After leaving Toledo, there was this really nice path along the Tagus, with great views of the city. The sun had been shining for a couple of days, and would shine for a few more.
It was then time to cross the Tagus on an old, repurposed railway bridge.
This put me back into farm country, where I had a rather nice lunch.
Then it was time to get inside the autonomous community of Madrid, through Las Vegas.
At first, the landscape was mostly the same as it had been up to here, but then it turned to a brown/grey soil, which looked like something out of the moon, only with more dead vegetation.
Worse still, I would pass by… well… a dump. If you’ve done any sort of rural dirt road, you probably have found garbage dumped alongside one of them. But this… this was the worst I’ve ever seen. It was like this for many kilometers, some of it even clearly visible from M-50, one of Madrid’s ring highways.
Hell, some of it is visible from space!
My route then took me through a rather dodgy looking neighborhood. The locals seemed friendly enough, though.
The rest of the day went by in a blur, in an effort to get out of suburbia. I couldn’t find out a place to eat. There was a Peruvian takeout place, though. In the end, the only things worthy of note were:
1 – you can see Madrid’s skyscrapers, even from a good 15km away.
2 – the town of Torrejón de Ardoz. Not because it’s particularly interesting but because it has… a jet fighter roundabout. Your town does not have a jet fighter roundabout, therefore your town isn’t as cool as Torrejón de Ardoz. Sorry.
Throughout eastern Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha, I’ve been seeing scores of rabbits and a few hares. They’re extremely scaredy, though. I’ve finally come across a few I’d thought I’d be able to take a selfie with. I think I didn’t succeed.
At this point, I’ve come across the first road without a hard shoulder ever since I’ve entered Spain. The Spanish drivers were respectful as ever, but I’d gotten used to the extra space the shoulder gave me.
And then I realized… I screwed up. I had scored a really cheap hostel in Guadalajara. The reason it was really cheap, though… was that it was in Guadalajara, Mexico. While I wasted time figuring out what to do, it got pretty late, though, so I went to the nearest place to camp I could find. It was a very visible, not very good place, though, so I woke up really early to get out of there quickly. The bright side is: it got me a good shot just after sunrise.
I’d then visit and stock up on Guadalajara. As a short review, it seemed like a decent place to live in, but not very good to visit. I’d give it a day at most.
And then it was time to head back to the hills, where there was lots of wheat, olive trees, and a really great campsite, not visible from any road.
And finally, a happy Easter from The Lazy Cyclist. Or happy Passover. Or whatever it is you celebrate.
“But I don’t celebrate anything!”, you might say. In that case, here’s some advice from 1980:
The Lazy Cyclist 