Camino Mozarabe Day 5: Alcaudete to Baena.

Day 5: Alcaudete to Baena. 27 km.

I was awake at 6am again, tea in bed and reading until 7am, breakfast and pack, we were on the road an hour later. The weather was very nice and although we were rigged out in our leggings it promised to be a very hot day. It did turn hot and the leggings were soon off and fleeces followed not long after.

Getting through the town and out on the route turned out to be fairly straight forward though when the author of the Cicerone guide did it they were building new roads and motorways so the route then was disrupted and confused. According to the map in the Cicerone guide the route should follow the N432 fairly closely but the waymarks as we left Alcaudete on a gravel road took us away for the highway. We seemed to be progressing well and chatting away not paying attention that we missed an arrow. We ended up a couple of kilometres the wrong way; fortunately the road led to a house so we knew right then that we had gone wrong. We retraced our steps and found an arrow at a junction hidden behind a clump of tall grasses; we were on track again but had lost 45 minutes. The point where we had missed the turning was at an enormous conglomeration of solar panels. They were in units of 48 panels, each single panel similar in size to the ones we have on our house. There were literally hundreds of these 48 panel baks here. That also helped to distract us from the change of direction arrow. 

It wasn't long before we were in trouble again by going the wrong way. Fortunately a farmer working on his olive trees redirected us. The track now wound its way round the hillsides and through yet more olive groves to meet up with the N432. The highway took us over the Rio Guadamoz then we were out into the olive groves again and on gravel tracks. We found a pool with a wall round it where we could sit and have a cup of coffee and a break. The distance signs on the N432 showed that we had only covered 8km in the 2.5 hours we had been going due to our getting lost. We thought when we started off again we had still plenty of time if we didn't get lost again but immediately came to a halt when we couldn't find markers at the first junction in the tracks. After a lot of searching I discovered a cross, 'not  this way', on one fork; so we got going again. Not for long, there were more difficulties as we entered olive groves that had been ploughed up and the waymarks had disappeared. Eventually we entered a Nature Reserve and a lake where we picked up markers again. Later I discovered that his was the Cicerone route but had ignored the guide as the map showed it running very close to the highway which we certainly weren't doing.

At the lake, Laguna de Salobral, the arrows initially guided us round the right of the lakeside but then disappeared. We followed the path near the eage of the water but found later that we should have headed up to an old railway line, originally used for the transportation olive oil, and had been converted into a cycle track. We did eventually meet up with it at the original railway halt/station. This seemed to be a picnicking and recreational area with lots of cyclists about. The lake is only about a metre deep and unlike now is dried up for much of the time. As we reached the road a sign pointed us again onto a gravel track to the right. We were reluctant to wander in more olive groves and found someone who spoke English. He said if we kept on the road until we crossed a bridge then turned first left we would reach the N432. That was now our plan.

When we reached the junction Moira went on further to check that it was the correct turning and round a bend discovered yellow arrows. The cross country track we avoided came to the road at that point and the way indicated was straight along the road. This didn't last long and it was into the country again a short time later. This time it wasn't so tricky, the track was wide and obvious even though the waywarkers were few and far between. At 1:30pm it was our lunch stop and we had bread and cheese, an apple and a cup of coffee plus a well needed rest. In half an hour we were on the go again and I estimated that we had 10 km to go, another 2 hours at least. We were now making good time on a nice flat track through these endless olive trees and it came as a complete surprise after an hour when we saw Baena stretched along a ridge on the other side of a small valley. There were now plenty of signs and arrows when we didn't need them as we climbed the steep road up into the town.

We asked directions and soon found Hostal Rincon, an inexpensive hotel, according to Cicerone,in the town square. We got a room and showered before going down for a beer and to settle the bill. It wasn't cheap as the guide book lead us to believe, E50. To keep in budget Moira went out later to find a supermarket and managed to get a barbecued chicken and some salad which we ate in our room with a nice red wine. It was starting to get cold in the evening and the heater/air con either blew out very hot or freezing cold air. Moira ended up turning it off when the room got too hot and on again when it cooled. There was WiFi and we were able to listen to the BBC radio on the Internet.