Toledo to Consuerga - 47 miles

Last night I decided that as I was in La Mancha it would make sense to see some of those traditional windmills immortalised by Don Quijote. My next destination would have been Ciudad Real, at best a long day's cycle away, but a slight detour would take me to the small town of Consuerga in reasonable time where some of those windmills were to be found. I could then cycle to Ciudad Real on Wednesday.

I thought today's big challenge would be the road climb out of the Tagus valley and onto La Mancha after crossing the bridge to leave Toledo. I was wrong. An hour or so after making that climb I was enjoying a cycle through lines of olive trees on sandy track with a backdrop of hills, markers telling me I was following a route called the Ruta Don Quijote which I thought appropriate for a trip to see windmills, when the ground became a lot softer. What looked flat and firm was often actually a thick, clinging red-brown mud that stuck in clods to my tyres, got trapped in the forks and rear wheels and brought my bike to a stop. Cleaning it off - not a quick process and requiring sticks and lots of poking and scraping - only made room for more and I was spending as much time removing mud as I was riding over it. Two days of rain and this rich, thick soil might be good for the poppies and the rows of olive trees around me but it was not good for my cycling.

The trick seemed to be to try and maintain momentum, something that I could do for short periods but deep puddles and deceptive ground would slow me down, my mud smoothed tyres would fail to grip and I would feel my bike sliding away from beneath me. After taking an hour to do less than a mile I was relieved to hit gravel and feel I was again making progress.

Clogged

Nemesis 

It did not last. A few miles of road through countryside and by motorway - more rows of olives disappearing into the distance and the hills around me - and a well needed lunch in a roadside bar in the middle of nowhere were the prelude to another long stretch on a track of that red-brown earth, this time through fields of neatly lined up vines. It was not as bad as the morning and I was only a few miles from my destination but it was still frustrating and took over an hour to get the bike moderately clean once I had arrived at my hotel; having seen some tumbledown buildings made from that earth in fields I had passed it was clear that if left it might dry rock hard. 

Bike clean, I headed off through town and up the hill on which twelve old windmills sit, beautifully restored and some with full working mechanisms.  None were operating today but an interesting video on the finer points of operating windmills and expansive views were enough to satisfy my windmill cravings and I was more than happy as I headed back for a shower to wash away the mud and the day’s frustrations and to find a hearty dinner.

Before

After