Yet another Via Verde

You might be imagining when you read about our Moho adventures in Spain that we are having wonderful weather, but I think you have to agree there is definitely something unusual about the weather right across Europe. Being April we expected the temperatures to be soaring and we could put our winter woolies away, but we have experienced so much wind in the last months often a cold wind, yesterday it was a hot and sunny 25° yet today the day started at 3° and has only risen to a chilly and very windy 12° with frequent showers including hailstones . Weird eh? What is going on? Back in the UK the weather has been much, much colder - so much for global warming!
Nevertheless, we get out on our bikes or walking almost every day and we love nothing better than a Via Verde for our cycling.

Which is why when we left Ubeda, we travelled to Alcaraz, where using Park4night, we found a car park right at the start of the Via Verde de Sierra de Alcaraz, we stayed three nights and in that time we had the car park to ourselves and very nice it was too, peaceful at night with another interesting historic town to wander around and explore close by.
Not everyone likes to stay in this kind of isolated car park on their own but it suits us just fine.

On the Via Verde we hardly saw a soul as the trail wound through the rather lush hills, sometimes literally as there were quite a few tunnels (with automatic lighting, which worked well most of the time, just occasionally there was a delay on the motion sensors and we found ourselves cycling in the pitch black - Scary!!)
It's a bit strange really (and the kind of thing you find all the time in Spain) but this wonderful Via Verde which stretches 74km from Albecete to Alcaraz has hardly any access points along its entire length, which probably accounts for why we saw so few people!

Chinchilla-that's us in the bottom left corner!

Our next stop was recommended to us by a fellow motorhomer, another hilltop town called Chinchilla. Here there is a massive Aire with room for up to 50 vans with all the usual facilities of water and waste disposal with an added bonus that it was really peaceful at night (except for the chiming of the church bells - not so good if you're a light sleeper!)
Once again exploring the town on foot left your calves aching from the many steps and steep hills, but it's always worth wandering around the winding narrow streets that have hardly changed in the last few centuries.