Of course I have no part in this, but my mother came from Germany the year before his story starts and my sister was born only three years after. So all his discussion of the role of Britain in the world and British values of decency ‘a nation should try to be fair, good and true, not merely an industrial sausage machine’, would sill have been in the air when my parents started their family. But I’m not sure I feel nostalgic for his vision of British virtue: only on page 44 so far, and with limited knowledge of the issues affecting post-war Britiain, I have the feeling that interest has always shaped British action, though it used to be dressed up with rhetoric of value and decency. I think people actually believed it themselves.
As I started cooking I heard the residents of the convent singing hymns, their harmonies wafting over the garden wall.

Trip to the Cape of Arousal

Today I took the ride southwards on the coast road down to the bay of Arousal, but it wasn’t as successful or enjoyable as yesterday’s ride.

To the Cape of Arousal at EveryTrail

The road is not as attractive and there were roadworks in a town about 5 or 6 miles down the road and a diversion which got me completely lost. I knew the name of the town I was aiming for, Ribeira. In my lostness I got swept onto a motorway that I could see on the map but wanted to avoid. In the end I made it to Ribeira, which is the kind of town that guidebooks describe as ‘a gritty port town’, hot busy, big trucks and tricky to navigate around, but a few stops to look at the map and u turns later I was leaving town. I managed to stay on the right road back, the only event being my arrival, along with others, at a recently occurred accident. A bright yellow delivery truck and a car were severely smashed and it was impossible to work out what had happened but everyone seemed safe and completely unhurt.
Today is more humid and a little overcast. The other Brits left this morning and I think I may do the same tomorrow. Its very pleasant here but short of spending tomorrow lying on the beach or swatting flies at the campsite, I think I have exhausted things here. But I still haven’t decided where to head for tomorrow. There is a medium-sized looking town Leon about half way toward the region I want to end up at on Sunday. I might see if I can find a hotel there. There are no Alan Rogers recommended campsites there, though apparently a great many.
This holiday has been so much more successful than previous camping trips and I put that down to two things so far: I have got the right guidebook to chose campsites, so for the most part I have avoided the nasty ones which can just feel uncomfortable. Here, as in the first site I stayed in, there is a thankful variety of travellers, young couples, even the odd single person, apparently gay couples, all in a variety of tents. There’s something about the barrage of families and the slightly affluent retired folk in motorhomes that feels alienating because there is no point of contact. With the unusual travellers there is, or at least the possibility. The other ingredient – again so far – has been the weather, warm, sometimes hot, dry. There’s nothing worse for the spirits than rain, particularly when you don’t know how long it will last. The other difference is that I’ve stayed in one place if I like it rather than move on every morning in a distance-covering operation. In fact, this trip is a few days too long, a result of the hugely different ferry prices.

