After shuttling from Córdoba to the small village of Luque, we began our day's ride with a short downhill spin out of town, followed immediately by our first of many climbs of the day. On our way out of town we passed some motorcyclists having coffee at one of the small bars in town. I didn't realize how many of them were there until they caught up with us @ 3 miles out of town. It looked like a Hell's Angels convention! There were at least 70 of them whizzing past us on the narrow mountain road.
The entire day's ride was a series of uphills and downhills (most of the time, the uphills were much longer than the downhills) as we wound our way up and over and through the mountains past miles and miles of olive orchards.
Up and over and through them there mountains
View of Priego de Cordoba after climbing out of town
We stopped in the town of Priego de Córdoba, about 13 miles into our ride, to buy sandwiches for a picnic lunch later on and discovered we had lost a rider. Mary was nowhere to be found! Jorge was riding with us today and said he had seen her riding into town, but that she must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. He set off on his bike while Raoul took the car to look for her. The five of us all had flashbacks to our Provence ride two years ago when Mary got totally off course and found her way to a town nowhere near our planned route. I guess once you get REALLY off-route the GPS is of no more help than the written course instructions we were using two years ago.
Forty minutes later we had found Mary and were back on our bikes climbing more hills. This was another scorcher of a day and the hills felt harder and harder as the day wore on. We stopped for our picnic lunch 28 miles into our ride and had a bit of a respite from the heat. After lunch it was more climbing. It felt REALLY good to finally reach our hotel and give our legs a rest!
Montefrio
Nighttime view of Montefrio
No comments:
Post a Comment