Ride Day 4 - Medina de Pomar to Frias

Despite having had a short conversation with the Russians, I wasn’t quite ready to make us a party of four. Nonetheless, the guy at the hotel last night sat us together for dinner. On one hand, he figured that since we were the only people in the entire town and were more or less travelling together, it made sense. On the other hand, he clearly didn’t know me.

It turned out to be fascinating. We actually got to know each other somewhat and despite significant limitations in the only language we both knew, we covered a lot of territory. Most of which I am not at liberty to disclose in this publicly accessible blog because, you know, Russia. But it was very interesting to get the perspective of some regular Russians (although probably pretty wealthy by Russian standards) without the filter of our news media. It was doubly interesting because the parents had very different opinions about current politics than did their teenage son. On to the ride.

The very first thing my navigation app said this morning was "Today, you may want to buy food and bring it with you for lunch," which told me everything I needed to know. I followed, crossed and sat by the Ebro many times over the course of the ride, most of which was spent in, shocker, isolated places. Every time I went from the river at the bottom of the valley back up to the top of the cliffs and saw eagles flying below me (yes that happened) I would think "I guess that's why I'm a little out of breath."

Speaking of isolated places, if you, like me, thought hermits only existed in Monty Python movies, guess what! They not only existed, but one of them lived here along my ride. After the heyday of hermits, this cave remained uninhabited for hundreds of years until the 1950’s when some Portuguese laborers building a hydroelectric dam were “housed” here. Not to be judgy but it seems like that should be sort of illegal.

Then on to Frias, a medieval town near the end of the ride. I could have taken the regular road but chose to use the original bridge. The tower in the middle is a toll booth, but I didn’t have to pay a toll because the guy who worked there died 800 years ago.