Bike trails and bike trials

6th November

Part of the reason that we decided to stop at Navajas is the ASCI book mentioned it was near a bike trail.

The Via Verde Ojos Negros is a 160km cycle trail converted from an old narrow gauge mineral railway built in the early twentieth century. It follows the valley of the river Palancia from.San Augustin to the sea at Segunta. Apparent it was financed in part by the British government who required additional supplies of iron ore to compete with Germany during the build-up to WW1.. As I recall there was a serious arms race going on between the two powers, particularly around  a battleship building competition. I feel a little sensitive right now about lumps of German metal, but I'll come to that in a bit.

Although the morning was very chilly, dawn was glorious....

Since I was up with the larks, or more precisely, the pigeons, and Gill was still snoring away happily in the back, I decided to pluck up courage and check the University of Derby's VLE. My tutor, Teresa had said back in September that the dissertation marks would be posted in early November. I have been putting this off as I have had all kinds of bad feelings about the structure of the thing which became a bit 'unmanaged towards the end. In the event, when I checked, I was utterly astonished, the first mark is sitting there at 88%, given that anything above 70% is distinction level, it does appear, to use phraseology more often associated with MOTD, that I have 'nailed it'. Now I do realise this mark may not hold during 2nd marking, but it will not be adjusted radically in all likelihood, so overall I do appear to be heading for a distinction in the MA as a whole. I am delighted I must say, I did work hard and after the whole redundancy debacle, where my confidence and self belief took a real hit,doing well in the MA became important to me as a way of bouncing back and becoming more positive about life in general. .

Rather than set off straight after breakfast we waited to go cycling until mid-morning hoping the temperature would rise. We don't really have outdoor clothing with us suitable for really cold weather, and indeed it did get pleasantly warm in the sun. We cycled about twenty kilometres on the track. As the photos show it is indeed lovely, and warrants further investigation, maybe a little earlier in the season - the wind was biting; reminiscent of the Tissington trail!

Banana time!

The trail is used by school parties for outdoor education, the kids were all very jolly - singing as they toddled along.

A distant view of Jerica, we turned around here and headed back.

The route runs in parallel with the motorway for part of the way.

However the trip was not as enjoyable as it should have been due to problems with both bikes. Gill's has developed an intermittent fault with the twist grip throttle which gives a boost when you start; given the weight of the bikes this is a  really useful feature for pushing off uphill. Weirdly, my bike has developed the opposite problem, the motor will only kick-in using the throttle, but is not activated by the pedal action at all. Effectively this renders the bike useless on anything less than perfectly flat ground, as really it is too heavy to use as a conventional bike going uphill.

Both bikes are German built Wispers, bought at considerable expense expecting them to be robust and reliable compared with the cheaper brands manufactured in China. This has not proven to be the case. I have contacted Wisper UK, and though they are sympathetic, in all honesty what can they do. It looks increasingly likely that I will be carting a defunct electric bike around on the back of the van until we get back to the UK in March. Hence the reflection earlier on regarding useless lumps of German metal.

One useless lump of grey metal next to another!

In the afternoon we gave up with the bikes and went for a walk in the other direction on the trail. We skirted the industrial park nearby. A huge blue warehouse dominated the skyline. I have a bit of a soft spot for these gigantic faceless structures that have popped up in the landscape over the last decade. I find them mysterious, unsung monuments to the age of globalisation, just as typical of our age as a Cotton Mill was of the first Industrial Revolution, and maybe equally 'dark and satanic'.

A group of teenagers were stopped by the side of the road mending a puncture on one of the bikes. Once they knew we were English they had a good old attempt to have a chat and when later they passed us waved madly and shouted "good-bye!"