Straight Shot

Eighty kilometres seems like a very long distance to do in one day, but when most of the trip is downhill, it's a lot better. We left Brihuega going down a sweet series of hairpin turns to join the valley of the Tajuña River, which is going to take us all the way back down to Madrid.

It's a gorgeous day - the sky an incredibly deep royal blue which looks even more blue when juxtaposed with the bright yellows of the poplar tres which line the Tajuña. The day starts off cool, but warms up enough that, by the end of the day, we all end up with sunburns on our noses. The route takes us past two dozen attractive, historical villages; it's a shame that we don't have time to visit them all, because it doesn't seem fair that we should have to choose one over the other.

The further south we go, the more the valley opens up, and by the time we reach the N320 highway, the Tajuna lies at the bottom of a low canyon, bounded by wheat fields on each side. We stop for lunch at a small town close to the Madrid-Guadalajara border; the afternoon's riding was totally seamless, one of those days when you could go on riding and pedalling forever if the sunlight let you. And then we hit the first big problem: finding a place to sleep.

The Spanish greenways guidebook says that there are four places to sleep: two in the town of Ambite, one in Orusco de Tajuña, as well as a youth hostel in Carabaña. Turns out that the Carabaña youth hostel is just that - no one over 30 - and the hostales in Orusco and Ambite closed years ago. Which leaves us with a hotel in Tielmes whose name I won't mention.

The hotel itself is not bad if you've got money, but it's very surprising to find out that there are so few options along the way. The hotel is NOT cheap; they do have cabins for rent, but they're not good value for the money, and the three of us are woken up several times during the night by drunken wedding guests trying to find their way into bed. I was hoping that the existence of the Vía Verde would motivate more tourism initiatives in the area, but this doesn't seem to be the case....