Day 2 Ruta Vía de la Plata - off road to Zafra

It rains in Spain

I arrived at a lovely Hotel Adarve in Zafra, a hotel magically built into the town's city walls, covered in mud. Today it rained and what was in morning a lovely dry trail was, in the afternoon, transformed into something wet and slimy. If I hadn't been writing a guide for Cicerone I would have opted for the road route, the lovely and totally empty N630, and got to Zafra faster and cleaner.

Today's route was just about off-road all the way and visiting the little towns of Monesterio and Fuento de Cantos broke neatly down into almost equal 20km phases (the total day was 69km).

Day 1 Ruta de la Plata - off road - El Real de la Jara

Day One on the off-road version of the Ruta del Plata from Seville to El Real de la Jara is tough. It's longer than most of the stages, involves climbing out of the coastal plain into the mountains and once you get there they go up and down a lot. Adding insult to injury I took a wrong turn and went climbing up a gravel track for about 5km before I realised my mistake and headed back to the correct route. Including mistakes I've covered about 95km and climbed nearly 2000m. I’m totally wacked.

The start, outside the cathedral in Seville

Off-Road on the Ruta Vía de la Plata - Day 0

In three days time, on the 23rd of May,  I set on off on my biggest cycling adventure yet - a mega off-road trip on the Ruta Vía de la Plata. I'll be glad to get started because at the moment I'm feeling more than a little nervous. 

Last year I cycled the road version of the Ruta Vïa de la Plata. The route, that starts in Seville and heads north through the heart of Spain to Gijon on the north coast, also has an off-road version. After enjoying myself so much last year and persuading Cicerone that the route needs a guide, I'm putting some fat tyres on my bike and I’m going back to Spain for some serious off-road cycling.

Mingling with the pilgrims

Winter Cycling in Morocco

You don’t need to know this but this is my second attempt to write this post. The first one ended tragically. Staying in the laid-back seaside town of Essouria at the end of a wonderful Moroccan cycling trip I decided to walk across the little stream at the end of resorts huge and very beautiful beach. I’d already done this a couple of days before only to discover halfway across that a stream that barely features when the tide is out is a different proposition when it’s not. Carefully protecting my camera as the water rose above my waist I completely forgot that my phone, containing the first version of this blog, was in my back pocket.  The phone, of course, was a dead as a dodo and although for days afterwards I was convinced that it would somehow forgive me for my memory lapse and return to life, it never did.

The death of my phone and turned out to be the only serious hitch in what was otherwise a brilliant trip. This is our fifth midwinter cycling getaway, second with Skedaddle, but the first which hasn’t involved travelling to the other side of the world.  We were keen to visit Morocco not least because we wanted to find out whether this was a place where we could enjoy winter sun on a more regular basis.

A Jersey Circular

The island of Jersey, just off the coast of France but very British, is not everyone's idea of a walking destination .... but trust me it works. It's especially good if you stay in your own hilltop tower.

If I'm honest it was the tower rather than the island that triggered the trip. We've been looking at Landmark Trust properties for years but have never taken the plunge. The Trust's mission is to preserve threatened historic properties by turning them into holiday accommodation. They have been at it for more than 50 years, and now have a portfolio of really quirky places to stay, one of which is Nicole Tower.

Nicole Tower

Cuckmere Haven to Lewis.

If you've spent the best part of 45 minutes on a bus from Brighton to Cuckmere Haven (the 13X is the fastest one) then most likely you'll want to follow the crowds and head south to the Seven Sisters. Stunning though that walking is, heading north presents a completely different and in many walks more interesting alternative. The walk described below is Sussex walking at its very best.  Head up the Cuckmere Valley, go through Alfriston and turn west going either high or low to Charleston, walk through the Firle Park and onto to Glynde before climbing over Mount Caburn to Lewis to finish with a well-deserved beer in the pub - a great day out.

Heading north up the Cuckmere Valley

The Ultimate Fann Mountains Trek

In September 2017 we went with KE Adventure Travel on a trek to Tajikistan's Fann Mountains, a trip which included a visit to Samarkand in Uzbekistan. It was a good trip: beautiful scenery and remote mountain walking shared with a nice group of people; but it did have some serious problems.

Tajikistan is in the middle of central Asia, remote and landlocked. It sits north of Afghanistan, east of Uzbekistan, south of Kyrgyzstan and west of China. The Fann Mountains, part of the huge Pamirs range, are north of the capital Dushambe.

On a pass in the Fann Mountains