Chapter 25: Bikepacking the Altravesur-Campo Camara to the Sierra de Cazorla

16th June 2019

Sunday morning the Casa Pepe bar, in Campo Cámara, was open early, and quite busy with many locals having breakfast. Pepe, the owner was behind the bar this morning, he was a happy friendly chap. It was a nice atmosphere, so I wasn’t hurrying at all. I had a coffee or two and a tostada, Pepe’s wife made me a bocadillo to take with me, and as a treat I took a can of Coke, to open when I was really needing it!

I rode back to the top of the town and continued on the surfaced road I had ridden in on. The mountains ahead of me were getting closer and closer, the road was tree-lined and undulating. Along this road, I left the Granada province and entered Jaén. Almost immediately the road was passing through beautiful thick woodland, and a massive descent had started, it was nice payback after the awful climbing nearly all of the day before. And the sun wasn’t high yet, which was another bonus.

Not far into Jaén, around half ten, I came across an entrance to a restaurant on my right, and thought I’d stop and have a Coke. I didn’t realise because of the woodland, that the restaurant was sitting above a lake, the Embalse de la Bolera, another turquoise-watered reservoir. It was similar to the one I’d visited the previous day. It looked like you could hire kayaks further around the lake, with many already on the water. I had a quick drink, then got on my way. I wasn’t feeling too clever this day, I think I’d way over-done it in the 13 hours of riding in the sunshine the day before, but I was quite