Day 17: Salamanca to Plasencia. 84 miles. 4345 feet of climbing.

We got a lucky break and some heads up work from Jesse and Michelle as we found a place to eat outside of Salamanca.

It might not look like much, but this meal (bread and coffee off-screen) saved us this morning.

Today was one of those days when we knew we were in for a challenging time.  It was going to be a long day.  It was going to be a hot day.  And we were not going to follow our normal morning routine.  Being in Spain has required us to change our usual morning and evening schedules.  Cafes and restaurants don't open early for breakfast.  And they don't start serving dinner until at least 8pm.

The long empty road.  We saw more
hikers than we did cars on this road.

This morning, Jesse and I were up early, so we walked around the medieval section of Salamanca at 7 am, reconnoitering for any place that might be serving breakfast, as our hotel did not have a kitchen (probably the only one on this entire trip).  Eventually, we realized that our search would prove fruitless, so we all decided to take our chances and ride out of town, hoping that we'd find a place along the route later this morning.

As luck, and some ingenuity from Jesse and Michelle, we found a bar/cafe about five miles out of town that agreed to serve us breakfast.  The husband immediately started making coffees for our group while some of his early morning usual customers looked on in amazement.  While he was tending bar, his wife was cooking us up fresh eggs, jamon and bread.  A nice meal was not had by us during this trip.

The challenges of the day continued with a road closure out in the middle of nowhere that allowed our bikes through but caused Jesse to do a 60-mile detour before catching up with us.

The Spanish version of the signs
I saw earlier in France.

We had a couple of major mountain climbs today that speak for themselves.  It was slow going, especially as no one was packing a lot of fuel today to draw upon (as good as our breakfast was, it was much less than we'd normally eat).  On top of that, today we really started to feel the heat of central Spain.  And the headwinds during the last 10 miles didn't help much.  The one special treat of the day was the nearly 17 miles of downhill cruising after the last mountain climb.

Looking back on the last mountain
climb of the day.

Our late start and our late finishes meant we had less time before dinner than was usual.  But, owing to the fact that most restaurants in our neighborhood were not opening until 8:30 or 9:00 pm (some chefs chose to watch the local bullfights, thereby delaying their normal opening times), we chose to eat at our hotel.  That turned out to be a great choice as we had some much needed healthy eating while still enjoying local cuisine.

I've shown you these before.  A church steeple with a huge bird's nest.
It turns out many churches in the Salamanca area encourage these
as breeding grounds for giant white storks.

Somewhere in the middle of our ride today, we ran across this giant park with multiple granite statues and displays.  Turns out, there's a huge granite quarry down the road.  These playful displays (we all called this one Stonehenge) are scattered across a 20-acre site.