Day 1: Mostoles to vicinity of Pto. Navacerrada (~80 km with a decent climb.) -
I have no gas for my camp stove, the outdoor shop was sold out. So I’m hoping to find some on the way. Instead I have some heavy fuel for human bodies that does not require cooking: nutella, cheese, two bags of fritos (not the corn chips this is a great Spanish thing that blends cornnuts, honey roasted peanuts, and fried chick peas), and a little bread just to help get the other shit to my mouth. This will go on top of my breakfast of fried potatoes and cheese and sriracha (which Becky mailed to me! ... aw shucks). Last year I read about a feral punk rocker guy who toured on a dumpstered bike with a trailer he made, and wore a hat made of roadkill. He could ride faster than anyone and woudn’t buy food, he would just scavenge food from dumpsters. This amazing athlete’s dietary advice was “ eat like a fat guy”. Years ago I learned this riding the ring road around Iceland…I got really skinny. You’ve got to eat like a fat guy just to maintain your weight. I reckon I need 5000 calories just to come close to breaking even today.
Ok so I started out form my apartment and as usual riding out of the city (any city) kind of sucked. The road I was using was borderline freeway…but shortly I changed roads in a town called Brunete. After that I was having a marvelous, if uneventful ride. The country is pretty nice in that area, it’s mostly cattle pasture with these oak trees that have had all their branches cut off, so the trees overcompensate with a proliferation of branches making excellent shade. Occasional granite outcrops, and stone walls of un-mortared granite pretty much complete the pastoral aesthetic. I had considered stopping by Escorial in the vicinity of Pablo’s house to actually take a tour of the palace and monastery, but it was a holiday and El Escorial was a freaking madhouse…so I blew right through. Apparently, I was riding on the “Ruta Imperial”, a reference to some damned thing that Fellipe II did, someone had altered the road sign to read “Puta Imperial”. The funniest jokes are simple. Then I blew right through Guadarrama, to Navacerrada. So at this point it’s time to climb my first Puerto, although I’ve gradually been climbing all day. It was a fairly steep pitch and kept me in my granny gears. But the climb was pretty short. I even stopped for water at a spring called “the geologists fountain” and dozed off for a while. I still made it to the Puerto de Navacerrada from Mostoles in only 6 hours, with plenty of daylight and some energy left.
I didn’t want to climb the next Puerto just yet (not that energetic) which was a few km around the corner…so I fucked off for a while at the Puerto. I had beer and patatas bravas (fried potatoes with a sauce), the only food item that doesn’t have ham or fucking tuna. Tuna is number three on my list of most disgusting substances on planet earth, the smell makes me gag. Then I went for a nice short hike to the top of the ski slope. Theres actually a windy paved cobbly road that goes up there.
My eye was drawn to a yellow flag flying up top. When I got there I sat in front of the flag taking in the panaoramic view and trying to convince my camera that it had enough battery power to take some pictures. I was curious about this weird metal thing protruding from the rocks a few meters in front of me. I clambered around to the front of it and found that it was a Madonna & child statue of metal, painted glossy black, with skis on her back. What a fun surprise!
After my hike it was starting to get dusky, so I had a logistical problem to solve: where to sleep. Camping is prohibited in these mountains, I think because of fear of fires. The only type of campground in Spain, as far as I can tell, are like those giant private ones with RVs and shit. The type that makes a backpacker shudder in horror. And these are absent from the mountains, so not even an option. There are a couple youth hostels, but why the hell did I lug all my camping gear up here if I was going to sleep in a hostel? So, long story short, I need to ninja camp somewhere and its better to not try and figure it out in the dark. Everywhere I looked was on a rather steep slope…eventually I just had to find the flattest spot I could (not very flat) before it got dark.
Day 2- Pto. Navacerrada to El Buerreco (~ 65 km).
