It was a thursday night, and the three day weather forecast was calling for a chance of rain Friday, leading into a beautiful weekend. I decided to chance the weather and set my morning departure time for 8:00am, only to find that I had guessed wrong and woke up to the wonderful sound of rainfall. Either way I was on my way by 8:15am toward Ávila on N-110. The rain turned from a consistent downpour to a steady drizzle, which to my luck only drizzled for the majority of my friday ride. N-110 proved to be quite an enjoyable road to cycle on, the shoulder is adequate for cyclists and the majority of the traffic stays on the Autopista, leaving only the local traffic for me to worry about. Around 10:00 I stopped in a small pueblo called Villacastin in order to eat some food to replenish my energy for the second leg of the ride. N-110 provides quite a scenic ride due to the fact that it parallels the mountains for the entirety of the trip. By noon I was riding into Ávila, legendary for the walls that surround the city. To my luck I found a fairly inexpensive place to stay for the next two nights before the sky let loose and it started to downpour, for the rest of the day. A good little 70km ride followed by a good meal and a hot shower. The next day I would be riding into La Sierra de Gredos, the mountain range found just south of Ávila.
The date is Saturday, November 8th, a perfect day to ride into the mountains, crisp temperatures with hardly a breeze in the air. I decided to head toward the pueblo, El Barraco, via N-403, apparently Barraco is quite famous due to the fact that two professional cyclist were born here and from what I saw the total population of Barraco cannot be more than 1,000 persons, quite impressive. The ride there is around 26km, of those 16km are uphill, the last 10km leading into the pueblo are quite steep down the backside of the mountain pass. The whole time I was riding down the pass I kept in my mind that I would latter have to ride back up what at the moment was so fun to go down. Once in Barraco I explored a bit, they held their open air market on Saturday, so I was able to attend that, wandering through the narrow streets until I happened upon a small church overlooking a few mountains whose names I do not know. While looking at the church an old local man approached me, knowing that I was not from around there, do to my appearance, for I was wearing the bib of an Italian cycling team, which I am sure is probably not the best idea. But this man came up to me, and calmly explained the importance of this church to the pueblo, showing me how they built this church so that at some-point in every day, depending on the season, if a person stands in front of the main door, the sun will come through the bell tower illuminating the path to, well, salvation I suppose. Then, once finished, the man bid me farewell and wished me safe travels. I sat and reflected for a bit before getting back on the saddle, looking forward to the uphill battle I had ahead of me. The 10km climb was not as bad as I had imagined and once at the top I was rewarded with a practically 100% downhill ride back to Ávila.
Sunday rolled around and it was time to head back toward Segovia in order to prepare for my monday classes. I was on the road by 8:30am or so, but was quite concerned about the heavy fog devouring the road. No matter how well one is lit up, it is still hard to see in fog that resembles clam chowder. By 9:30 I had ridden out of the fog and into view of La sierra de Guadarrama, the mountains just outside of Segovia. The riding from here on out was just incredible, I was able to enjoy on Sunday what had been so miserable that previous Friday in the rain. The mountains were shinning with the fresh snow that they had received the night before and off in the distance I could see the bell tower of the Cathedral of Segovia, which I believe is the highest bell tower in all of Spain. I finished the ride back in just 3 hours and 10 minutes or so, and was actually back to my host family before they had even gotten up for the day. Overall it was a great weekend...
Day one: Segovia to Ávila (70km)
Day two: Ávila to Barraco and back to Ávila (52km)
Day three: Ávila to Segovia (70km)
View heading into El Barraco, 10km downhill and absolutely gorgeous.
The oh so famous wall of Ávila...
This was an interesting/very natural formation for a cross (Barraco)
A sundial atop one of the many towers found in the wall of Ávila.
