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Cycling from Jadraque to Guadalajara
I left the hotel in Jadraque on a very nice day ! Ofcourse I did since I was stuck here because of the rains and winds and was therefore waiting for that 1 nice day ... Or at least one normal day.
These screenshots show you the weather evolution.
At first instance (left) it looks to be better weather soon.
But the meteo changes more and more to the worse the closer a day gets (right ).
At the 14th it looks to be oké from the 16th on.
But on the 16th it looks far from oké from the 18th on.
This happens time after time.
It is like a 6-Stop and 1-Go trip this way ...
It is too bad that the weather is causing me so many delays (and extra costs) ... Then I really cycle only about 1 day per week while it is raining and/or storming the rest of the week. Where I would like to be OnTheRoad 4.0 say 2 or 3 days per week, and so travel longer distances and discover more of this country.
On the other hand I quite often stay somewere for a longer period. I even love to if I can have a good time there in terms of nice weather and of discovering a town and region etc. Not because I am blocked and thus have to ...
The 16th and 17th kept on looking oké so I left the 16th, although the 17th looked more promising.
But I would enjoy the 17th anyway, whether cycling or being a tourist.
It was not that far to Guadalajara but again the second next camping (in Madrid !) is some 60 kms extra
and therefore would just again be to far to cycle in one day.
Also I am just not as quick as a deer anymore haha.
According the sign on this picture they even jump 5 kms at once !
I therefore thought it more wise to enter Madrid early in the afternoon to have time to adjust to i.e. the traffic etc. And to have spare time to be able to compensate for unexpected 1-way roads, unpassable highways, getting lost (my gps haha), etc.
As a warm-up I first had the privilige to be invited to push the bike all the way up the hill to the castle of Jadraque. And from there even further and higher. The 250 meters at this first picture was the only stretch I could cycle, all the rest I had to push ...
But as they say in the Netherlands : Dan heb je ook wat !
The Views were stunning again ! They also gave me a legal reason to make extra stops pfuuhhh haha. Please allow me to call this "Another day (Not) at the office" !
At the end of this stretch I finally arrived at the plateau.
From there on the rest of the day was quite normal.
So this was what you could name a wake up call ... Pushing about 75 kgs some 45 minutes up a hill of 3.9% directly "out of the bed" haha. To save my reputation I took 50% extra time "to take pictures" 😁. Seriously, this desolated landscape just grabs me, I have to look, over and over again, the longer the better !
Can you feel
the emptiness ?!
I stopped in the mini town of Casas de San Galindo to drink some water. Later I found that in 2007 it had about 34 inhabitants where I think that must be at least 134 nowadays. That 134 could be true, if in every house there is only one person living. Or maybe many of the houses here are abandoned ???
I was watched by this beautiful grasshopper. "Don't you come closer or I will eat you ! " Will grasshoppers save mankind being the new food ?
Nothing moved, except for a cat.
Even Max Verstappen didn't move. I waited 20 minutes so he could have my signature 😁 but he did not show up.
The clouds were playing with the light all day.
If you can't avoid being "at the office"
you could consider
to be a truckdriver
in these landscapes ...
And then, at this downhill,
It Happened ...
I lost my cap !
Because at this hill I broke my YesTrip speedrecord to set it to a whopping 70.4 kmh !
While mountainbiking (very offroad, in the French Alpes) I reached 50+ kmh on every trip and 60+ kmh on about half of all the trips. And once I reached 90.4 kmh at the mtb but at tarmac. I guess the weight helped me here despite of the air resistance ... Anyway, I should do this more often !
Then I finally saw some (living) animals !
It are sheep as you can see and they as usual just deny the (rest of the) world. How simple can live be haha ?!
But not so for the Boss.
Beau-
ti-
full !
Yes, a sparrow. I don't even see sparrows most of the days. They too have left to the "patatas fritas" areas.
Only in human crowded areas they are there too. It's probably just a matter of finding food easily.
Finally I was allowed to overtake cars again.
I stopped in Tortola de Henares for some fuel.
Then suddenly I was on a secundary road, for the first time in a Very Long Time ... When cycling This is what you Want ! Small curved roads with surprises (not being a tractor or truck haha).
The track at the Garmin Citynavigator map
and at the Velomap.
But as I wrote before there simply are very few roads so you'll have to take the ones that are available. Or make huge detours. Which I maybe would have done if the weather had helped me just a little bit more ... Which it didn't.
This road was a Very Nice Variation.
The last time I cycled on secundary roads was when I went from Lekunberri to Pamplona.
And that was about 7 weeks ago !!!
However this time it lasted only about 20 minutes.
And for some it lasted somewhat longer ...
Way to soon the secundary road brought me to a Non secundary road. A very busy road and (from the next roundabout on) without shoulder. And far more worse it had a concrete barrier very close to the right so I could not dodge if anything would get critical !
Last but not least it had very much gravel, dirt and even some glass on it. Barriers at the outsides also cause all that shit to bounce back to the road. Plus it seems to be a "sport" for certain cardrivers to throw their empty beerbottles out of the window trying to hit the barrier.
I cycled as fast as I could to get to the end of this road. This situation lasted about 10 kilometers and one should not think about having a puncture here ... It is impossible to leave this road because of those barriers. You would have to continue riding or walking and that would destroy your tire And your wheel.
While preparing today's track in Mapsource (the gps program on my laptop) I had not looked at Velomap. It has much better details for cycling (were cardrivers have no interest for, they miss all details anyway). But Citynavigator is far better in calculating a route automatically. Unfortunately I often forget to check the CityNav result in Velomap afterwards.
So I sometimes miss certain interesting options, like the official cycletrack that I could have taken today. And which would have saved me from that very annoying mainroad and the concrete barrier along it. On the other hand I then would have missed that very nice small road ...
 new 1000.jpg)
If the daily distance is critical I switch Mapsource to the CityNav map, set it to "car" and to "some smaller roads also" and then have it calculate the shortest route. I have to in Spain then when I would set it to "more small" or even to "bicycle" it would end up with routes that each would be far to long every day. Then as told before I must reach some camping or hotel every day and they are already too far apart.
Next step is to check the result for strange and/or unwanted stretches. For instance sometimes a strange detour shows up in the result and the question then is what is going on there ?! Is there a one-way road ? Are there no cars allowed there ? Did I by accident check the "allow tunnels" option ? Etc, etc.
If I (dangerously) think it concerns a mistake in the map (database) or in the calculation I correct the route manually. Then I use WinGDB3 to transform the route into a track (so I remove the instructions).
Anyway, traffic was intense here, something I had not experienced for a very long time.
It was obvious that I was nearing Madrid with it's 3.166 million inhabitants !
I entered Guadalajara and took a room in a hotel. Then once again I would be stuck for several days because of the oncoming bad weather. Besides that there are no campings here in the (very) far surroundings. Even in Madrid there is only 1 ...
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Read all about my stay in Guadalajara in the next blog !