The Mediterranean Coast of Almeria

We awoke to a beautiful calm day and rode into Almeria, the only big city on the transandalus route. Navigated to the 3 bike shops but only one had a workshop. We left our bikes, found an enormous supermarket to stock up then picked the bikes up at 2 pm. New crank for my bike, bottom brackets, chains, clusters, cables etc, I think we have now replaced most moveable parts on both bikes! A nice small city to look around. The sea breeze was more of a gale as we made our way back to the campground. Just 25km ridden, a pretty good rest day.
Aguadulcia to San Jose - 51km
From Almeria there was a paved bike path for about 25 km along the coast, superb! Then a sandy stretch to Cabo de Gata, lots of empty apartments and hotels waiting for summer visitors. We are now on the most eastern southern tip of Spain. The car road ran out here and we headed up to a lighthouse then down a rocky trail which we had to take slowly finally passing beaches and coves to reach what used to be the fishing village of San Jose but is now more touristy. Found the only campground, we are enjoying the camping, while the weather is great. It is lovely sitting out in the evenings and we can sleep 10 hours a night on our air beds! They cost between 10 and 18 euro, most about 15 and the facilities have been really good.
San Jose to Carboneras 53 km
A bit of pushing our bikes up an unrideable section first thing, it took both of us on each bike but then onto a hiking trail and fantastic views around the coast, worth the effort. Then inland passed abondoned goldmines and a quite rocky hard to ride track that really took it out of us. Then a nice fast 8 km on tarmac to Agua Amarga, a gorgeous small village but accommodation was way out of our budget so we rode another 9 km to Carboneras, a much bigger place but off the route, arriving at 6.30 pm exhausted. Found a great little hostal/hotel with a lovely host who gave us a room with a balcony looking over the sea for 35 euro. Perfect! So good we decided to stay another day and leave our bikes parked in the garage. We wandered around, along the beach,  I waded in but the water was really cold. We visited all three supermarkets, ate and drank lots.