Tempomanent

You’d think there should be an organisation in every country that takes suggestions for new words. The French have it, it’s called Académie Française and it’s pretty much in charge of the French language. If they say it’s in, then it’s in.

I’m only saying this as I saw something this morning that made realise there is a need for a new word. What I saw is depicted in the picture above, obviously the road was not needed, or not to be used anymore, and they temporarily put a bunch of soil to block it.

Then they forgot about it, as shown by the vegetation growth in the soil, and the temporary work sort of became permanent. There you go, tempomanent. We put in place a tempomanent solution when we do something with all intention to rework it into a something better and more, well, permanent, but then something happens and they remain as they are as the actual final whatever.

I think it should be a word, and I’m happy to give it to the world for free. By the way “tempomanente” would work in Italian too.

I left Béjar with some leisure. The place I stayed, despite the very low price, was nice and included breakfast, which is rather unusual for me these days.

I also spent some time lubing the chain and assembling my new map holder. All things I was doing as I expected to have a fairly short riding day.

The idea was to ride to Plasencia, 36 miles away, and have a rest in the afternoon as this would be my 5th day on the trot.

I quickly discovered that the my dad was right. When we spoke last night he said that sooner or later ascent would turn to descent. It did this morning and I did Béjar to Placentia in just over two hours. As I got there at roughly midday I did not feel right about it. The sun was shining, I was not tired at all and there would have been problems with checking in this early in the day in a place in town.

So, after some food, with a little patience, I loaded the guns and let them feed my appetite for road destruction. In other words, I put my iPod on and speeded along for some more cycling.

The way out of Placentia was quite steep and for a good half an hour I was averaging 4 MpH. This was rather worrying me as my new chosen destination was twenty six miles further along and, at this rate, I would have got there in the dark.

The other nuisance was the wind, how is it possible that it is always in your face when you’re tackling the more challenging bits of road?

Never mind, the mood improved when I got to the top of the hill, just before I got the best surprise of the day, the Parque Nacional de Monfragüe.

This was a great and a not so great thing at the same time. It was great that I got a surprise like this, and you will see the pictures below it was truly amazing.

On the other hand it made me wonder how many other extraordinary things I have cycled close too and failed to appreciate as I simply did not know they were there.

The park itself was a joy to ride through. the road was very exposed and the gradients, both on the way in and the way out, were not too extreme leaving time to look around without huffing and puffing.

To start with I almost decided not to take pictures as I thought there would have been better pictures already online for people to look at and, given the time of the day, the sun was in the wrong place for most of the more interesting shots.

As Went along though the majestic scenery forced me to start shooting and I will let the picture talk for themselves.

TIP: I have loaded a larger rendering of the four pictures below, to see them magnified click on them and then click the little button on the top right corner.