44: 13th January 2022. Toledo to Illescas. 33.4 miles cycling; 1,598 ft climbed; and 3.54 hours cycling time
We started this, our last morning in the 5* Eugene Hotel, with a “luxury” breakfast in our room – in my case in bed. Debbie made her breakfast speciality of oats, granola fruit and yogurt in an empty humus pot that we had to take turns with – and also share the one remaining plastic spoon we had commandeered from the Seville Vincci hotel several weeks ago!
We then took a walk into Toledo to do the two remaining sightseeing visits we wanted to do – one to the church of the Sante Tomb in which the Buriel of the Count of Orgaz by El Greco, and the other to the Mesquita. It turned out that the Sante Tomb is only open on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays (not Wednesday as we had been told), and although the Mesquita should have opened at 10.00, by 10.30 it was still shut and we gave up. It as very frustrating as I had very much wanted to see the El Greco painting.
So this is our penultimate day of cycling on this tour. We could have managed cycling into Madrid in one day but we really didn’t feel we wanted an extra day there so we have broken the journey with an overnight stop. I then looked at the relatively short days and diverted the route so we have two more substantial cycling days to give us an opportunity to see more of the landscape coming into and surrounding Madrid.
The ride out of Toledo was interesting, with the first couple of miles being down the hills with a crossing over the Puente de Alcantara bridge, crossing the Targus river and built by the Romans and opened in 98 AD after they had founded the city.
Our ride them continued along a busy road before going along a dirt track that almost felt we were going back some 100 years in time; I even had to ride through a herd of goats. We were soon back on roads, although these were now busier main roads with more traffic on them than we have had previously – we are definitely moving into a more urban and populated area of Spain.
After twenty miles of cycling we stopped at a cafe and I enjoyed a beer whilst sitting in the sun and breathing in fumes and eating tapas (more accurately fish paste stale bread sandwiches).
The ride after this was made harder by a fairly strong and chilling headwind and quite a few challenging hills. eventually we moved from country and farmland to industrial suburbia; the run in was on busy roads and to be honest it was not a very attractive area. We did, however, get to our hotel, the Hotel Complejo Paris, quite quickly and which turned out a little to my surprise to be a very good hotel – whilst not being the most luxurious, it was very comfortable and functional. It also provided us with a very good three course meal and beers, all for for €30 for us both which was very good value compared to some of the meals we have had.
Cycle Touring Adventures! 