Trying to find Cape Finisterre

Here’s the map. More to follow: Up to Finisterre at EveryTrail

Last night I ventured up to the terrace bar for a drink and to write up some notes. When the young guy working as a waiter put something to nibble (tuna and some twirly pasta) on my table I decided to risk dinner. I was hungry. I went for the mirage of the aroma of cooking meat and the warm buzz of company. I learnt – never again. The food ‘marinated pork and potato’ turned out to be daunting in volume and poor in quality – the potatoes were actually chips. I was challenged to finish even half of it.
Afterwards, with the sun just setting I walked down to the beach. Now, unlike earlier in the day when it was hot, bright and crowded, now it was beautiful, deserted, the tide just up and on the turn, a lovely light just before the sky lost any colour, the quiet lapping of the water around the rocks. This moment, like the walk up to the stations of the cross seemed to say to me that there are moments of involvement to be found but they are unlikely to be in searching for involvement in what others seem to find attractive. I first sensed this about 40 years ago and still don’t seem to confidently believe it.
This morning I am still suffering from last night’s dinner. I rode up to Finisterre, the most westerly part of the peninsular in search of 1. A supermarket to buy some fresh produce after a week of not seeming to find any and 2. What I imagined as the lonely lighthouse on a crag with ample parking and few people. I can tick off number 1 – I could even park right outside the door but not the second. Despite two attempts, all roads seemed to end in the congested and cobbled little town sea front awash with people walking out in front of the bike and other people trying to park anywhere. There were also many pilgrims to be seen who had obviously gathered to much spiritual momentum on their walk to Santiago that they were unable to stop walking and hopefully managed to stop just in time before the ended up in the sea.
On the way back I got my always mysterious helmet cam to work for the first time on the trip. As a triumphant finale I manage to turn up into the steep and narrow street leading to the campsite under smooth control – unlike my first arrival.
Once back here at lunchtime, I see the place is filling up again, with three new tents in the field down here, two guys with the radio on (strains of double-stopped violin, ‘music clasique’ says one of them without turning it off, then a family of three – the third being a small annoying girl. Then interestingly a couple riding a Honda Pan (Pan European – if you are not in the know) with GB plates. They turn out to be Scottish, pleasant, him fit, an ex-competition cyclist and she, ironic, funny and dealing with their apparently huge amount of washing. There were two conversations going on – the men talking about motorbikes, cycles and fitness and interjected conversations between me and her about the washing machine having broken down – I tell her she will have to buy a complete set of clothes now.
Later, after a few halting pages of Being and Time and swatting flies, I went down to the beach with my swimmers cunningly ready beneath my zip offs (in zipped-off mode; you see, I have saved bringing two separate pairs of trousers; the legs have colour-coded zips). I discovered its actually beautifully breezy down there and lay in the sun and sneaked into the sea which is cold. It’s the Atlantic not the Mediterranean. I also notice that while many people walk up and down in swimming costumes very few actually get into the water.
Postscript on my failure to find the lighthouse. The wonders of GPS and Google earth showed me just now exactly where I went wrong on the road. I need to decide whether to retrace my steps tomorrow or to take another winding coastal jaunt in a southerly direction down the coast to the Cape of Arousal. The attractions are obvious. Excuse me while I find my zipped-off legs.

Monday 2nd September Miles – none

This campsite closes next Monday and is almost empty now. It wouldn’t surprise me if I am the only one left at the end – though I’ve been trying to plan a route back to Bilbao but that’s not till next week, or the end of this week.
Time, Being and Time. Time passes slowly when you are restless. After breakfast up on the lovely terrace and saying goodbye to the intrepid cyclists who were aiming to do 70k today and who saved me from solitude, I started reading Heidegger in manageable chunks, and swatting flies from my salty body and having innumerable showers and then ventured out on foot – twice. Orientated towards finding a supermarket and the beach I had failed to notice a residential convent next door – just the other side of the stone wall. There was a very catholic 19th century chapel, cool inside and the sign Reception over a door which I did not understand at the time. I did notice the stone path up the side of the hill in front with pillars containing plaster reliefs of the stations of the cross (just to remind you: Stations of the Cross (or Way of the Cross; in Latin, Via Crucis; also called the Via Dolorosa or Way of Sorrows, or simply, The Way) is a series of artistic representations, very often sculptural, depicting Christ Carrying the Cross to his crucifixion in the final hours (or Passion) of Jesus before he died, and the devotions using that series to commemorate the Passion, often moving physically around a set of stations. Thanks to Wikipedia), so of course I started to climb to the top, through all 14, through the recently burnt out undergrowth (it still smelled of charcoal).
Stations of the Cross at Lauro, Spain
Stations of the Cross at Lauro, Spain
Stations of the Cross at Lauro, Spain
What an amazing sight it must have been when the whole hillside caught file and those 14 pillars survived, just needed a fresh coat of whitewash. I’ve just noticed I can see the convent from where I am sitting by the tent, though a gate. There’s nothing going on there. I climbed up my personal Golgotha all the way to the top. What a change of mood from the beach and search for a supermarket. And what a strange story. Is this a very good metaphor for life, an uphill struggle, to an ultimate cruel death and being laid in a tomb? Its formalised – how many times did Jesus stumble? Like my 14 days in Spain, I’ve stumbled three times, coming to an abrupt halt with a struggle to keep Bertha upright. And why did the soldier give him vinegar, not water or wine? Vinegar seems to go well with the overall bitterness of the story. (Apparently it was used as a kind of painkiller to prolong death on the cross and Jesus refused it – which I had forgotten.)
Tomorrow I will ride up to Cape Finesterre – its not far – then back down the coast . It does look beautiful. It was good to rest today but some boredom crept in.