Chapter 13: Bikepacking the Altravesur-Villanueve de Cauche to Valdeiglesias

You can see my YouTube on this ride here

From the hamlet of Villanueva de Cauche the Altravesur had a long ride on a surfaced road, first across agricultural plains with some escarpments and mountains beyond, then onto some steeper mountain roads. These went on for many kilometres. It was very hot, although the ambient isn’t too high, perhaps mid 20’s deg C, the blazing sun is hard to shelter from on a bike, especially on your face. At times, when there was wind, I could stay cool enough, but for the most part it was a pretty uncomfortable a ride, especially when the five kilometres of steeply uphill started.

Many motorbikes were using this road for a Saturday morning jaunt, perhaps 20 – 30 passing me by.

I stopped in any shade I could, eventually stopping to eat the half of Phillipe’s bocadillo that I’d saved for lunch and to have a rest. Checking the GPS at this time, I noticed I’d gone slightly too far up this road, only by around 200metres, it was a downhill ride back to where I needed to turn onto the camino towards Riogordo.

The camino was chalky and rocky, but mainly dry. After a couple of kilometres ascending, the camino became a steep, rocky, fabulous descent! It went on and on, the hours of pushing up the mountain road was worth this descent, which passed through mainly olive groves. I couldn’t believe my luck!

The descent was very steep at times, but