We planned a lunch in one of the restaurants in Madrigal de la Vera. First, however, we needed some shopping. There is a Dia supermarket in Madrigal which is about 1 mile/1.5 km distant. We decided to use Shanks’s Pony armed with our two rucksacks. Just outside our campsite there is a rather splendid Roman bridge which we had to turn just in front of.
Get a move on, we need to get into town. Since the weather was quite pleasant, around 24°C, rather than sit around having lunch with fresh food warming up, we decided to bring our purchases back and then return for lunch. Besides, we’d have been too early.
For the return trip to town and lunch, having walked there and back already, we thought we’d use our bikes. I took the rain cover off the bike carrier only to have my heart sink; the front tyre of my bike was once again doing its best to emulate a pancake. It was completely flat. How on earth had that happened?
There was nothing for it; we walked back into town.
Beside the side road was a sort of drainage ditch, quite narrow, rather like a flush. This is the kind of habitat favoured by Keeled Skimmers (Orthetrum coerulescens) and sure enough there were a couple of males flying over it and settling on the vegetation. I also saw one that looked a little different and the light stripe on the thorax side, the “epaulet”, identified this as another skimmer, the Epaulet Skimmer (Orthetrum chrysostigma). This was the first decent dragonfly action of the trip but I wasn’t prepared so these are just phone shots.
Once in town [again] we started the search for an appealing restaurant. It was now around 13:15 and most of the restaurants were still empty. Whilst I don’t like them crowded, empty restaurants raise question marks. One called the Alhambra had a few signs of life and some items of interest on the menu so in we went. We ordered alcachofas con jamon [artichokes with ham], gambons a la plancha [grilled prawns] and a salad. The prawns were very messy and quite yummy. Between about 14:00 and 15:00 the place got relatively busy. I know the Spanish eat their evening meal late but they clearly also eat lunch late, too. Makes sense, I suppose.
Fun over, I was going to have to walk back, yet again, and investigate my accursed front wheel.
I took the wheel out. The weird thing about the tyres on my bike is that they pretty much fall off the rim; I’ve never had a bicycle tyre so easy to remove – no need for tyre levers at all. The converse is that when you inflate the inner tube withing the tyre it tends to push it off the rim in any number of places making assembly difficult. It had made we wonder if the tyre was actually too big.
I took the tube out and found a large hole very near to the valve. In the corresponding position on the wheel, the rim tape which lines the wheel’s spoke locations had a similar large hole. I don’t know how it had happened; possibly the exploding inner tube had blown this hole in the rim tape? Now at least I understood this puncture – putting 50psi in the tube had pushed the inner tube into the rim hole and it had failed again.
I used some gaffer tape to cover the rim tape hole.
Out came the puncture repair kits; yes, I have two. I first tried a self-adhesive patch but clearly picked the wrong one; when I installed the “repaired” tube and inflated it, air blew through the patch.
Now I couldn’t easily remove the failed patch so I used an old-fashioned glue-based patch from the other repair attempting to to patch the patch. That got me to about 7psi and then the patch on the patch released some air.
Now I resorted to a penknife to scrape the first patch off the inner tube. Looked OK. I found my largest old-fashioned glue patch – the hole was about 3mm across and circular but with a flap – and tried a third time.
I didn’t get much further before that, too failed. I need another new inner tube and life is becoming stressful.
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