12. Scopa, Café-Culture, and the Terrible Fate of Murcian Chickens.

25.01.24 – 30.01.24 : Valencia – Granada

Time in Tangier moves at a different pace. Excuse my lateness. Perhaps this can serve as some lunchtime Monday reading.

Do you remember this idea of calibration? Well I’d say Doug and I found true synchronicity in our time together. At the heart of this lay a game. Games are a crucial element of shared time on the road. With the sun setting at 7pm, the evenings can stretch without some good old fashioned entertainment. With Joe, this was Bananagrams. Think: Solo Speed Scrabble. He’s wordy, you see. In fact Bananagrams was a very last minute addition to the adventure set-up (and not a common one, I’d bet). Riding out of London with an entourage of encouraging friends and family, I suddenly realised I’d forgotten to pick the set up from Sainsbury’s, forcing the whole caravan to u-turn. Slow progress from the off. 

Now Bananagrams, as good a game as it is, didn’t make the cut for Phase 2. When you’re weighing up – quite literally – a potentially life-saving water filter vs half a kilo of lettered tiles in a novelty banana-shaped bag, the banana’s prospects suddenly don’t look so good. So, game nights were a thing of the past… or so I thought. Producing a small deck of cards on the first night, Doug introduced me to Scopa. One of the three national card games of Italy, Scopa is a lively game of equal parts skill and chance, played with an ornate deck of 40 cards. There are numerical cards up to seven and three face cards, across four suits: Clubs, Cups, Swords and Coins (given Doug’s is a Neapolitan rather than a Milanese deck). It’s a game reserved for sun-soaked languor, often played by retirees outside cafes at what might once have been productive times of day. We’ve devoted a mildly alarming amount of time to Scopa and it’s formed an essential part of our daily routine. 

For those interested, the daily routine goes something like this: 

9pm (The Night Before): Discuss grand plans for an early rise to make sure we get some distance under our belt early in the day. Debate the alarm. Settle on 7am, then set it for 6.45.

6.45am: Alarm goes off. Open one eye, make sure the other person is still horizontal. Snooze the alarm immediately, before either of you can wake up too much. After all, it’s not even light yet.

8am: Open one eye again, and then the other. The unmistakable glow of dawn seeps through the tent fabric. Oh alright then. 

8.15am: Finally pluck up the courage to escape your warm, down cocoon and face the morning freeze. (Never before have I experienced such a temperature spread. Nights regularly dip below freezing. Mornings on the bike are layered to say the least. Like clockwork, at 11am the sun cranks up the UVs and the slow-roast begins. Temperatures climb almost immediately to the mid-20s.)

10am: Mount the bikes. Consider what element of packing up camp could possibly have taken nearly two hours. Vow to stop faffing. 

11am: Mandatory shedding of layers. Pace-wise: closer to a strip-search than a strip-tease.

12pm-ish: Coffee, or vermouth – depending which side of midday. Our first round of Scopa.

3pm: Tapas. Lots of it. Our main meal of the day. Ice-cold Coca-Cola and vermouth. Maybe a caña if the situation permits. Several more rounds of Scopa.

6.30pm: Stop and pitch camp. Utilitarian dinner: tinned fish, a cucumber and unheated microwave grains. Dollop of hummus if we’re lucky. 

7pm: Retire to the tent. Yet more rounds of Scopa (livelier than usual: the day’s tournament depends on it).

8.30pm: Sudden anxiety that our unofficial campsite has been discovered thanks to our noisy whoops of excitement and sighs of despair. Scopa scuppered.  

9pm: Repeat. 

Thanks to our obsession with Scopa, we’ve become well acquainted with Spanish café-culture. The full Scopa experience requires plazas, plastic chairs and a procession of acrid espressos. Our coastal route up to Valencia was peppered with tourist towns. They were often garish and lifeless, deserted in the low season but for a few expat stragglers. We were glad to shrug them off as our route diverted inland, certain we were entering a region far from the tendrilous reach of our sun-seeking compatriots, closer to the provincial café-culture we needed to live out our Scopa fantasies.

A typical sight. A fresh deal and an even fresher vermouth.

In the unassuming town of Caudete, a bright yellow hangar housing a hodgepodge of bric-a-brac caught our eye. Too intrigued to leave it uninvestigated, we pulled over hoping to find a quintessentially local hangout to play our morning round. Instead we were greeted by a truly bizarre sight. Bolted on to the gloomy warehouse was an all-English, bulldog-on-a-leash, God-save-the-Queen greasy spoon. Expat central.

 Like moths to a flame, it seemed all the Brits in the surrounding area gathered here on Saturday mornings for a slap-up breakfast in the sun. They were a tonic. Total characters, all of them. We spent a very happy hour chatting away to our new friends between mouthfuls of black pudding (and hands of Scopa of course – we weren’t too proud to hold out for somewhere more fitting). One of them – a lorry driver who’d traded right for left-hand drive – took great pleasure in telling the gathered group about his first breakfast of the morning, enjoyed on the road: two packets of Maltesers and a naughty coffee (as we discovered: a cappuccino with a double espresso thrown in for good measure). Chiming in, a charming Scottish woman admitted that despite her best efforts to avoid such temptation during the day, give me a box of Ferrero Rochers at night and I’m a goner! All in all, it was time well spent. Sadly the same can’t be said for the money. The €10 fry-up and watery coffee sat in rather stark contrast to the similarly priced Menu del Dia we’d enjoyed the day before; a beer, three delicious courses, and coffee to finish. The full-English is not one of our finer exports. 

