I didn't sleep that well, waking up quite a few times because I'd rolled down the side of the tent. I don't know why I didn't think about it considering I had plenty of daylight when I pitched the tent, but I'd chosen a patch that sloped downwards! At least it meant I was ready to get up when the alarm went off at five, prompting my morning run. I decided to leave the property and run on the road this time to avoid the risk of twisting my ankle in the paddocks, and went down the way the people at the golf resort had told me to the day before. What would you know, but there was a proper camping ground after all! If I had just gone 500m further, I would've seen it on the other side of the autovia.
I felt quite bad about stealth camping after that discovery. It's pretty bad form to do it when there's a proper campsite close by. On the other hand, it was an honest mistake, and I finished the day not having spent a cent, so maybe it wasn't such a bad choice.
Packing up the tent in the dark was quite difficult and I had to have a few goes at it before I got the buckles set up properly, but eventually I was off. Sneaking out the gate, I breathed a sigh of relief before getting on the bike and discovering a deflated back tyre. I guess that was my punishment for having broken the cardinal rule of stealth camping. It felt a bit risky repairing the puncture that close to the scene of the crime, so I rode on a bit further before getting out my puncture kit. I thought I'd become quite efficient at fixing flats, but it took forty minutes before I was satisfied. The first time I took the tube off, I couldn't find a puncture, and had almost put the wheel back on when I heard the telltale hisss.
A little further on the autovia and I saw the awe inspiring rock of Gibraltar on the horizon. It really was an amazing sight – this massive clump of rock jutting out from the coast lit up beautifully by the morning sun. I must have stood at the lookout for about fifteen minutes, just taking in the view.
I hadn't really planned on going all the way down to the rock itself, but I was so enraptured by this geological marvel, that I changed my mind and rode down. Riding along next to the sea, I saw a man feeding bread to what looked like porpoises. I stopped and watched, again transfixed by one of mother nature's gifts.
A couple of years back, I remember seeing something on the news about the Spanish government trying to claim Gibraltar as part of their territory (or maybe the British government trying to give it to them?). The people all voted against it in a referendum – 'We're British not Spanish!' I was rather keen to see what the situation was like there now. Not knowing what to expect, I followed the signs to the town of Gibraltar and was amused to discover a customs checkpoint. It's quite ridiculous really. Nowhere else in the EU does a border actually exist between countries, but here, in this tiny bit of British territory, there's a fully staffed border guard. They weren't really checking people's passports, it was all a bit of a farce really, but still, after being waved through, I was technically in the UK! I wondered whether I'd suddenly have to start riding on the other side of the road, but no, they weren't that lacking in common sense.
To be honest, I think the inhabitants would have been better off if they had joined Spain. The difference in infrastructure was very marked. The roads suddenly went from being quite decent to being in absolutely shocking condition. I might have been imagining things, but the clouds overhead seemed to be bunching around the rock, creating an overcast London day to add to the 'authentic British' atmosphere.
It was a bit of fun seeing English signs for a change, but I probably would have just hopped right back over the border if my chain hadn't suddenly started grating and making horrid noises. I say suddenly, but it was doing it most of the day, ever since I'd changed the tube on my back tyre. My only solution to such problems is to add more lube to the chain, but after having a look at all the grime accumulated there, I decided I should probably give it a clean first. So situated on the east side of the rock, away from the kitsch pubs and B&Bs, I got out my equipment and gave it a good scrub. The sun was shining on my back, so it was quite nice really and I didn't mind the interruption at all.
Still, by the time I crossed back over the border, it was already 12ish and I basically hadn't made any progress. If anything, the clean and relubing had made the chain behave even worse, but I just tried to ignore the clicking, clacking and smacking and rode back the way I'd come, looking for a road down the coast. Somehow, I ended up going through an ugly industrial estate. Instead of nice beaches, the coastline was monopolised by oil refineries belching black smoke. It wasn't very nice to ride next to and I was quite relieved when I emerged on the other side.
