Day 9 Wednesday 24th July
Today was an easy day, just riding 80 odd miles to, around, and back from the Bardenas Reales, a place that has fascinated me since I first saw pictures of it quite a few years ago. Everything went according to plan. I set an alarm and when I arrived downstairs for breakfast at opening time, one person was already leaving and another well into their meal. Unlike my last restaurant there was someone there to serve. Every time I think about when to leave tomorrow to get back to the port to catch the boat I find myself deciding to leave earlier. Now it is 8.30. I was practising my French (they speak some French here – very little English) to ask for special dispensation to check out early but I can see that won’t be necessary. An early start might beat the worst of the temperature as it really starts to rise at lunch time. The boat is due to leave at 3.30 but maybe we can board much earlier – if we are lucky.
Back to today. It takes about 20 minutes or so to get to the town where you can find the road that leads onto the Bardenas Reales. It is all dry and agricultural/industrial around here. On either side of the road you can see the dust rising from the wheels of vehicles on farms and industrial estates. Once you turn into the national park there is a visitor centre with a large car park – with huge spaces for buses. A few people were there already, though it was only 9 in the morning. You carry on a narrow tarmac road until you get to a fenced off military centre where you have to chose whether to take the gravel track to the left or the right. I chose left, to ride clockwise around the area and to branch off to the north on the way. The desert landscape with its bizarre rock formations and a number of deserted shacks seems more like a constructed film set than a natural feature. It is strange, and strange to be breathing its air, feeling the bumps of the road and experiencing its heat (it wasn’t too bad – between 26 and 30 degrees) when I have seen so many photographs. I stopped a few times too, to take obligatory photographs and got some good footage of the ride. I headed up the northern track towards El Paso though I turned back before I got there in order to continue to ride in the desert. One great thing about the ride is the confidence I got riding on gravel all morning. To start with I was riding tensely and in second gear. By the end I was sailing along at 30 (over the speed limit) enjoying every slip and slide. So that later in the day when I had to make a U-turn into roadside gravel I did not hesitate. This was a really enjoyable, stress-free, part of the whole trip. I must find more similar challenges – predictable ones not the crazy narrow tracks that end up going nowhere from earlier in the week.


I stopped at the end to visit the information centre with the expectation of getting a cup of tea and a cake – but it seems that they only have some stony artefacts and a list of rules about where you can and cannot drive and what you must be wearing even, to go into their building. That answers my puzzle as to why I saw people returning very quickly to their cars after walking into the entrance.




So, I decided to head for Tudela, about 10k away to find something to eat, a supermarket with air-conditioning and easy parking. I was looking for the Spanish Gin that I drank in Casa Camino – but despite visiting two large grocery stores, that did have air-con and ample parking, none was to be found. I got back at soon after 1pm with the ingredients for a fresh lunch and for tomorrow’s journey though I am not sure how well it will travel in the heat. I still have a packet of figs that I bought at Arjuna before I left. I opened it at Portsmouth waiting for the ferry. I picked out a wiggling maggot from the top and, as I was hungry, ate one or two figs. But I have not been so enthusiastic since then, probably because I have not been that hungry since then.