We didn’t have to wait long to find the cafe we’d been dreaming of. The next morning – a Sunday – we rolled into Calasparra praying that somewhere might be open for coffee. Our hopes weren’t high. So far, Spain had been decidedly non-secular on the subject of Sundays. Saying that, if Spanish business’ already incoherent opening hours are anything to go by, religion might merely have been an excuse to shut up shop for a day. But, to our surprise, our prayers were answered; several blasphemous bars were already bustling away at 10am. It seems the religious residents of Calasparra had given up the ghost (and the other two). 

We set up shop and Doug dealt a hand while I went in to order. Bar Los Zagales was a hive of activity. Barmen took orders like bookies taking bets. Saucers were slid halfway along the counter to be loaded up with sugar and a spoon, and on again to meet their cups. As a finishing touch, bottles of hard liquor appeared and the coffees were fortified. Coins littered the bar, occasionally scooped from the edge by a passing barman and thrown, uncounted, into an open till. I pity their accountant. 

Some typical Café action… with notably less booze than in Calasparra, mind.

Despite the familiar cadence of our days, we’ve appreciated some variation from the changing landscape. We covered 500 kilometres from Valencia to Granada. Our route began by stitching together the lattice of raised access roads that decussate the paddy fields of La Albufera. From here, groves of all varieties – Orange, Lemon, Olive and Almond – became commonplace. Often planted on platforms carved into the hillside, they offered good cover for a stealthy pitch and tilled land that didn’t require a sledgehammer to drive a peg into.

As we left the provincial cultivation of Valencia, we found ourselves entering the realm of intensive agriculture that Murcia is known for. One night, pushing our pitching until dusk, we found ourselves in what can only be described as the chicken-farming-capital of Spain. Intensely industrial operations, these gigantic warehouses even came complete with sinister signage. No Recording Under Any Circumstances. Or, at least, that was our rough translation of a camera with a red line through it. Sure that such signage portended a prowling private security outfit, we waited until dark to make camp, choosing what we thought was a secluded spot beside a quiet country lane. In the middle of one of our livelier Scopa rounds, we heard a voice, the creak of a gate, the unmistakable growl of an unfriendly dog. Headlamps were extinguished and we sat, alert, in the darkness. Luckily the sounds moved no closer, but we aborted the game nonetheless. 

At 6am we were rudely awoken by the pneumatic hiss of lorry brakes, seemingly mere feet from the tent. So began a steady train of vehicular traffic on the roads surrounding our camp. In the dusk of the previous evening, we’d unwittingly pitched ourselves in the middle of a tight triangle of roads that acted as the main access point for one of Murcia’s largest chicken farms. With every rumble of an approaching truck, we braced ourselves to be discovered. An alarming number came and went, all loaded, we assumed, with ill-fated poultry headed for the block. The clamour from this cortège of lorries was occasionally punctuated by jovial whoops and cries coming from the farm. We decided this was likely the sound of one particularly sadistic employee celebrating the imminent demise of each truckload of livestock as it left.

We packed up camp more briskly than usual – sped up by our mounting sense of unease – and hit the road at first light. Unsurprisingly, this cursed stretch of countryside served up the only two flats of our trip. As an asphalt descent rapidly disintegrated to gravel, Doug’s road tires gave out. With punctures patched, we proceeded at a more pedestrian pace. This was a problem. Up ahead, a pack of farmyard dogs patrolled their territory. As we approached, growls gave way to snarls, which erupted into barks. Too late, we noticed: no leashes. But the road was still little more than a track, and Doug’s rubber was at its limit. Thankfully, as we rounded the corner, the asphalt resumed and we were able to pick up speed. Not enough, though. The pack leapt into action and flanked us. The leader of the pack, a particularly brutal looking bull-terrier with blood-spattered jowls, painted a gory picture of the fate befalling any chicken who tries their luck beyond the coop – or any cyclist that’s caught skulking in the woods after dark. Dodging the pack one by one, we sped off, hearts hammering.

Credit where credit’s due; Doug’s Gatorskins took a beating and more than held their own. This was their only moment of weakness…

Thanks to a tiresome headwind, it was well after 4pm by the time we reached Baza, our intended lunch stop for the day. By that time, most establishments had closed their kitchens, only to reopen them at 8pm for dinner. In a twisted turn of fate, only one place took pity on us, conceding a single dish from their menu: a whole rotisserie chicken. Exchanging glances, we hesitantly accepted. Needs must. 

We made it to Granada – the home of The Alhambra, as you now know – a day later. During our days of welcome rest, we sat down one evening to watch a film. Idly scrolling Netflix’ library we settled on Chicken Run, a nostalgic and comfortable choice. Only afterwards, we registered the significance of our decision. Clearly, our weighty conscience yearned for a story where the chickens were the ultimate winner.