It rained all night and was still coming down pretty heavily when I went for my run at 5am. By the time I'd packed up though, it had stopped and I left in good spirits, having slept well. The first stop was a bank, where I had no problems withdrawing money. I guess in the future I'll just have to remember to take out some cash before I actually reach the point where I don't have enough to pay for a night's accommodation.
It was still very early, so I decided to go visit a bike shop to see if they could do something about my troublesome gears and also to stock up on patches. There wasn't a shop as such, but after asking a few people, I managed to track down a motorcycle repair shop. Those kind of places are a lot more common than bike shops I've found (for the reason that motorbikes are a lot more popular than the pedal driven variety in Spain) and most of the mechanics can do a decent job of repairing my kind of bike. I have to admit, I was a little skeptical about this place though. The bike stand was so covered in paraphernalia that it was obvious it hadn't been used in quite a while, and when the mechanic lifted my bike onto it, the arm holding the bike in the air collapsed, dropping my bike onto the ground. After cursing a bit and fiddling around with a spanner, he managed to get the stand in a secure-ish state (but I kept a hold of the frame just in case) and started to inspect my gears. Tsking and tutting, he frowned as the chain made horrible grinding noises when he turned the pedals. He didn't really seem to know what to do, and fiddled around with a few things, tuning the gears, tightening and loosening the limiter screws and spraying the chain with a bit of lube before telling me to go take it for a test ride.
The shifting was a tiny bit better, but far from perfect. I decided not to bother with it anymore, it was obvious that was the best he could do. I hadn't really expected him to be able to fix it anyway. There was a lingering suspicion in my mind that the problem probably lay with a very worn out chain that needed to be replaced. After buying three tube repair kits (which was only eighteen patches, not one hundred, but hopefully that would be plenty for the five or so days of riding I had left) and chatting to him about the trip, I headed off down the Carretera Nacional.
The saddle soreness of the day before hadn't abated at all and I spent quite a lot of time riding en danser to give my poor seat muscles a rest. About ten km down the road, I noticed my rear tyre had started to deflate a little bit. Now that I thought about it, it had gone down a little bit overnight as well, but by such a small margin that I hadn't bothered changing the tube. Hoping irrationally that for some reason the tyre had just lost a bit of air when I'd laid it on the ground at some point, I pumped it up again at a car tyre repair shop and rode on into the rain. There was no possible explanation for the loss of air apart from a puncture, but it was deflating so slowly (and even the smallest puncture will quickly lead to a completely flat tyre in a matter of minutes with the amount of weight I carry) and the thought of having to change the tube in the rain was so unpleasant that I decided to keep on riding.
Ten kilometres later, the crunch of my wheel rims on the road convinced me that I should really do something about the situation, so I stopped at a service station and put a new tube in. Fittingly, I couldn't find a puncture in the old tube, even after inflating it to about 80 psi, so it must really have been a minuscule hole. It was good to stop anyway and stretch my legs a bit, so the interruption didn't bother me too much.
Checking the map, I discovered that once again, I was going to have to get up close and personal with the autovia. Like yesterday though, it was absolutely fine with a wide shoulder and considerate drivers. I made a bit of a foolish mistake when I first turned onto the highway, following a sign for a 'cambio de servicio', which I translated as a service road, but which would be better defined by the term 'service track'. It would've been fine in summer, but after the rain of the previous night, the dirt road soon became a muddy disaster. My mudguards were clogged within a minute and my wheels sank into the ground so I couldn't even ride and had to push the bike. Then to add insult to injury, the path gave out when it reached a river, so I had to backtrack through all the mud again. Grumbling a bit, I spent five minutes cleaning out my cleats and mudguards with a stick and got back on the autovia.
That's where I stayed for the next forty km, going from city to city, often fighting a strong head/cross wind that was blowing from the Atlantic ocean. My destination for the night was Rota, a town on the coast that my map told me was serviced by a campground. There was a road leading there from Puerto de la Santa Margarita, so I hopped off the autovia and kept an eye out for a sign pointing that way. I couldn't for the life of me see any signage relating to Rota at all, so I went by my compass and headed North West. At one point I asked an old man for directions, and pointing down a dirt track he said he thought it was roughly that way.
I probably should've known better after my experience with the mud a few hours before, but I went down it anyway and wound up in exactly the same kind of difficulty as the previous occasion. Grumbling again as I picked out the mud, I thanked my lucky stars I hadn't sustained a puncture from all the broken glass that had lined the track (people seemed to have treated it as a bit of an illicit dumping ground cum ATV obstacle course). I still couldn't see the road for Rota and there was no-one to ask, so I just went by my compass. Entering a maze of residential streets, I soon reached a dead end, so back I went, guided by directions from two helpful young gentlemen.
I hadn't really understood what they'd said, but following the way they'd pointed, I saw a road with a fair bit of traffic going down it. It was pointing North west, so I decided to give it a shot, and was finally rewarded for my persistence: it was the right way! It wasn't an easy way though with a headwind blowing the rain right into my face and slowing me down significantly. To top things off, I was very hungry and just wanted to stop for the night and eat dinner. Sheer willpower pulled me along those last few kms and with the sun dipping below the horizon, I made a bee line for a supermarket and stocked up on provisions for the next two days.
Well burdened with jars of beans and packets of muesli, I rode further into town with my lights flashing, looking for the promised camping ground. There were plenty of signs to guide me and having eaten a whole baguette I was happy to follow them, enjoying riding now that my hunger had been sated. There was a limit to how far I was prepared to go though. After having followed the signs for a good five km and having left the outskirts of the town, I started to wonder where on earth this campground was. There was no trace of it at all, and the signs had ceased to be any use at all, so I gave up and decided to stealth camp for the second night in a row.
Out here away from the lights of the town, there were plenty of excellent spots to choose from, and I crept stealthily behind the veil of trees lining the road and set up my tent on a bed of pine needles, gloriously dry thanks to the umbrella of branches over my head.
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