A little further up the road was a big solar array. Can you imagine the dichotomy this image would present to an observer from the sky? In a sense it represented a time machine. Walk fifty metres across the road and you leap forward 80 years, dancing between the messy, exploitative past and the clean, green future.
I've been trying to decide whether Spain is more or less environmentally conscious than Australia as a country. I haven't looked at any statistics, but I'd say we're probably about on par. They have a lot of water scarcity issues too, and having adopted the approach Melbourne is going down, the government has built desalination plants all the way down the coast (As an aside, I think Melbourne may lose its reputation of having the best tasting drinking water in Australia – desal water tastes awful to me!). The many solar panels and wind turbines one sees do make up for that a little bit, but it's still a colossal amount of energy that goes into powering these necessary evils. Motorised transport is definitely the dominant paradigm around here. As I mentioned in a previous post, one barely sees any bicycle commuters and there doesn't seem to be a very adequate public transport network either. I guess I have been going through rural areas though, so the situation is probably no better in Australia.
After attempting to find a quiet way down the coast and failing, I turned once again to the autovia. I've become very blasé about riding on them now. It's kind of against the law, but there's no other way really and I've never had any problem whatsoever with motorists taking offense at me being on 'their territory'. Quite often it's actually quite nice riding on them because they're almost always in perfect condition, so I can ride fast and there's usually a wide shoulder, so I don't feel too caged in.
Coming in to the city of Algeciras, I saw a sign for a bike path. Usually I just ignore them because they always peeter out after a short time, but I think one is legally obliged to follow them when they jut off from a highway like that. It was basically a lie, and resulted in me taking a two km long cut before being thrust back on the autovia. Congratulating the highway designers on their idiocy, I stuck to the shoulder from then on and resolved to ignore such false promises in the future.
According to my map, there was a red road (ie. Non autovia-ish) I could take down to Tarifa, where I wanted to spend the night. The Italian guy I spoke with in the campground near Marbella had told me about how one can see the tip of Africa from the town (southernmost point of Europe) and I really wanted to visit to really cement the day's place as the most scenic route of the trip so far. I'd just gotten to a sign pointing me down to the road when I felt my back tire give way. “Not again!” I groaned.
I ate lunch first to give me the strength to deal with this annoyance, stuck in a new tube, which I only managed to get partly inflated, and rode on, very slowly, bobbing up and down a little and really hoping there'd be a service station where I could top the air up. Ten kilometres later, after having struggled up a steepish gradient the whole time, I stopped, gave up hope of finding a service station any time soon and managed to pump the tyre up a little more. It wasn't great, but it would do.
There sure was a lot of climbing to be done! I only had thirty km to Tarifa, but I wasn't going to make it there with much time before sunset at this rate. At first I couldn't work out why the highway designers (perhaps the same people who had created the 'bike path' on the autovia) had made it go so high when it was basically a coastal road, but then the trees fell away a little bit and I realised that there really was no other way. It must have been a very tectonically active region at some point because the whole area was composed of hill after hill after hill.
I had to admit that even if it was hard work, I was getting some very nice views. Straining my eyes, I thought I could make out a landmass that might or might not have been Africa. Apparently it's only fifty km across the sea from Tarifa, and there were no peninsulas between me and the town, so it must have been! What an amazing concept, being able to see another continent! There was a lookout not too much further up the road, and I stopped and had a good old gawk and took a few photos. It was definitely worth climbing up there to see the land of possibility shrouded in mist, looking so close, but in reality a world away. I could imagine people over there thinking the same thing. It's no wonder so many people attempt the crossing by boat (we're talking literally dinghys in some cases – hundreds die every year) in search of a better life.
Thankfully, the volcanoes must have backed off a little bit, because I had a downhill ride into Tarifa, which meant I even had enough time to get some supplies from the supermarket. It's always an issue I have to consider on Saturdays because there is nothing open on Sundays in areas like this away from the big cities.
The campground was about 4km away, and I made it there just shy of 7 o'clock. It's great having the sunset this late in the day. It means even with a lot of stopping, I can still rack up a decent distance on the odometer.
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