Even though there was one more day of riding the next day, this would be the last day that we all ride together. I was kinda bummed about that, but will cover my "bummi-ness " in the next post. This day's ride had some great weather, great views, a flat tire care of "el flato", a nice lunch, never ending hills and Matty in the race against time! [ we still aren't quite sure why he was so focused this day...maybe he had a phone interview or something =P ] We started off nice and early, leaving before 7:30am and headed out of La Herradura. We had some great morning views along the coast and went through the bulk of the climbs, but we did have a number of climbs waiting for us at the very end along with a VERY scary nighttime highway ride that had me and Shruti riding in these weird shoulder paths, but will get to that later.
but first ... the stats!!
Ride Statistics
Date ....................... Sunday January 15th 2018
Strava Link ................ https://www.strava.com/activities/1361969306 Departure City/Town ........ La Herradura
Departure Time ............. 7:20AM CET* Departure Temperature ...... TBD Time in Motion ............ 8:42 / 73% Time at Rest ............... 3:24 / 27% Total Time ................. 12:46 Arrival City/Town .......... Marbella
Arrival Time ............... 8:06 PM CET
Arrival Temperature ........ TBD
Total Miles Cycled ......... 86.7 mi
Total Elevation ............ 6,506ft
Steve Avg Pace|Max Speed ... 9.6 mi/h | 40 mi/h Matt Avg Pace|Max Speed .... 10.4 mi/h | 32.4 mi/h
Shruti Avg Pace|Max Speed .. 9.3 mi/h | 25.5 mi/h * Central European Time
Tour Statistics
I decided to be extra nerdy and keep a cumulative running total of some key stats. :)
Total Miles Cycled ......... 735.7 mi
Total Elevation ............ 37,438 ft
From a stats perspective not too shabby. We were almost at 10mph for the day while cycling almost 90miles and the most one day elevation of 6500ft. To put 6500 ft in to perspective, the Empire State Building is 1,454ft. So that means we rode our bikes up 4.5 Empire State Buildings just this one day! As we were cruising down our favorite road N-340, we had hit a bit of a downhill that we were all enjoying. To the left was a spectacular ocean view and for some reason, I turned to my right and caught this amazing structure that I thought was a bridge. I quickly grabbed my mobile and snapped a few shots and was actually able to get one. After getting back home I did a bit of reseach based off the photos encoded longitude and latitude and discovered it is a bit of a famous structure. It is a 19th century aqueduct that is still in use today! Here is a little snippet from this website: http://www.andalucia.com/nerja/eagle-aqueduct.htm
"Acueducto del Águila (Eagle Aqueduct), also known as Puente del Águila (Eagle Bridge), is regarded across the region as "an historic jewel of Spanish architecture". It was built in the 19th century and has been used continuously since - today the local community uses it to irrigate farmland. The aqueduct is situated on the Barranco de la Coladilla de Cazadores, to the south-west of the Caves of Nerja, and is visible from the N340 road linking Nerja town and Maro. There is a layby where you can stop to get a good view and take photographs of the monument. The aqueduct was built between 1879 and 1880 (the exact date is not known) to aid the industrial revolution; it was intended to carry water from Nerja town to the local sugar refinery in Maro, Las Mercedes (also known as Fábrica San Joaquin de Maro, built in 1884), for irrigation. The aqueduct was commissioned by the factory owner, Francisco Cantarero Senio; his signature is visible in the central pavilion of the aqueduct. The factory is now closed but the aqueduct continues to be used for local irrigation.
Aqueduct Eagle - El Acueducto del Águila
We ended up stopping in the town of Torrox, Spain for a quick breakfast stop, a life story from another patron and we finally figured out how much oranges cost!
me finding out about this British man's medical history
during my cafe con leche y toastado de jamon :).
But seriously, he was a nice guy
Around mile 16 we pulled in to this little spot called Cafeteria Capricho, adding the address below because the older gentleman who ran and owned the place was so nice. We were going to take a selfie with him, but he was running around with the breakfast crowd and we kind of let it slip. Regret # 35! . He told us about another person who either walked or bicycled, but I think it was walked, from Norway or something all the way to Spain due to protesting war. My memory is faint, hopefully my other scorchers can remember and comment below. :) We ended up having a nice chat with him about our cycle and the patron behind us was also talking to us about things and his 42 heart attacks :), jk, and I seem to be the only one who was listening to the poor guy. But seriously he was a nice guy and if he ever finds this blog, I hope you are still going strong!
