As I learned during the past three weeks, the early morning hours on a weekend, while it’s not yet scorching hot, are the prime time for road cycling in Spain. No surprise then that today the roads were quite busy. I tacked onto a chain gang of local riders for as long as I could hold up in the outskirts of Málaga only to get dropped as soon as we entered the hills west of town. Another roadie I encountered and re-encountered three times at various points on my route, including a nightmarishly steep section in the town of Casarabonela where the climb in the Sierra de las Nieves national park begins.
There weren’t really any major climbs on the plate for today but a lot of climbing nevertheless. As the first task of the day I had to get from sea level up to the Sierra at around 1000 m which was a moderately steep ascent through pine forests and, as is the rule for Andalucía, endless olive plantations.
On the Sierra I then continued on to Ronda which involved some descending and regaining the lost altitude. Ronda is situated on a steep cliff which makes for stunning photos, or so the thousands of tourists must have thought that were clogging the street. Not that I blame them, it really is an exciting place to visit. Together with the Sierra nature park this has become my favorite part of Andalucía; the difference to the rather monotonous Sierra de Cazorla is striking.
Climbing out of Ronda I immediately noticed how the wind had turned. What used to be a welcome tailwind for most of the morning and early afternoon now had turned into a headwind. To make it even more insidious, the wind blew strongest near the summits and thus near the final meters of climbs. Of which there were quite a few, this being a rolling rock ridge an all. Thankfully the rest of the day was mainly downhill which almost compensated for the headwind.
176 km with 2980 m of climbing, another massive day.
gps tracks
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