La Vía Verde de la Noroeste
Next morning the pilgrims trail took me to Mula, an exciting town which is overlooked and dominated by the Castillo de los Vélez, a fortress built in the 16th century by a Spanish Marquis in order to subjugate the people of the area.
It was built on the site of a smaller Moorish fort that is known to have been in existence during the 12th century. The site has been uninhabited and disused for at least 10 years and there are currently efforts being made to prevent it falling into complete disrepair.
It's difficult to explain why I found the town so attractive, maybe because of its mixture of old and new, East and West, North and South. It really felt like a melting pot. This mural appeared on a wall at the edge of town.
Maybe two hundred yards away in a small housing estate I encountered two aged shepherds watching over a flock of sheep that were grazing in this suburban setting. They wished me good day and safe journey and I almost turned back to take a photograph of them with their sheep in this incongruous setting, but I remembered a scene from a film, "Les Princes", where a German tourist fails to take account of the sensitivities of his photographic subjects, a dysfunctional gypsy family recently made homeless, and ends up provoking them to violence. Not that I was afraid that these two dear chaps would become violent, but sometimes the camera can be a very intrusive instrument, and I had no wish to treat them both as though they were curiosities. On the other hand they might have been flattered, if only my mastery of Spanish was a little more developed.
Beyond Mula it's back on the wonderful Via Verde de la Noroeste, the cycle track which follows the course of a disused railway line between Murcia and Caravaca de la Cruz. The countryside outside Mula is intensively irrigated and agricultural, still capable of supporting orange groves despite the slowly increasing altitude and the descending night time temperatures found in the interior of Spain. If you zoom in to this picture you'll see the first of many tunnels along the line.
The line crosses several rivers, tributaries of the Rio Segura, and runs beside many reservoirs that support the agriculture. I found it really extraordinary that in an area of such low rainfall there are so many rivers that continue to flow from high up in mountainous areas. Spain does seem to be in some way blessed with its morphology.
Here is an old railway station that in summer is open as a travellers hostel, but was sadly closed in October. All the same a very pleasant place to pause for a picnic.
The further I traveled along the trail the more I began to realise what an extraordinary privilege it is to make this journey, and what good fortune it is for cyclists and walkers to have inherited this incredible route. Take a look at these spectacular bridges which would ordinarily never be considered as economically worthwhile for us lowly worms:
As the altitude gently increased and the surrounding slopes became steeper, so the landscape became more forested and wild.
And then all of a sudden we were deposited at the foot of another urban area, this time the city of Bullas, the centre of a wine growing region.
I didn't stop at Bullas but continued to Cehegin where I camped overnight at a recreation/picnic/rest area. I was joined at around midnight by some of the local youth who kept a respectful distance and volume, which was great. During the course of the day I had noticed that farmers had begun lighting fires again and I took this as a cue that it would be ok to light a little fire to boil up my rocket stove for some tea in the morning. But I couldn't find my tea anywhere. In fact quite a few things were missing and it gradually dawned on me that when I had picked up my shopping in Mula at the beginning of the day, and chucked out the previous nights rubbish, I had somehow included a small bag of supplies, including my tea and Barleycup, which I had not used for some time. I became really annoyed with myself as I had been looking forward to a cup of tea since first seeing the fires yesterday morning. As chance would have it there was a pomegranate tree growing next to the rest area, laden with wild pomegranates. I wasn't too keen as I remembered them being really messy to eat, but I got stuck in anyway, and what a revelation it was. Talk about tasty and refreshing. Within a score of minutes I had forgotten all about the lack of tea and coffee and I was flying off on the bike again.
Well actually I did stop for a coffee as soon as I arrived in Caravaca around lunchtime, and it was delicious. After cycling around the town and having a bit of lunch I set off for the next stop, Barranda, and the museum of musical ethnography! I felt a hardening of the "oughteries" as I felt that perhaps I "ought" to honour the basilica of Vera Cruz with a visit as a token of gratitude for the extraordinary journey I had enjoyed to this town, and the respect I had been offered as a traveller. But the truth is that I visited the basilica about five years ago, and it is a hefty climb to the top of the town. I knew that the journey to the top was marked with countless shrines and prayer stations and that these signs of active faith on the part of the local population are inspiring and very edifying. But I also knew that the basilica at the top was a little disappointing and similar to probably thousands of other churches around Spain. And honestly I was more interested in the museum of musical ethnography a few miles away in Barranda.
The road to Barranda follows the valley of the river Argos, another tributary of the Segura, and I found myself singing and humming tunes from that incredible album Argus, by Wishbone Ash, and thinking about my oldest friend of all, another Paul, "Dutt", who took me to see Wishbone Ash play in a small theatre in Hunstanton in Cambridge a few years ago. It was an unforgettable evening marked by some virtuoso performances, pleasing all the more because it was not just populated by aging hippies, such as myself, but also by plenty of young souls who felt the fire in the melodies. Audients exercising their emotions.
