Even with the heat, we wanted to cycle along another railway line, the Via Verde de la Jara which is in total 52 km long. It starts at Calera y Chozas, leading south over the Tajo via an enormous viaduct and up into the mountains on the other side, which are dominated by a savannah like landscape with oak trees, now golden-yellow grass and granite rocks formed through woolsack weathering.
We had started early – or as early we had managed – from an old station not too far from the Tajo: 39.819632, -4.995197 where we had spent the night. In the evening we could watch tiny bats leaving the old station through a little gap in the wall. One after the other came out, and we could stand in front of that exit, watching them fly past us.
We soon reached the river and the huge viaduct, whose only function is the cycling path nowadays, leading over it to follow the old train line south.
At the next village, there was a wagon left next to the abandoned train station. The shut down of that train line must have been hard for the villages in this remote area.
In the end, we didn’t do the whole Via Verde, which we hadn’t planned anyway. We turned around by km 29 or so and were happy when we had reached our starting point again.
After 4 hours on the bike in the heat, we were desperate for a nice place to relax near the water. On google earth I found the perfect spot. How that turned out on our next post!
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