Yet another lovely sunny day when we headed off from Lucena for our leisurely 23 km cycle jaunt to Puenta Genil and the end of the Via Verde del Aceinte. We would spend the night there, then cycle back to Lucena for another night before catching the bus to Granada. We traversed a pedestrian bridge over the highway just outside Lucena and then we were in the countryside and on the Via Verde for almost the whole way.
It was a beautiful ride with hardly another person in sight, except for a crew of people working on the path. They looked like volunteers, all of an age, men and women, perhaps from the nearby town we just went through. They were such a cheerful looking group and I stopped to say hello and thanked them for their work. They were interested to hear we were from Canada. “Canada!!!” they exclaimed and gathered around to talk to me. Well, they talked and I smiled and nodded and offered up the odd Spanish phrase I could think of - “ Muy bonito!” In spite of my inability to communicate, it was a heartwarming little encounter and I finally waved goodbye and pedalled madly to catch up with Jim.
It was an interesting cycle, that took us over a couple of bridges, through a small town, also with a refurbished old train station, and past some ruined houses. The bike path was excellent and seemed quite new.
The Via Verde ended a short distance before the town of Puenta Genil, near the ruins of another old train station. We rode a short distance on a road into town and found our hotel on the main street.
Hotel El Carmen was surprisingly grand! It had been a flour factory and was renovated into a lovely hotel in 2007. Our spacious room on the second floor was only 64.40€! I checked the current price and it is still only 88€ so while prices have gone up further into the spring, they are still so reasonable. Our room looked out onto a big swimming pool at the back of the hotel, not in use this early in the season as was the case with all pools we encountered. I loved the public areas of this hotel - elegant furniture, beautiful floors and interesting abstract Spanish-themed art.
Hotel El Carmen is the perfect place to begin or end your ride on the absolutely stunning Via Verde del Aceite or the Olive Oil Route and to make our stay even more perfect, we saw that their dining room had a Menu del Dia for lunch. So after walking a short distance down the main street to find a bank machine - it was time to replenish our euros that we brought with us that had lasted far longer than we imagined - we decided to have a late leisurely lunch in the sunshine on the terrace of the hotel. It was very quiet - only one other occupied table. I finally had the traditional Andalucian chilled tomato and bread soup, solmorejo - delicious. And we both had a potato egg dish with grilled peppers and flan for dessert. With coffee I think it was 10€, wine and beer extra.
We enjoyed walking the long main street of this town of 30,000, still an agricultural centre for olive oil and also membrillo, a yummy quince jelly that seems common in Andalucia. The town seemed quite prosperous with nice shops. Only 45 miles from Cordoba, it felt so much further away to us. It is on a high speed train line - the one that would not take our bikes - so likely gets a lot our visitors later in the year. It is near some important nature reserves for hiking and birding. There was an interesting statue of a composer and some other old industrial buildings, some refurbished.
We were however staying in the newer upper town and unfortunately, did not walk as far enough down the main street to reach the older part of town built on the banks of the Genil River, a river we would see elsewhere, and the 16th C bridge for which the town is named. The town was founded for defence reasons because of it location near an important pass running from the countryside to the south into Muslim occupied territory. Frequent river flooding damaged the bridge which was rebuilt in 1874. There is an archeological museum and Roman ruins near the town as well.
We saw a poster for Dia de La Bici, Day of the Bike in Puenta Genil but would be gone by then. That would have been fun and a fitting end to the touring part of our trip, radidly approaching. I would go back to Puenta Genil and the Hotel El Carmen and cycle the Via Verde del Aceite the opposite way to its other furthest point in Jaen. You can’t find better cycling than that route. But instead we would cycle back to Lucena the next day for a last night before taking the bus to Granada, an exciting prospect too after a month of cycling from place to place. We had booked an apartment there and would stay for a week. Stay tuned - almost there!
This featured blog entry was written by Jenniferklm from the blog Cycling in Andalucia.
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