Day 9: South, but not really south

It's amazing how the Camino culture changes once you go south of the N120 highway. All of a sudden, the bone-whote churches with their fancy belltowers give way to squat, red-roof building that would seem more at home in Soria. Further to the south, the buildings seem tougher, stronger, built to last and if they fall down, that's that.


After a bit of futzing around in Arlanzón, we hit the Vía Verde de la Sierra de la Demanda, and start riding between the two most westerly edges of the Sierra de la Demanda, which must be one of the least-visited areas of Spain -- and somewhat unfairly, too, considering that it's one of the few areas in Spain where you could seriously forget that other people exist. There is nothing here except the sound of the breeze raking through the pine and oak forests in the lower reaches of the Arlanzón Valley.

I'd originally though about doing the entire Vía Verde all the way up to Barbadillo de los Herreros, but the truth is, I was starting to face by about 4:00 pm. Going uphill for four hours is taxing, even if the incline is fairly small, but when the bike's got all those bags on it, and with the loose gravel on the surface of the road, it made for particularly tough going.



The VV Sierra de la Demanda is pretty well organized, so it feels a bit churlish to complain about the two points that did give me trouble -- both of which were extremely steep uphill climbs over what were the disused (and, I suppose, caved-in) tunnels at Km 10 and Km 31. I know that the costs of rebuilding these tunnels must be exorbitants, but I'm not sure that making people perform some kind of hands-and-knees crawl up a hill with a 20% grade is not a solution, either. If I'd had more of a sense of humour about it I could have looked at it like something that they'd make you do on one of those wacko Japanese game shows. But it just seemed unfairly dangerous. I stopped biking two hours ago, and my Achilles tendons are still screaming. When I got to the Puerto del Manquillo mountain pass (1400 metres....the highest point in the trip, methinks), it didn't take much prompting to get me to take to the highway and bomb down the final 5km to Riocavado, rather than spend another hour fighting the gravel on the Vía Verde. And what a delicious downhill it was! When you're going downhill so quickly that the dogs can't even be bothered to bark...that's amore.


Now I'm Salas de los Infantes, which seems to be one of the few towns along the way that doesn't have a Chinese restaurant. Being that it's Monday, there isn't a lot open...but boy, a good beef with green peppers would go down a treat.......