Day 72: Rincón de la Victoria (Cycling)
Today's ride was mostly going up or going down.
The first up started about one kilometre from the get go. As I climbed I passed through:
which is synonymous with the Muscat of Alexandria grape, its raisins and wines.
After some more climbing I descended down to (the name of the pueblo is on the rhs of the photo):
After a further kilometre of descent the next climb had me passing through:
Subsequent climbing took me to a "no name" pass, at an elevation of about 440 metres.
The descent to the valley had me pass-by Cutar, which is the village in the foreground of this photo:
In the distance, on top of the hill is Comares, which I would pass-by once I'd descended to the valley floor.
Warning: After a short rollercoaster ride up the valley, you turn left for Comares, which immediately had me in my lowest gear! The first kilometre has an average gradient of 13%!
The upward trajectory continued until I reached about 860 metres: I was in the clouds, it was about 10°C (not including wind chill effect!). Once I'd put on additional clothing and gloves, it was time to hit descent mode (there were a couple of short climbs), all the way to the coast and ice cream! At least so I thought. About two kilometres from the ice cream stop and about 13 kilometres from ride's end, misfortune befell me!
This happened to my rear wheel's tyre:
Firstly, amazingly, the tubeless tyre had not deflated but, nonetheless, the bike was not rideable.
A shan't bore you with all the details, but getting my bike road worthy again took me much more time than it should have. But ..
Problem 1: Not having any screws on my bike, I didn't have a screwdriver to extract the screw. So it took sometime before I finally got it extracted.
Problem 2: The method to plug the hole was as much use as "tits on a bull" (pardon my French!). More time wasted.
Problem 3: I replaced my trusty, but old, pump with a new, reassuringly expense pump. Yes, I had tested it and it seemed to do everything you'd want from a pump. Unfortunately, there is a fundamental flaw with the design: it doesn't work so well with a tpu inner tube.
Solution: Remove the first inner tube and replace it with an alternative with a longer valve stem and hope the pump, without using the connector hose, will inflate the tube. Thankfully it worked! Third time lucky! I didn't have a forth option!
So a five minute job took me just about 1.5 hours!
Now I need to buy a new tyre (to replace spare) and another spare inner tube (to replace the spare that doesn't work with the new pump).
Obviously, I still went for ice cream!
1 scoop of plátano + 1 scoop of chocolate.
Finally, having climbed almost 2000 metres of ascent, it was just about flat going for the final ten kilometres to Rincón de la Victoria.
I enjoyed the cycling and ice cream, but not the ....!
- Distance driven: 0 miles
- Distance cycled: 81 kilometres
- Weather: Sunny to start, cloudy later, 10°C to 18°C, light breeze.
Today's route: