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| Morning Seville |
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| Morning Seville |
I have stopped for the night and I’m glad to have done so. I’ve had enough of the blustering wind that catches at my clothes, wind which when I round some bends gets funnelled towards me hitting me full on and slowing me down. I’ve had enough of feeling drained from the heat of the afternoon sun. And I’ve had enough of that sun making me continually stop and pull my mobile phone into some shade in order to check my route because it is impossible to read it otherwise. Despite the distance, with its relatively flat profile it should not have been so frustrating a day but that frustration seems to have crept up on me as the day progressed.
The morning's ride was easy if not inspiring. Mostly flat, mostly through fields and on straight roads where heat haze shimmered in the distance and I seemed to be constantly chasing but never catching it. The evidence of human interference in the landscape - concrete irrigation channels, telegraph poles, pylons - was always close while far off, across the dry flatness, you could see the regional motorway and the occasional box like structure of industry adding modernity to the edge of a small, old town. The afternoon was more isolated and more enjoyable, following the contours of the landscape on mostly quiet roads and through the colours of Andalucía. By then though the sun and the wind were taking their toll. I passed through towns with names familiar from two years ago - Las Cabezas de San Juan, Jerez de la Frontera - each a place where I had overnighted after a day's walking but now passed in a day on my bike. I stopped at Jerez de la Frontera at the first bar I saw, in need of decent sustenance even with only ten miles to go, my need to eat trumping the location by a roundabout and a dual carriageway ring road. Afterwards my body may have been refuelled but it didn’t want to function as I headed for Puerta de Santa Maria, cursing the steady uphill to get to a place by the sea.
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| Las Cabezas de San Juan |
I am now in the nature reserve of Los Toruños just outside Puerto Real (another overnight stop from two years ago) near the Bay of Cadiz. I remember walking through this reserve early one morning on my Camino and thinking it would have been a nice place to camp so, with that in mind, here I am hidden away off the track amid the noises of the reserves rightful residents. Tomorrow morning I arrive at Cadiz and the sea.
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| Towards Cadiz |
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