June 5th, 2018 – Valencia, Spain to Almeria, Spain: ~290 miles
Finally set up with our BMW R1200RS, we spend a day focused on…other bikes.
Did you miss Day 3? Vy and I get our bike and head inland to see Potato Jesus and Albarracin.
I don’t drink coffee, but Vy and I made it a point to start off our morning with a beverage. Valencia is famous for horchata, which is also known as the “drink of the gods“. Made from tiger nuts (which are actually a tuber), horchata is a local tradition.
We hopped on the R1200RS to find ourselves a glass.
Back in 2017, the city of Valencia erected a series of six statues of various fruits and vegetables to commemorate their title as the “World Capital of Sustainable Food”. They were placed all over in busy spots, and have since been moved to less busy spots. We parked near a pepper!
One of the most famous vendors is Horchatería Santa Catalina. It’s been around for over 200 years.
For all that time, the go-to order has presumably remained the same: horchata with a side of fartons. Stop giggling. Fartons are sweet bread that are perfect for dipping.
It was absolutely delicious (and probably too sweet). But taste wasn’t the only sense that was delighted, as the interior is full of beautiful ceramic tile from the town of Manises.
We had arrived right when it opened, and the staff was still polishing things up.
Satisfied with our quasi-breakfast, Vy and I took the long way back on our walk to the bike. Along the way, a sculpture called me something that I normally only hear from Vy.
At first we thought we were seeing double! Looks like Baby Jack is trying to become the spokesperson for Pampling, a quirky t-shirt store.
I was disappointed to see that he hates humans.
Our next stop was the City of Arts and Sciences. Vy and I tried to stop here the night before as it sometimes is lit up at night, but when we arrived at the scheduled time it was all dark.
It’s supposed to resemble a giant eye.
It would seem that inconveniences abound with this building – it went at least 3x over the original budget of 300 million Euros, the opera house had 150 seats with obstructed views, and the science museum originally did not have elevators or fire escapes. At least it looks interesting from the outside, I guess? Its futuristic look made it an appropriate filming location for Westworld’s most recent season.
En route to our next stop, we saw some non-kid-friendly language at a playground.
We started to get some rain, which meant it was time for me to bust out my Racer MultiTop 2 gloves – an excellent combination of feel and waterproofness (though they do have a habit of getting severely waterlogged and difficult to get in and out of if you’re spending a long day in torrential rain.
The focus of our day was one of the many suggestions I received from you kind folks – the “Museo Vehiculos Historicos Valle de Guadalest”.
The museum was full of interesting Spanish bikes that are nearly impossible to find in the US. One example was the 1951 Soriano Pantera. Soriano was named after its founder, Soriano Schotz, the Marquis of Ivanrey. His motorcycle company ran from 1942-1952 in Madrid. All of its creations were small city runabouts.
The Pantera was the last model Soriano built, and it was the only one with telescoping front forks. The drivetrain was a 108cc 2-stroke single with a 3-speed transmission.
It’s so full of good stuff that I created a separate Picture Intermission to peruse, otherwise this post will be way too long.
As we rode past Benidorm, we saw the Intempo skyscraper towering over everything else. It’s the tallest residential (fifth tallest overall) building in Spain, and was supposed to be completed in 2014. The architects resigned, the construction firm went bankrupt, and the tower became a “symbol of incompetence.” A new owner took over in 2018, promising to have it finished in early 2021. We’ll see.
In 1956, the Osborne sherry company built large black bull billboards to advertise their company and they became well-known across the country. The Spanish government instituted a law in 1994 banning roadside advertising for alcoholic beverages, but the bulls were so beloved that the signs were allowed to stay if all branding was removed. There are approximately 90 of these out on the highway network of Spain, and one of my few regrets on this trip was not pulling over at some point to hike up next to one – I kept telling myself that we’d see another one soon enough.
We enter Andalucia, the southern region of Spain…
…and once we start exploring some back roads we are almost instantly greeted by community after community of abandoned buildings.
The BMW’s relatively quiet engine was the loudest thing for kilometers.
It was quite shocking to me, though not entirely unexpected. Spain had quite a real estate bubble during the last worldwide financial crisis, something that was pointed out multiple times in a particularly memorable episode of Top Gear. One of the highlights was when they “stumble” upon an abandoned airport and then proceed to turn the runway into a dragstrip:
We didn’t encounter anything quite that crazy, but after a few towns where it looked like <10% of the homes were occupied, I decided we should stop and see if things really were as empty as they seemed. They were.
I pulled the bike into the courtyard hoping to get an interesting shot but a.) I couldn’t find an angle I liked and b.) there were nails from construction and broken glass from vandals all over the place so I just left it on the edge.
We explored the interior of a couple of buildings, seeing nothing but broken glass, spiders, and even some dead birds. I went to the top of the unfinished construction to look out over as much as possible, and learned that the homes next to the water had residents.
What was supposed to be a 5 minute stop took up 35 minutes, so it was time to get back on the road.
And what a road it was! We hugged the coast as Vy had a hike planned for us to end the day with.
It involved a beach called Cala Enmedio, but try as we might we couldn’t find any signs for it on the road. Eventually we spoke to a local hotel owner who told us that there wasn’t really a sign for it at all, but that we just had to start at a trailhead and we’d figure out from there.
It was so poorly marked that someone had taken pity on fellow hikers and drawn vague directions on where to go…
In my mind, a loosely-defined hike seemed like a bad idea, but the trail was clearly demarcated and the view was gorgeous. This is Vy’s idea of heaven, but I’m a lazy person who would much rather ride somewhere than walk. I kept waiting for the trail to cut out to the water, but we just hugged the hills for kilometer after kilometer. After 30 minutes I started to get concerned that we had somehow missed a turn.
Right on cue, we crested a hill and were greeted by a view of the ocean.
We had the place all to ourselves so I ditched my motorcycle gear – including the Aerostich boots, so I could enjoy the sand beneath my bare feet.
Vy started climbing everything in sight, as she usually does.
Then she took a beauty shot of Baby Jack, which I usually do.
So majestic.
Time to gear up again.
We caught sunset on the hike back to the bike, and that wrapped up our planned activities for the day.
Most restaurants were closed by the time we got into the city of Almeria, but we lucked out with a local deli. We snagged a few prepackaged items and made our way to the hotel.
The hotel staff suggested I park the bike on the sidewalk right in front of the hotel, which was an easy suggestion to accept. Bike secured, we called it a night and planned out tomorrow while enjoying our deli-prepped dinner.
