There’s a great restaurant in La Puebla, Meson Galindo, that is very Spanish, in terms of the food they serve, the fact they only speak in Spanish and the customers are predominantly Spanish. Lesley and I love it and decided to make it a destination for today’s bike ride.
We knew this would be our most challenging bike ride so far! On paper, OK Google maps, it would be about 25k each way. The furthest we’ve ridden so far. The other challenge was that we weren’t sure which way. It’s not so difficult in the car, the roads (mostly dual carriageways) make it easy, but by bike, we would need to make our way on service roads (via servicio) and even on stretches of off-road tracks. Because of the vastness of open spaces and distinctive mountains, once you have your bearings it’s generally not too difficult to navigate, and Lesley made sure that we followed a pretty good route with a real mixture of surfaces. During the trip we saw lettuce at virtually every stage of growth and a wide range of different vegetables too. Once we got to La Puebla we had toast and coffee at a cafe opposite Meson Galinda, all for €3.
Not wanting to go back the same way, we decided to head towards La Unión/El Algar, basically following our nose. We went through and passed many places that we’ve never seen before, but also, happened upon places and buildings that we know but didn’t expect to see because we had cycled further than we thought.
We went through La Palma and under the AP7, close to Parque Mediterranean, Cartegena.
We also discovered a derelict building, Villa Milagros, which I hope to go back to with the camera to take some proper pictures. We also passed Liquor 43, which you see from the AP7 on the way to Cartegena.
Next was Roche Bajo, a lovely little village, worth another visit.
Just before La Unión we came across La Cartuja, not sure what it is but they had ponies and a noisy donkey in the field.
Then on to La Unión and back on familiar territory. From there it was the usual route back. In total (as you can see from the map), we covered 60km, our longest ride so far.
