The pleasure was mine!

Today I finally had the chance to meet the charming Ben Curtis and his wife, Marina, the brains and brawn behind the Notes From Spain (http://www.notesfromspain.com) website. For the last couple of years, Ben and Marina have been channelling their love (and, sometimes frustations) for Spain into the website, which covers topics as diverse as fiestas, expat life and how thin the walls can be in apartment buildings.

One of the most fun things about their website is their weekly podcasts, where they take time to sit down and talk with diverse people about the diverse things they get up to. So, after much searching for a quiet enough place to do a recording, we settled down in a Starbucks with three cups of hot chocolate, and had a chat about the Trans-Iberian.

It's always encouraging to speak to people who are interested in travelling by bicycle, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Ben and Marina will be able to join us, even if it's just for one weekend!

Check out the podcast at:
http://www.notesfromspain.com/2007/12/10/cycle-ride-lifetime-notes-spain-podcast/ !

Where? Where? Where? Where? Where?

No sooner are we out of the hotel than I become very, VERY thankful that we didn't go to Andalusia this weekend. A cold front has blown in from the Atlantic and has shrouded the northern half of the peninsula in cold air, which means that if you're anywhere near a river, you're in fog. Thick, dangerous fog that makes biking treacherous, especially since there was no notice in the weather forecasts that this was going to hit this far south.

We're somewhat lucky in that most of the fog we encounter hits us on the way to Toledo, and even though the ride into Toledo requires a bit of zigzagging along some very large roads, we don't have to deal with a lot of traffic and the signage is more or less clear about where we need to go.

This is NOT the case with the Ruta del Quijote signage that we can't see for the life of us. Even though Toledo is effectively the trailhead for the Ruta, there's very, very little signage that directs us to where we're supposed to go to pick up the trail and get out of Toledo - not helped with the nonexistent maps that are in the guide book. Eventually we do find the road out, and head up to Cobisa, then hit the Ruta full-on, but until we get out of the Tagus Valley, it's a bit complicated finding where we're supposed to go.

And even when we're on the route, it becomes clear, very quickly, that you've really got to keep your eyes open for the signs. I'm not sure how, exactly, the signs were planned, but you have to be very, very vigilant for the signs. Paranoid, almost. We end up messing around for a couple of hours before finally giving up after a serious dog-leg; we blow down a secondary highway to the town of Mascaraque, have lunch and promptly give up the idea of trying to make it down to Consuegra before nightfall.

I don't want to criticize the people who worked to create the Ruta del Quijote, because there are some things about the route which are very well done - the rest stops, the signpost markers which tell you how far you are from the next town - but it's not the first time that I've been on the Ruta and come away with the distinct feeling that someone in a government office somewhere sat down with an army map and tried to loop together as many back roads as possible, without actually getting on a bike or putting on a pair of hiking boots and doing the route itself.

We roll into the town of Mora at five PM, check into the hotel and collapse on the beds, partly from exhaustion and partly from the effects of so much frustration in so little time. Fifty-six kilometres in seven hours. Even discounting having stopped for coffee and lunch, we're frustrated that we're nowhere near where we thought we would be.

Fortune's Hotel Room

When the bunch of us go out on scouting trips, we often don't make hotel reservations. I know that we should, especially on weekends like this when it's a holiday weekend for almost all of the weekend, but -- knock wood -- we've never had trouble. So even though we know that Toledo is going to be busy, I don't bother making a hotel reservation before we leave because there are only two of us, and there's always somewhere for us to stay.

We leave Aranjuez just after 11.15, and ride out towards the Tagus River, on a slightly ratty secondary highway which, blissfully, doesn't have much traffic. The ride between Aranjuez and Toledo is something thaty I've been wanting to solve for a while - it looks like it should be a fairly easy trip, but because of the way farm land has been settled in the Sagra Valley, it's not easy to follow the course of the Tagus and make a straight trip between both towns - let alone cross the Tagus and follow the river down to Toledo.

Generally speaking, it's not hard to follow the trails. The path rolls along the old rail line for most of the distance, which makes navigation easy. The only problem is how to get across the Tagus River, since there aren't a lot of and while we could take a hand-barge to cross the Tagus, the thing doesn't come with any kind of instructions. At times like these, it's best to go with your gut instinct and trust your tripas: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

But then sometimes you just have to let yourself be persuaded, which is what we do when we get to Mocejón. The owner of the Tic-Tac Café is intrigued at the sight of us travelling by bike, and asks where we're headed. Toledo, we say. Got a place for the night? No, not really. Mocejón isn't that far from Toledo; is there any place to stay there? He pulls out a cellphone, rings up one of the hostales in town and half an hour later, we're in a small (but VERY well cared-for) hotel. True, that leaves us with a twelve-kilometre ride before we get to Toledo tomorrow, but we'll manage.