You get used to sleeping to the sound of crashing waves quickly, and to a great breakfast and stretching on the beach even faster. At breakfast we decided not to leave here and to stay at least a day longer. The fully booked hotel spoiled this plan and we sadly had to pack up.
We left the hotel a little after eleven o’clock and headed for Seville. From the map, we quickly guessed that the TET would again continue mostly on roads, but this was a mistake.
We descended fairly quickly onto fast dirt gravel roads, full of small and large potholes, occasional mud and large puddles. Hundreds of wind turbines were all around us.
A decent surprise awaited us at the town of Chiclana de la Frontera. The TET bypasses it from the east on clay and much washed out roads that are impassable in the rain or shortly after heavy rain. We were lucky and drove there a few days after the rain, so the deep puddles and swaths of mud were passable. One section there is very tricky, it is a steep cliff with meter deep potholes, where it is harder even in dry weather.
This tricky section was followed by a beautiful run through a pine forest, on easy sandy roads.
The last surprise the TET had in store for us was beyond Jerez de la Frontera, where it follows the Rio Guadalquivir through an agricultural, intensively irrigated landscape. When the navigation showed that the next turn was 29 km away, we didn’t want to believe it. It wasn’t lying, and there were only about 3 slight curves on those 29 km. So we were safely cruising along the almost smooth wide gravel road at 100-110 km/h, slowed down only by the storks that flew heavily and slowly in front of us.
We almost certainly won’t beat the average speed on this section.
Before arriving in Seville, we forgot to turn off and when we found out, Peter and I had an argument about whether or not we could continue. I said no, so we parted ways with the idea that he would show up.
It turned out that Peter was right, it was possible to ride it “straight” while I took the longer but worse route on the TET, which ended in a muddy hell where I made a ball of mud out of myself and the bike. That’s what happens when you disobey an older friend 🙂
(225km, Hotel Sercotel Doña Carmela, Seville)