Almagro to Valdepeñas - 29 miles

My journey to Valdepeñas took longer than anticipated. Although mostly on road through wheat and olive groves there was a section on track that was both beautiful and frustrating. At first it was firm and smooth, more olive trees and a backdrop of hills, but it got more stony as the scenery became more dramatic until at times I had to walk the bike along a path with stones the size of fists. If my mind had not been so focused on getting to Valdepeñas with my bike I might have appreciated my surroundings more and worried less about the delays caused by the terrain.

The last few miles to the city were on a long straight road through vineyards. I stopped to observe today's two minutes silence four miles from Valdepeñas before arriving at the shopping and industrial centre on the city outskirts. And here, once again, my problems began. It was only now when I looked at the details of the cycle repair shop that I saw it was a motorbike shop despite my very specific search criteria. I felt I was back to square one. The nearby Decathlon sports shop could offer no guidance about likely repair shops so it was a case of cycling into town and asking in bicycle stores. I was trying to hold down that simmering concern gripping my mind: should I have stayed in Ciudad Real; was I going to have to fall back to my plan for a train to Madrid; how wrong had I got things?

The first place I found seemed unsympathetic and couldn’t help me until next week, the second was a general toy store but I struck gold with my third place in a tiny back street: Pedro, the diminutive and bespectacled owner, would have the bike ready for collection at eight this evening. I went off relieved and with the aim of finding a cafe where I could sit down, relax with a coffee and look for somewhere to stay.

I got to see a lot of the city looking for that place to fix my bike and the subsequent walk to my accommodation. It is a grid of streets of iron balconied, two storey houses of indeterminate age although the narrow streets, which have necessitated one way systems to accommodate cars, suggests they are not modern. It may not ooze with the antiquity of Segovia or Toledo but it is certainly no Ciudad Real.

Those streets seem to have a large number of shops selling household goods from kitchenware to furniture. There also seem to be bars and cafes everywhere. It has a nice feel about the place and you get the impression it has not been turned over to tourism; there may be Don Quijote related statues, street mosaics related to the wine that made the city's fortunes and statues and squares celebrating local figures but to me this was more about Valdepeñas celebrating its own heritage than trying to sell it to outsiders.

It may have not been a long, hard day but after showering I fell asleep. A combination of relief and the knowledge I was in that period between early and late afternoon when Spanish life is suspended and small shops, restaurants and other establishments are shut no doubt contributed. For my part neither of the two museums I had in mind to see, the local town museum and the wine museum, opened before five-thirty so in reality there was little else for me in the city until then.

As it turned out the town museum was shut when I got there and on my way to the wine museum I passed the museum of Gregorio Prieto so I looked inside. It turns out he was a locally born artist and this collection was dedicated to him. True, this collection of his work was entirely planned and created by him - he was quite a narcissist apparently - but it seems he was a highly regarded Spanish artist with strong links to the famous Spanish poets of the early twentieth century. Interestingly his English Language Wikipedia entry is very short whereas the Spanish one is a lot more extensive which might say something of his international reputation. Whatever his standing, he seemed an interesting and complex individual who worked in a range of art forms from painting to drawing and photography to collage. He spent some years in Britain after the Spanish Civil War and there, so my audio guide said, gained a reputation as a portrait painter among the upper classes. Apparently he was also quite into windmills.

Consuerga 

Make of this what you will….

City Museum 

As promised my bike was ready at eight. Amongst other issues there had been a lot of dirt and mud in the workings but all that was now resolved. However, the chain was stretched and after discussion with Pedro I decided it wise to set off from here with that and the gear cassette replaced on top of the other work already done; although my bike had been checked before I came here and declared sound Spain seems to have been a lot harder on it than I had anticipated.

With the additional work that Pedro was to do I now pick my bicycle up late tomorrow morning. It doesn’t affect my plans as I had already decided to stay here until Saturday; despite a day off in both Madrid and Toledo I feel that I am not on top of all those little tasks that slowly build up and do not feel that I have had any proper 'down time'. And of course I still have those two museums to see.