Lebrija to Coria del Rio

Our room in Lebrija would have been “muy tranquillo” as requested except that sometime after 11, there were loud voices right outside our room. We hadn’t seen any sign of any other guests. I finally got up in a fury, threw open our door and yelled “Silencio!” at a young guy talking in a loud voice on his cell. He was with a young woman, who looked really startled but they both left down the stairs and that was that. I lay awake for quite awhile though, worrying about a reoccurrence.

Before leaving town, we had the usual cafe breakfast - café con leches, zuma de naranja, and tostadas that always seem to come with the same plastic packages of mantiquilla (butter) and mermelada (jam) in my case. Jim opts for the tomato and olive oil which I can’t quite face first thing. When we can, if we have a kitchen, we eat our own preferred breakfast - muesli, yogurt and fruit plus the fresh orange juice you can always buy in the mercados. The hotel restaurant amazingly opened at 7, so we got an earlier start.

We were just finishing when a guy came in and asked in a strong Aussie accent, if we spoke English. We had a bit of a chat with him - he was meeting with agricultural people about some kind of laser technology for weeds. He lives in the Murray River area which we knew about. Nice guy but the most amazing thing about this random encounter was that after we left and had been cycling for a couple of hours on the endless alluvial plain on the way back down to the river and our next destination, we came to a crossroad just as a car came from the other direction and stopped. It was the Aussie guy. What are the chances that we would both arrive at that corner at the same time? I assure you this is a landscape where there is nothing and no one around but fields and irrigation channels as far as you can see in any direction. It seemed pretty amazing to run into someone we “knew” in that empty land.

We started out in fog that morning when we descended from the hilltop town. The day was kind of an endless boring ride on straight roads with few landmarks and zero signage so Jim was relying on all his online navigation to get us through it. There were pump houses every few miles and you could see how the water from the Guadalquivir River is intensively managed for what looked like pretty major industrial agriculture.

We recognized some crops - artichokes, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. We only saw a few signs of harvesting - once a group of guys who were putting cabbages on some kind of conveyor belt and who all waved in unison when I stopped to take their picture, no doubt because their day out there in the vast alluvial plain would be indescribably boring and they were dumbfounded to see anyone.

There were no houses anywhere, and hardly any people except one guy who we asked about a dirt road shortcut that Jim’s TransAndalus route seemed to want to route us onto. He discouraged us and a good thing as we saw the end of it later and it look pretty mucky.

Once we got back down to the river and were following it, there were lots of stork nesting sites in the trees on the river bank and we saw them out in the fields feeding. There is often a lot of bill clacking noise from the nests.

For almost the entire route, the road surfaces were not great and it was a long tiring day of trying to ride around potholes and road cracks and then a horrible surface of small rocks that was like riding on marbles. You had to stay hyper-focused on the track surface. And there was a certain level of anxiety about finding our way. One could be lost out there for weeks. We also had some additional anxiety and pressure about arriving at a ferry embankment point before the last afternoon sailing at 3:30, as they didn’t resume until 6:30. We stopped briefly to have something to eat at an old abandoned house.

Finally we were out on a real paved road again which was such a relief ad then we actually saw signage for the ferry.

It was still a ride of some kilometres to get there but we made it, and shortly after we arrived at the river the ferry putted over from the opposite bank and we boarded with a bunch of motorcyclists and one car.

One of the motorcyclist came up to ask us where we were from and how far we had come and looked quite astounded when we told him.

Anyway, our long day was thankfully coming to an end and after disembarking the ferry, we walked through the little town of Coria del Rio to the one hotel we had been able to find online - the one star Hotel Gran Avenida at the far end of town near the road we would take the next day to Sevilla. It wasn’t much of a building from the outside, but we had a clean, comfortable room on the ground floor, our bikes were safely stored in’s nearby room and the staff were really friendly. After that day, it was good to just get horizontal. We couldn’t face waiting for the late dinner hour or looking for a restaurant so managed to find a little shop that was open - all the bigger markets were closed as it was Sunday - and bought warm buns just out of their little oven, cheese and salami and had sandwiches in our hotel room for dinner. One of those less than spectacular days on the cycle path…..

Our day - 68.5 km. Flatter than flat!