Day forty one

 

The unforgiving outback, dry, hot and little shade.

So much for my planned preparation for today's stage. At 2:00 in the morning I am awoken from deep sleep by the drone of a mosquito in my ear. I can tell it has already struck as my left sole is itching. How did it get in? Under the door? Now that it knows where I am it will not let up. I stare up at the white painted ceiling, waiting for it to approach again with a neck scarf ready to beat the living daylights out of it. It never comes of course. It's sitting somewhere watching me and waiting for me to turn the lights out. Eventually I switch off the light having checked everywhere and lie awake for hours, then it is back again and has bitten my right shoulder. I put on some tiger balm, which helps but what I really need is the Deet spray but that is with the luggage on my bike down in reception. I have my head net and put that on but it is stifling trying to sleep with it on. 

This goes on all night and I get no sleep. At 6:30 half an hour before my alarm is due to go off I get dressed and have breakfast; a croissant bought the day before, a fig yogurt and some salmorejo fresco. I must buy some fly spray and so check the Internet for supermarkets forgetting it's Sunday. Almost all are closed but I find one nearby that opens at 10:00 with some good reviews and photos. Meanwhile I decide there is nothing more I can do till then and attempt to sleep fully clothed till 9:30. I doze until my alarm wakes me. I pack and leave but the supermarket I found earlier no longer exists, something Google seems very good at doing. I find another not far away and ride around for the next one and a half hours following Google's directions. The problem is when you are close the arrow pointing the way begins spinning in all directions making it impossible to know which way to go. I always come back to the same place but there is no sign of any supermarket. I ask some people and show them my smartphone, eventually they figure out where it is, just 100 meters away but the name has changed. I get my fly spray but visiting the cathedral will have to wait till another day after wasting most of the morning. The photos of it looked fascinating.

Black plastic covering seedlings that is eventually ripped up and scattered across the landscape.

I head off towards Lorca with a plan B if I don't make it. It's 60kms uphill but mostly a gentle climb allowing me to pedal all the way. 'Nose to the grindstone', has never been a more apt expression as I stare down at the road passing beneath my front tyre for hours on end in a sort of zombie like state. The peak of my baseball cap protects me from the sun but makes looking ahead difficult. For lunch I just have a cafe con leche, a cheese and ham pastry and rely on the rest of my M&Ms to keep me going. It seems to work anyway as I reach Lorca before 19:00. Total distance today 70km.

Farming on a huge scale.

I pass through Europe's fruit and vegetable backyard garden and it was shocking to see shredded plastic remnants once used to protect young seedlings covering every square meter of land as far as the eye could see. Is it bio-degradable? If not then the rest of the plastic garbage problem is nothing compared to this!