If you are visiting, you should definitely stop in: Cafeteria Capricho, Av. de Andalucía, 14, 29793 Torrox, Málaga, Spain
And if you are wondering how much oranges cost in bulk in southeast Spain, we figured out that it was about 2.5lbs of oranges for 50c !! We asked the shop owner how much he paid.
We wanted to take a selfie with the owner ... i dont know what happened
After breakfast we head down the gold coast towards Malaga and our final destination of the day Marbella. The colors of the mediterranean and the big sky in front of us is just fantastic. I could stop every half mile and take pictures.
"el flato" wasnt as angry as he looked in this picture. This was the beginning of the "streak" :)
I changed it in return for a tasty coke :)
After the flat, stopping at a bike shop on the way to lunch, we made it to Oasis. A bit pricey, but pretty tasty. It was located right at the start of Malaga.
If you ever wondered how those culinary photos are made ... :)
and how happy the pics make the photographer :P
I believe these were mysardines. Yumm
and my pulpo!
matty the master selfie taker.... but i think i see a bit o finger in this one... tut tut!
:D
After lunch we head back out on the road and are under the clock. As I mentioned before Matty was determined to try to get us to our destination as early as possible. It was good to get that focus, otherwise Shruti and I would be taking selfies all day and end up at the airbnb at midnight. :) Spain due to the miles we had to tick off and the elevations, we didnt have the same flexibility as we did in India, we needed to focus on the cycling, selfies, the time and the amount of sun we had left!
Action Selfie
we are obviously in Malaga :D
got matty in an action shot ...
or since we are stopped at a light... a before the action shot
i took this baby in traffic while cycling #onearmedbandito
action selfies ... kids do not try this at home
love looking at this scenery
cool little bridge. We didnt go over it. We were sort of in a google mapping circle for the next 30mins.
Matty bhai streaking towards Marbella!! GO GO GO !!!
second leg off roading and uphill - it was a bit tiring, but nice. Any cycling is good cycling
We headed along the coast which put us in a touristy part of Spain with a "boardwalk" type area with some shops and lots of restaurants. After passing through this got us to the part of the day where it got a bit dicey.
Post the coastal area we cycled through a bit of a town and then started weaving our way in and out of higher end communities. We had been cycling up and up and up and then turning corners and continuing to go up. We were in need of some down. It seems that on this part of the highway going to Marbella there are a number of higher end communities sitting up in the hills and mountains off the coast having a non-grid like street layout. Coming from NYC where everything is pretty much a grid, i just dont get it! We had a quick-ish beach walk detour below and then got to the really rough spot... I normally dont get nervous cycling, but this road even got me a bit scared
We were pretty off kilter at this point and had to pick our bikes up and hit the beach to get around this never ending street
at least the "detour" lended itself to a nice sunset view
we had no idea that we were about to enter "the danger zone"
So it turns out that our favorite road, the N-340, has disappeared! We were left with an insane ride around the coastal mountains in the dark, and with fading batteries and fading lights and a ton of elevation already done, no one wanted to go back in. So we did the unthinkable, the rule that we werent supposed to break and honestly did not want to break, we rode on an A road. I had posted links to the highway system on an earlier post, but in short, the A roads in Spain are like the serious major highways that are not supposed to have bicycles on them. The "interstates", if you are from the US. I dont know what they call them in other places. :) I posted a map snippet below, we just didnt have a choice. So we mustered up the courage and entered the highway. The shoulder was tiny, it was night time, we probably weren't the most visible, it was not good. My dad and Matty "speedster" cycled up ahead and me and Shruts fell to the back. I noticed that there were bus stop cut outs and weird walkways leading to them from up the roads as well as almost like service walkways. Im sure they have a name in Spain, but lets call them shoulder walkways. On these walkways there were little bridges to get over drainage, lightpoles, electrical poles, minor amounts of garbage[ Spain is very clean ], broken cement etc... so i was thinking lets give that a try, at least it is behind a metal railing and it is better than dying. The draw back is that you have to get on and off of them at exit ramps and sometimes we had to lift our bikes over the metal barriers and scuttle across the crazy death highway to the other side. It was slow and not fun. BUT WE MADE IT!
one of our Shoulder Walkway "entrances"
A7 - the uncyclable was cyclable...
finallyyyyyyyy
We finally made it, we were sooooo happy to be off that death road. Tomorrow is the last "official" day of cycling and ended up only being 3 of us... but which 3???? So mysterious :) The ride tomorrow is supposed to be 80miles, but we managed to get it in to the 60s with some crafty mapping and a bit of self made supermercado jugo de naranja. Vamonos!!
We ended up stopping in the town of Torrox, Spain for a quick breakfast stop, a life story from another patron and we finally figured out how much oranges cost!
