Day 30 - Ronda

Well this is pretty much our last day of the holiday. The next 48hrs will be spent travelling within Spain and then onto Australia.

We spent the day enjoying the sights of Ronda, one of the most beautiful towns we have seen and good enough that Earnest Hemmingway and H.G Wells have their ashes scattered here.

The town is perched on top of cliffs and the major attractions are the old bridges that span the deep canyons.

As we are in the south of Spain, there is a significant Arabic(Moorish) influence to the buildings.

But otherwise, it's just another pretty Spanish town with lots of white buildings.

Day 29 - Ardales to Ronda (last day of Ride)

Today was a harder day with a decent 300m climb out of Ronda to wake us up. We then wound our way down some very average roads to the small valley town of El Burgo.

Now we faced our 2nd largest climb, from 400m to nearly 1200m. Surprisingly, despite having ridden a solid 5 days, we are finding the climbs a bit easier and find a good pace that suits us. We enter the beautiful town of Ronda very satisfied after 5 great days of riding.

Our hotel is perched right on the top of the cliff above.

Day 28 - Antequerra to Ardales

Gorgeous start to today, a nice (!) steep 100m rise out of town to get the heart started and then beautiful rolling hillside scenery for most of the morning.  We crossed into another scenic valley with lemon, orange, almond and of course Olive trees and gently headed down for most of the morning until arriving at El Chorro gorge. 

Let me tell you about the down hill sections; they are STEEP!  Yesterday we had to get off a couple times for an incredibly steep uphill section, but I (Shaz) could happily have gotten off the bike for a couple of the downhills!  The roads are little back roads so not the best surface to start with, then in the braking zone they turn to rubble and then to gravel in the corner!  Then the corner might tighten a bit, or drop off even steeper and of course, there can always be a car coming the other way, or two cars stopped - one in each direction - while the locals catch up for a chat!  My legs haven't hurt as much going up any hill as my forearms and hands have hurt trying to keep the speed under control going downhill!

So happily after lunch we headed back uphill, 200m to 450m in about 4km, through some pine forest, the lake district and then into Ardale.  Gorgeous, typical white town with narrow lane ways up steep hillsides, pity the food wasn't so great; I think the ice-cream was the healthiest option here.

Day 27 - Colmenar to Antequerra

A challenging day today with a few big climbs including one to the top of a mountain from 350m to 1250m. In places it was so steep that we had to get off and walk the bikes. The descents can often be more challenging, reaching over 70kph, blind corners, stones across the road, some sections with a 10% gradient (which is a lot steeper than it sounds, try impossible to ride up, difficult for cars and steep enough for walking to be very difficult). Again, the views were amazing, especially from El Torqo, the mountain we climbed.

Day 26 - Bike ride to Colmenar

A little shorter today but the tooshie is already sore from yesterday!  We had an incredibly steep ride just to get out of town so soon forgot about the toosh and just concentrated on breathing!  Just 51kms today but 2 decent climbs. 1 from 800 to 1180m and then the 2nd took us from 380m to about 700m and was right at the end of the day. 

But again, the scenery made it completely enjoyable.  We've ridden into one of those tiny, white towns perched right on top of a hill top and the valley's are just spread out below with views of another mountain range, the Sierra de Alhama in the background.

Day 25 - Bike ride Granada to Alhambra Granada

Now THIS is the Spain we've been waiting to see!  We had a pretty big bike ride to warm us up, 65kms and 3 massive climbs (well by our Beach Rd standards anyway!) with the final climb finishing in town at 900m. But it didn't seem to matter; as soon as we got a bit tired or thought the hill would never finish, we'd just have a look at where we were and the surrounding scenery. It was just spectacular!  Gorgeous little farms growing wheat, herbs & olive trees as far as the eye can see.  But it gives the land scape a really intersting patchwork appearance. Even the fields that look like weeds are pretty as they're full of red poppies and then yellow and purple flowers (which could be herbs or something for all I know!)  and everything else is bright green. 

The towns are all white with caramel colored roofs and they,re just dotted across the countryside and perched precariously on hill tops in many cases.  And then of course there are the specacular, rugged and still snow capped mountains of the Sierra Nevada. 

We're told that Cadel Evans is training around here having just finished some local race where he came 5th, so we're in pretty impressive company!

We ride into the massively steep streets, even when you're walking! of the tiny town of Alhambra and get taken by our wonderful Dutch hosts to the natural springs just outside of town and let our legs recover after a massive day lugging our extra holiday weight around and then get taken to a great little restaurant for dinner.
We can't figure out why this place doesn't rate as highly as Tuscany; certainly the countyside is up there, perhaps the towns aren't up to comparison with Sienna, etc.

Day 24 - Granada

Granada seems to be an interesting place, situated inland and a bit larger than San Sebastian. One of the main attractions of Granada is the old palace which is in the Arab/Islam style like we saw in Morocco, but a lot larger and more grand. It was really worth the visit.