Woke up and made cold instant coffee (no gas remember? still no gas), which, shockingly was delicious. I’m anticipating a minor climb to Pto. de los Cotos this morning. There was a bajillion road riders out and few cars. Turns out there was no climb, because you never lose any elevation from Pto. Navacerrada. From Pto. de los Cotos, I took a short side trip to a ski resort (which I also thought was a climb but was not). So I have a steep downhill all the way to Rascafria (20km). On this side trip I saw numerous flat places I could have slept, had I not wasted so much time reconing slopes….next time. I contemplated screwing off for a while near the Puerto (because it really was pretty), but I prefer doing my screwing off after I’ve covered the miles I need to cover…also I’m not comfortable leaving my bike and panniers locked up while I hike. So I got to Rascafria in about 5 seconds, it was like riding one of those light cycles from Tron. I love long downhills in the mountains because you can move faster than the cars. There no goddamned douchbag bearing down on your ass who just has to pass you regardless of the safety of the maneuver…because cars just can’t keep up. I stopped at a famous monastery (de Paular) which is over 500 years old, although it has seen many modifications over the years. It was really cool. It’s too bad there’s no monasteries for atheists, I could enjoy the secular monastic life.
Then I chugged along and before long I had somehow missed my turn to Buitrago (goddamned headphones! They push you up the hills but they are like an attention span vampire), so I headed toward Lozoyuela. Oh well, I had no particular attachment…it was just on the Bike Spain route. The roadside maps say I have a campground option near there. Down here theres no longer good tree cover, so ninja camping will be harder. So I rode to Las Navas de Buitrago looking for the campground. For want of a better word…this town was really “cute” (next thing you know I’ll be saying it was “darling”) and the country was just flippin awesome, and the clouds were keeping the sun at bay. The town looks like it has maybe 200 residents, and no campground. The locals told me I’d have to go to La Cabrera for a campground, but I ended up finding one near El Burrueco. This was the part of the tour that I thought was going to be kind of blah, but really the region is ideal for bike touring, too bad there’s not simpler camping options other than hiding on someone’s property.
At first I actually liked the campground, there was a free shower so I could get the disgusting sunscreen off my body. Amazingly, there is also basketball and soccer courts, a swimming pool, and a restaurant/bar. I discovered I had a horizontal raging angry sunburned stripe where my shirt fails to meet the top of my shorts when I’m hunched over the handlebars. Turns out my He-man shirt is a little bit short. When I went to bed I was kept awake by this stupid light that exists so people without flashlights can find their camp. I had put my tent in a cluster of rocks. This worked against me because this is where stoner teenagers come to get baked at night and escape their parents. Then there was the cannons and trambucos (muskets, not penises). Did I mention this was a holiday similar to the 4th of July…heavy artillery is a major part of the holidays in Spain.
Day 3. El Burrueco to Casa de Campo (~110 km)
So I’ve got a dilemma…my planned route is just too short, I could have made it to north Madrid last night if I’d wanted to push. I don’t have any destinations in mind to lengthen the route, I could just make some silly meanderings, but this seems, well, silly. There are a couple Puertos accessible out of Miraflores, but I’m pretty sure both are unpaved from my previous web searching, and I don’t want to try them with road tires. So early in the day I come to the conclusion that I’m going to get back home by the end of the day. I had a pleasant ride to Torrleaguna, through Guadalix de la Sierra, through Soto del Real, over to Manzaneres el Real. I came to Manzanares to see a castle. I had some vague recollection about some Spanish castle being used in several movies. Strangely, a fantasy sequence from Beverly Hillbillies came to mind where Jethro is a knight riding toward a castle…but I’m pretty sure they did not come to Spain to film a 5 minute sequence of the Beverly Hillbillies. I really enjoyed the castle, but unfortunately the library was not part of the tour. The castle was embellished and added on to many times over the years, including the 1700s, the most extreme being in 1917. The owner apparently wanted to jazz up the towers a bit to make the castle look more castley.
From the upper towers you can look out on a reservoir and pretend its Loch Ness. Also, you can see one of the ski resorts I rode to previously (not sure which one though). No movies I had heard of were made at this castle…but La Marca del Hombre Lobo (The mark of the wolfman) was filmed here. After the castle I took the via ciclista all the way back to north Madrid. This thing is an awesome 40 km two lane bike road. It makes you wonder about how much better the world would be if we had a handful of roads for cars, and thousands of these things, instead of the other way around. To simplify and shorten my ride on the metro (which I am dreading with a loaded touring bike) I linked back up with the Anillo Verde and cruised the last 20km to Casa de Campo. I’m actually only 10km away from Mostoles but I don’t think there is any route that is not an autopista (freeway). …so the metro is my way home. I got off the metro at 9:00pm in Mostoles and found that I had cold beer in the fridge.
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