nbjtours

La Guardia de Jaen, Spain

86 miles 8186ft

No we have not suddenly become religious, but today did feature a lot of climbing and we have never seen so many olive groves. In fact we are wild camping tonight in the middle of an olive grove just outside of Jaen.  

 
Getting up this morning was more of a struggle as sunrise was after 8, but we still managed to get away just before 9. 

Initially the road climbed up alongside a river before it then really started going up and over the Puerto de las Palomas (Pass of the Doves) at 1290m. 

It was a cool and misty start to the day and we saw many deer crossing the road in front of us and heard lots of stags bellowing in the woods as the rutting season is underway.  

 At this stage I shouted “look at those geese” when I meant to say goats, tiredness and effort taking its toll- we all had trouble staying on our bikes as we were laughing so much. This guy had a big bell !  

The climb though long, was not too steep  

 and rewarded us with a great view at the top, looking back over the valley we had just climbed 

 Monica and Nigel had waited at the top for us as we shared our achievement.    
   A more technical descent with plenty of hairpins followed, but gave us a much different view on the other side of the mountain. One that we were to become familiar with for the rest of the day.  Olive groves. 
 Our coffee stop was just passed Cazorla (so ticking off our second Spanish footballer)  Below is the castle at Iruela next to Cazorla. 

 Leaving this stop, the next segment was a rolling road running almost exclusively through the olive groves we had seen from way up above. Unfortunately they seemed to be more up than down!  

 Lunch stop just short of Jodar was welcomed and left just over 30 miles for the final segment. At this stage Nick who had been struggling with keeping his cleats in decided to make some running repairs on the road. He was the most surprised when he actually fixed it.  

 Thinking that we had left the big hills behind, we were seriously mistaken, as we immediately had a long climb into the Sierra Magina where we continually seemed to be going up and only had short drops until the last big descent. This photo was taken after another big climb to Jimena 

 During this segment we were overtaken by several cars running in a classic car rally, including MGs, Porsches, Austin Healeys and a couple of Bentleys amongst others, including this Datsun. It was great to listen to these classics go past as they sound so much better than today’s machinery. 

 As one car went passed, it lost its rally plate which I then wore for the rest of day! 
 Leaving La Mancha Real, we looked at the scenery and thought we must be going downhill,  as there was only one hill, but no, our road went straight up that solitary mountain for the hardest climb of the day to Pegalajar, at a gradient that was between 9-11%. As ever, the great view made it worth it – just. 

 Tonight we were wild camping again  and Nigel found a spot in the middle of an Olive grove, where as usual we enjoyed a hearty meal, washed  down by some cheap beer, the cheap wine at €1 a litre  box,  would have stripped paint, so the highly trained athletes amongst us gave it a miss, especially as today had the most climbing of the whole tour to date. 

 
I hope that you have been enjoying the blog. Following much demand after his reading of the blog this morning an audiobook version is now available by phoning Nick and he will be happy to offer his interpretation for those that cannot read!