After the success of our 55 mile mountain ride a couple of days before, I thought Colette might be up for this longer route, as suggested by Ciclo Costa Blanca. “Isn’t that the one you said would be too hard?” she reminded me… That could have been a problem, but luckily it didn’t take too much persuading for her to give it a go.
We headed off nice and early towards Callosa as before. This morning was a little cooler, especially in the shade, but I resisted the urge to put on my arm warmers. At the central roundabout in Callosa, we took the CV-755 exit, heading for Guadalest.
We had been warned that the CV-755 was closed north of Callosa, due to a landslide in the January floods, which washed away most of the road surface. That means closed to cars, but bikes can usually slip past, even if it isn’t really encouraged. I had the idea of checking on Strava to see whether any cyclists had recently been able to get past. Sure enough, there were plenty of people completing the climb to Guadalest in the last week, meaning that there must be a way through.
So we ignored the road closed ahead sign and forged onwards. The sun was now shining warmly, the road was free of cars and we were enjoying the approach to the mountains. A mile or so further, we came to the museum of motorbiking, situated close to a fork in the road. To the left was the diversion to Guadalest, which is narrow, badly surfaced and very steep, while to the right lay the proper road, which winds its way gently up the hillside in a very picturesque way.
We cycled past the barriers and onwards towards Guadalest. There were some signs of minor flood damage, but nothing really significant until we came to the break in the road. In fact, we had tried this road earlier in the week on our first visit to Guadalest, and found it easy to carry the bikes over the rubble on the left side of the road at the point of the landslip. However, since then, there had obviously been some work carried out. A big excavator was sitting below us in the middle of the missing part of the road, and it had been used to completely remove the whole of the carriageway. The part of the road we crossed by before was now completely missing. Instead, there was an 8 foot “cliff” to get down to the level of the digger, with a ramp to climb out on the other side.
Looking back on the landslip
If I had been by myself, this would have been impossible to get past, but when Colette arrived, I lowered myself down and asked her to pass the bikes down to me. Then a couple of German cyclists pulled up too, whose bikes I took, and they helped lower Colette down to me. It was all a bit undignified and messy, but we made it.
Above us we could see two ends of an exposed blue pipe with water trickling from it, meaning we had to cross a muddy stream to get to the other side. It took a while to get the muddy concrete stuff off my shoes, and we were only just setting off again when several vehicles with road workers arrived on the scene. They looked at us with quite stern expressions, and I’m sure that if we had been a few minutes later, they would not have allowed us to come past. Phew!!!
Guadalest
When we arrived at Guadalest, it was time for some coffee and to get cleaned up a little. It occurred to me that the workers might have severed a mains pipe and came back up to Guadalest to turn off the water, giving us that short window to get past. Clearly, we were destined to do this route.
After Guadalest, we got ourselves onto the CV-70 headed towards Alcoy. We were climbing steadily but it seemed to take much less effort than similar roads in Scotland. Shortly we arrived in the village of Confidres. This far into the mountains, the villages are smaller and further between, so even though it was maybe a little early for lunch, we decided to stop.
I was originally attracted to a sign on the door of a restaurant saying “bocadillas hasta 12”, but the chap inside explained that meant bocadillas until 12, rather than after 12 as I’d hoped. As it was just after 12, we couldn’t have them. However, we were offered the “menu ciclista” instead, which turned out to be great – salad and a pasta dish, both delicious. Love the idea of a menu only for cyclists!
After lunch we re-applied the factor 50 and headed onwards and upwards. The road topped out at about 3,100 ft, after which we descended steadily for a few miles. We parted company with the Alcoy road, continuing downwards for a while, before hitting a quite tough 10% incline, which was about as hard as it got all day.
Penaguilla
There was a bit of a lull after that climb, then our route took us onto the CV-785 and a series of hairpin bends, very gently taking us uphill again. The climb was taking us up about 1,000 feet but it never got hard, and in fact was almost flat in places. We must have entered something of a bowl in the landscape, as in contrast to the majestic mountain views, the scenery here took on a more intimate feel, as we passed by tiny fields with tiny stone buildings, surrounded by low, wooded hillocks.
I had got ahead of Colette by this stage, who got a bit worried after not seeing me for a while, and phoned me to make sure she was still on the right road. So I nipped back and we finished the climb off together, finally reaching a plateau at around 3,200 ft.
We heard some unusual noises as we approached the Safari Aitana animal park. Colette called out to say she spotted a tiger, and sure enough we saw two, pacing around their compound, with a giraffe looking on from the distance. Not exactly their home habitat, but I get the feeling they would be happier there than in Scotland!
Soon, the mountain scenery opened up again as we took on the descent to Sella. This was a simply majestic, sweeping descent, with nobody else on the road but us for miles, with the sun shining warmly upon us and the road surface near perfect, meaning we could safely choose our line down the mountain. Just perfect!
We stopped in Sella for a coffee as we needed a break. There were still quite a few miles to go and we were starting to feel a bit tired. The descent continued for a few miles beyond Sella, after which we had some more climbing to do before we reached the town of Finestra.
The climbing continued for a while, but it wasn’t too taxing, till we reached a fast descent, taking us back towards the coast. Suddenly, we went from quiet country roads to heavy traffic in one go when we reached the CV-70 at a roundabout. We took the cycle path option here to stay off the busy road, then threaded our way through back streets towards L’Albir. That did involve getting onto the main N-332 for a while, which was quite a culture shock after the rest of the day.
After that, we headed for the beach, where the cycle path took us safely all the way to Altea. Rather than head directly for the hotel, we went via the Russian minimarket to stock up on refreshments, then straight back to base for a well-earned rest. It had been a big day in the mountains indeed. Yes, it was daunting at the outset, but we were so glad that we’d done it.
A Russian minmarket!!?? The rest sounds wonderful! X