Pugsworth in Murcia

Checking out the eroded landscape was also the highlight of my ride to Murcia, lots of mountains and valleys and roads flat enough to enjoy the scenery. I even stopped for about 40 minutes to explore one small baranco of about 100 square metres. They are just such a fascinating environment in miniature and this one had a river bed that came from nowhere but in about 20 metres was deeper than I am tall! Further on I came to a town called Fortuna and I think I discovered the reason behind its name. I stopped in a square to have a bite to eat and decided to try one of the oranges growing there. I´d seen these wild orange trees in Valencia and other places and knew they were sour but wanted to taste them because I´d never tasted a sour orange. I also knew this would seem weird to the locals so I waited until noone was around but just as I went to pick the orange, a man walked around the corner. He saw me and came up to say it was no good and I shouldn´t eat it. I made to throw it in the bin but kept one segment to taste, yep definitely sour. The real surprise though was that a few minutes later he came back and gave me a whole bag of oranges and apples! I tried to refuse but he wouldn´t have it. He must have thought I was really starving and desperate to be picking sour oranges. The bag lasted me about a week, so I can see why the town is called Fortuna.

Murcia, the city didn’t do much for me but it was one of my best servas stays. I was only the second Servas guest Marie-Angeles had had, and the first guy sounded real dodgy, but she and I hit it off real good. It is amazing how you can meet people and have so much in common and yet a lot to learn from each other that after three days you feel like life long friends. Human beings are fascinating creatures and travelling is certainly a great way to learn more about them. To think that across the world with all our different cultures we can be so the same and yet so different is really remarkable.

From Murcia I rode to my first Spanish woofing place, and what a day! I slept in and woke up with about 25 minutes to catch my train. I made it and then slept a large part of the way. Most of the trip was inland heading back to the coast at the end through one of narrowest gorges I´ve seen. I was the only person to get off the train in the tiny mining town of Jaravia (Harabia). It seemed completely deserted, noone around for miles, like the middle of nowhere. Such an amazing feeling to get off the train, just me and my bike, a vague idea of where I am and where I had to go and just setting off, down the hill towards the sea. I followed the coast for much of the day. The first stretch was deserted and beautiful; then into a tourist zone that, while in the quiet winter season, seemed noisey and chaotic compared to the peaceful first hour. I stopped for lunch on the beach and was amazed to find that even though the road ran right behind it, a little drop, a line of trees and the small waves breaking on the shore completely drowned out the noise of the traffic. The next stretch took me into mountain country and I had a long winding ride up to a peak with a fantastic view and a brilliant descent. The lookout even had a sign showing the landscape and naming the peaks and bays etc on which someone had graffitied two cyclists screaming down the hill. Finally I got to where I could ride no further, I didn´t know if the minor roads went right through the next mountain range and the main road turned into a freeway. It was also getting late and I´d arranged to call and get picked up, so eventually a big blue bus arrived to take me into the unknown wilderness of Cabo de Gata Natural Park.

Pugsworth in Alicante

Next stop, again by train with more great mountains on the way, was Alicante. It was several degrees warmer again meaning I was now back to shorts and t-shirt all day. The best bit was Castillo Santa Barbara, an extensive hill fortress in the middle of the city but high above it with a great view of city, sea and mountains. I also climbed a small hill nearby, a remaining island of natural green area in the middle of the crowded city, the ideal lunch spot. It was a few days into December now and I was beginning to wonder what a Spanish Christmas might be like when riding home one day, I heard Christmas carols being played over PA systems in the street! Lots of people had said that Christmas in Spain was big but that´s just crazy, is there no escape?

It was also in Alicante that I found the book ‘Discovering your psychic powers’ on my host´s bookshelf. At the beginning of this trip I would not have even considered picking this book up but my horizons are broader now, particularly because of my time in Ireland, woofing and seeing ´Steiner Graffiti´. Even so, I still picked it up thinking I´d just like to see if this stuff could be described coherently. Once I started reading it though I found that the author, Tara Ward, had an overly careful approach and I was ready to agree and understand her more than she expected. She really grabbed my attention though when she offered an explanation for a phenomenon I had observed but never heard anyone else even mention, let alone explain. It must be a couple of years ago now when one day I observed what appeared to be little glowing lights, moving around in the sky in a pattern similar to that of flying insects. At first I thought it was just spots on my retina but had never been a satisfying explanation and I didn´t know who to ask. Anyway, I´m reading this book when I find exactly this phenomenon described as the earth´s energy field or aura and a small exercise for people to try to see it. Well I didn´t need the exercise and now I can see it any time the sky is blue. I don´t claim to understand what this means but it´s the only explanation I have of this phenomenon. I didn´t get the chance to finish the book but I am now working on trying to see the energy fields of plants, but it´s hard to know what´s real and what´s imagined without someone else to check against. Something I´d like to explore more though, do you know anything about it?

