Sometimes a visit to the good old fashioned tourist office can really come up with the goods. Having been unable to find online, a bike hire shop that was open at this time of year, the lady manning the Ronda desk, pointed us in the direction of Jesus' Bike Shop - conveniently located just ten minutes walk from our house. Having arranged to hire a couple of eBikes a few days ago, we arrived excitedly at 10am ready to go. We had no map of the area, but Clare was prepped with some serious navigational tech.
With bikes and helmets now in our possession, the trickiest part of the day looked to be gaining safe passage out of the city.
The navigating iWatch did it's thing and took us thought the less congested back streets.
And out onto the open road....
On Jesus' reccomendation, we headed south out of the city, where the long and winding county roads have perfectly smooth tarmac and virtually no traffic. It was biking bliss - especially on the uphills, where the eBikes purred encouragingly upwards! We stopped at a high col for a snack and beyond us the views had opened up, revelling some wild terrain.
From the Col, we enjoyed many exhilarating kilometres of smooth downhill. The bike's speedometer was reading 50km/h as we raced downhill. As the tarmac shot past beneath our feet, it felt considerably faster than travelling at the same speed by car. I could have gone faster still and part of me wanted to, but the sensible side of me (yes, there is one - now and then), decided not to, as the brakes began to judder quite alarmingly when applied above 50km/h. We covered a delightful amount of terrain without having to put in a single peddle stroke.
Dotted around the wooded hillsides were the white villages - Pueblos Blancos.
We stopped in the village of Alpandeire, which is packed in tight on the hillside. It was great to have a look around as well as let the buzz of the downhill racing wash off.
We then continued on the switchbacks to the next one - Farajan - where we stopped for lunch in the shade by the church.
Further around the hillside, we discovered that the village of Juzcar was not a 'white village' at all - it was a blue one!
After some careful navigation of the road on the final turn, we entered the blue village and detoured through the narrow streets to have a look. It really was all blue.
With plenty of distance still to go, we rode on and out of the village. The landscape now became more barren, with dry, karst, limestone hillsides and plenty of craggy outcrops.
By the time we arrived in Cartajima, we were both pretty tired, so pulled over at the local park, had some food and fell asleep on a bench each.
Three quarters of an hour later, we were back in the saddle (which, I'll admit, by now was rather sore) and aiming for the final 20km back to Ronda.
After negotiating a herd of goats that we being shepherded across the road, we were delighted to catch sight of Ronda, in the distance. It looked to be downhill virtually all of the way! We were literally whooping with a heady mix of excitement and adrenaline as we rushed downhill at maximum speed for the next 10km or so.
In order to avoid the final main road into Ronda, we took a chance on a smaller trail which unfortunately involved a rather deep ford crossing. We weighed up the terrain, calculated speed and feeling confident, I decided to go for it.
It was a tricky mix of variables, as not having mud guards, I didn't want to go too fast and get splashed. However, I soon realised (too late) that I was going too slow and at two thirds of the way across, was going to have to put in a peddle turn in order to maintain momentum. The water was already up to my horizontally balanced peddles, so (some might say, inevitably), I had to get a wet foot as I pushed the peddle down and made it to the far bank. Clare fared much better and made it across with both feet dry and in fits of laughter at my mis-fortune. She had noticed a way around the ford, that used a bridge just downstream!
Ten minutes later and we were back at Jesus' Bike Store, grinning madly and shaking hands as we returned the bikes. We picked up a huge bag of fresh Churros and a tub of chocolate sauce on the short walk back home and devoured them on the terrace. Brilliant day.
Clare's phone had recorded the stats of the day - 51km and 1060m of height gain!
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