24.2 km today.
127 km this trip.
1521.8 km from start.
0 metres minimum height.
88 metres maximum height.
86 metres ascent.
181 metres descent.
Track Log: Logged.
Travel: Bus.
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2008-02-15-000-Elche-to-Alicante.kml
2008-02-15-000-Elche-to-Alicante.gpx
Quiet at the start then urban roads. Some very busy.
We caught the Elche bus and got out 500 metres too soon. After correcting this error on foot, we headed for Alicante on the quietest roads and tracks we could find. Near big cities, this can be a real problem. The Alicante outskirts are pedestrian unfriendly. One huge junction about 1 km from the end of the airport runway was especially bad. We had to walk a couple of kilometres on roads only just short of motorway standard. Near the end we spotted an underpass that we could not reach and which was not signposted from the other end. 0/10 to the town planners on this one.
Once in town, there are lots of pedestrian crossings and the drivers are mostly very kind to those on foot.
We plan to catch the 7.45 bus to the outskirts of Elx where we caught the bus home yesterday. While having my breakfast (I fail to wake up in time to make it so I am a failure once again as I have not once managed to make the breakfast this trip) I wonder if the bus we are going on is the ideal one. The problem is that although all the buses go to Elx some go via the seaside and some go by an inland route. Neil would prefer the inland route so he can see where he is going and plot his route. I say this and Neil is sad because he is just doing his second sausage after asparagus. He had said it had that effect and I said it didn't on me. Any way I said we're too late we'll just have to go by the other route.
I am all calm and then suddenly I need to do a second sausage as well. While I am doing it Neil says I'm ready! So I have to be fast and off we go. It is 7.15. At the bus station the Elx bus is standing there and other people are getting their tickets on the bus so we do the same. In the event it is not this bus which goes via the inland route but the one we were going to catch in the first place. Any way it is dick so we can't see out properly at all. We pass a Repsol garage which is my first landmark and I start to look out for a chattock which is our bus stop landmark. Neil's landmark is the railway bridge. Once over it he pulses the button and leaps off the bus when it shrieks to a halt very soon afterwards. I can't see my chattock so I know it is too soon but Neil is right off the bus so I get out as well and we have to backtrack to the chattock before we can start the walk proper. Luckily there was a nice little woo to do it along.
This is the first and only holiday so far where I have kept my mustang in drybag mode for several days in a row. Today began cloudy but has cleared up and is now lovely and sunny and warm. There is still a breeze but force 3 to 4 rather than 5 to7. Our walk today starts along a pecuaria which develops into a busier road. Then along the Elx Alicante vlak and over it to the fierce, where we opted to walk along the shopping street because we have become addicted to Alicante tarts. We find a shop and Neil chooses one but when we get in it appears I chose a different one. It was very nice any way and we ate them in a squaw in the middle of Torrellano (the village where we were).
Beyond Torellano we get to a spaghetti junction and end up on a horrible road where a horrible lorry driver made gestures at us to wave us off. There was only a steep embankment to get off so we had no option but to carry on. It wasn't a motorway after all and seesickles were using it so why shouldn't we. At the slip road we came off and had lunch under some olives. The sun had come out by now and it was all cosy.
Now we turn left to Bacarot and for the first time get some little inclines - still nothing to speak of though. Along here, Neil's piles go flat and he changes them. We keep taking off and putting on our hellies as the sun goes in and out. We saw on teletext that having been 12 degrees in London it was now 7 and thought that boded well for us. It has. There are pouco núvols and molts clars. Tomorrow even the forecast said there would be clars so we are expecting a lovely day. I have removed my woolly hat and gloves from my mustang and have reinstated my tilley. I have also put my cagoule back in its stuff sack.
Neil has plotted a route back through Alacant, where possible, avoiding fierce roads and we are sticking to it rigidly. We have a little sit in a squaw and have a healthy bar and a little bask and we decide when we get back, instead of going home, to carry on to the port and have a bask there. I ruin Neil's navigation system by requesting that we go into the bus station to get a timetable for the C6 bus to the airport. I get it on a parper and Neil takes a photo of the notice with his candelabra. We pass the Argentinian shop and pick up a bottle of water and two magnums. Neil's is a double chocolate and mine is a temptation. The temptation magnum had vanilla ice cream, amendoas and streaks of caramel. Mmmmm. We ate the sees kweems on the central reservation of a duel carriage way in the town set up with chairs and lovely trees.
Then we walked to the port. I make a note of LUCENTUM, Tossal de Manises, Ciudad iber-romana. At the harbour, we basked behind a wall to keep the wind off. It was lovely and cosy. Coming home we got slightly lost but were rewarded by passing through a wonderful plaza with huge trees that might have been baobabs. The trees had huge aerial root systems. There was a lovely fountain and two turtle doves were desporting themselves. It turned out that this plaza was at the end of our own road but we didn't know because we had always headed south from our flat.