From Alicante I got up the motivation to ride beyond the cities of Spain, thanks largely to the beckoning of the fantastic mountains. Until now I´d hesitated going in this direction because going inland meant getting colder. However I found a Servas host in the little town of Novelda about 30kms inland, and decided this wouldn´t be too cold and a good introduction to Spanish rural roads. It turns out that Spanish roads are considerably better than British ones, probably thanks to European funding but that Novelda is several degrees colder even though it´s only a couple of hundred metres in elevation. As I´d hoped I got to go mountain climbing. My host took me up Peña la Mina, a peak of 1100m. It was a steep climb up some frosty ground that lay in all day shadow due to the low winter sun. The view at the top was fantastic though, I really love the Spanish landscape, dominated by erosion. You can see pretty clearly how the whole area used to be a large plateau which has now been eroded into magnificent mountains and valleys. They valleys contain the civilisation, farms, towns and roads, while the hills (if they´re not mines or terraced) are pockets of natural environment with great views. Erosion is very obvious on the small scale too, little barancos (rugged river beds), unusual rock formations and just generally water leaving its mark on the landscape, fantastic.

Pugsworth in Spain

It wasn`t my original plan to begin with Barcelona but seeing as it was so late in the year and getting cold it seemed like a good idea. I certainly enjoyed the comparatively warmer whether and being back in shorts for the first time in a while, but for me Barcelona didn´t live up to its reputation. The highlights were Gaudi´s Segrada Familiar and also his Parque Grüel, one of his less well known but just as beautiful landscape designs. It was returning from this park that I came off my bike rather dramatically. The front wheel of my bike was seizing up and I´d spent the morning looking for a bike shop but couldn´t find one open. Parque Grüel is situated on top of one of the hills over looking Barcelona and as I was coming down the wheel suddenly seized up completely, luckily I was going slowly so the stop wasn´t too bad. In the now fading light I had to turn my bike upside down and turn the wheel backwards in order to unjam it. I then got back on my bike very cautiously but was descending the steep hill down to the centre of town when it seized up again. This time I was going too fast and while I felt it coming and began to brake I wasn´t able to slow down enough to prevent me from going straight over the handle bars. The first time I´d fallen off the bike for the whole trip! Luckily I wasn´t injured except for a gash in my right leg, but several people stopped to make sure I was alright and get me off the road. From there I decided to walk, and managed to find a bike shop now open after siesta. I replaced the front wheel and back tyre, doing it myself in the bikeshop. Then back to the hostel for dinner.

Mostly though my impression of Barcelona is that it´s just another crowded city, not particularly pleasant and a bit touristy. I had a couple of nights out with others from the hostel but didn´t find any of the famed nightlife, maybe November is the wrong season. The other little jem I found is supposed to be the oldest known synagogue in Europe, in the old quarter of Barcelona. It´s just a couple of little rooms but a short visit there taught me a few things about the city´s history and the history of the Jews in Spain, something that seems otherwise squeezed out between the Muslim-Christian rivalries.

From Barcelona I headed south by train to Valencia, enjoying the beautiful mountain scenery along the way. From my first moments there Valencia struck me as a much more beautiful city with a lot of old architecture surviving and new architecture blending with it quite well. On my first afternoon I had a great ride down a stretch of fantastically landscaped parkland that runs in an old riverbed under several beautiful 800 year old bridges. It just kept going and going and progressively changing in design, shaping several different atmospheres along what turned out to be about 12km. Valencia has several beautiful park areas, all landscaped but not overly done and with a sort of natural look to them. I also had a great Servas stay, with a young couple who introduced me to some of Valencia´s alternative community. I went on my first ever Critical Mass ride on a Friday evening which was fairly relaxed and lots of fun and then out for tapas with a group afterwards. I also helped my host Santi working in a community garden he has started in a vacant lot.

Staying with Santi and Jenny was also the main beginning of adjusting to Spanish eating times and quantities. Traditionally the Spanish eat very little or nothing for breakfast, lunch is the main meal, between 2 and 4pm and then a light dinner at about 10pm. It seems that most foreigners find adjusting to the times more difficult but I often eat lunch at about 3 and dinner at about 9 so this was no problem. However I do this after eating a good breakfast at 9 or 10 in the morning. So with a Spanish breakfast I was at first starving by about 12, a big lunch just made up for it and I was well hungry again by dinner time. After a week or so though, I began to adjust, the body once again proving how adaptable it can be.

After a few days staying with Santi he mentioned he was going to Eivissa (Ebiza one of the Belearic Islands, next to Mallorca) to visit a friend. I´d wondered about going to the islands but had decided to give it a miss but when said that I´d love to go there he invited me to come with him. His friend Jesus was happy to have me so along I went. Like Mallorca, Eivissa is very touristy but being December most things were shut for winter. It also has some remaining rural areas and the highlight for me was a day walk through the bush to a remote farm and ending up on the cliff top on the western side of the island.