Yikes: getting stuck, the seaside and a near miss

Day 7 Monday 22^nd July

Today has been quite a day. Sixty miles, 2 and a half hours riding, down to seaside town Ribadesella and back. That sounds very simple, and my time sitting by the harbour on a bench in the shade was lovely, eating custard donuts bought from the supermarket there. On the way there and back was not so much fun.

On the way there, determined not to get lost I ended up following the GPS’s mad instructions – I’ve just looked at the track and it is one large ragged circle with no apparent sense to it.

There is an air of mystery to the hotel this evening. It is an old, very old manor house, with deeply worn stone steps and heavy doorways. Painted ochre on the outside. There is a main door, made of dark oak, at the front and another from the bar to the terrace at the back – and finally a service entry at the side. But I have just finished a slow glass of wine outside on the terrace, reading, and now all the doors are locked and I can’t get back in. Earlier I saw three women walking around the outside, some way off. I could hear that they were not speaking Spanish. They all had exactly identical figures. I walk all the way round the building. I look down the well.

And on the way back from my trip to the coast, I was sure I knew the way. I wrote the name of the turn off from the main road in pencil on the blue sea part of the map in my tank bag. But I missed it. So I took the next turning and knew where I was going, over the level crossing, past the station. But then somehow I was lost again and the GPS was pointing me in the completely wrong direction. Why does it do that? So I just stopped and turned the bike around to retrace my steps. Eventually I saw the signpost toward the hotel and followed it, still focussed on the frustration and need to find the right route. And then from around a corner, in a small lane with tall vegetation on both sides comes a car. And I am on the wrong side of the road. We are neither of us moving very fast but we are heading toward each other. There is not time to turn the bars. But there is time to move the bike over with my legs and we just miss probably by 6-8 inches. As I sail on I can see that the car has come to a halt right up against the tall grass. With my last glimpse in the mirror I can see it start to move off. This was a near miss.

On the way out this morning I followed the GPS instructions to go down the branching spider-web of smaller and smaller tracks, always on the incline and mostly through farms. But eventually, there comes a point where carrying on up a tight hairpin up a steep track into nowhere is not possible. I stop and there is a few feet of grassy track but it is sloping downward and each time I try to stop the bike and put down the stand we roll forward and I nearly drop it two or three times. Eventually I work out the best strategy and end up with the panniers jammed up against the side of a stone building then drag it forward enough to climb back on, start up the engine and make the turn, back over the track and eventually onto tarmac. Never again. I’ve decided that big bikes and small tracks do not mix well.

I just have to get out of here in the morning – without getting lost. Its 3 miles to the main road and a petrol station as the fist step of my rather mammoth 450k ride eastwards tomorrow.

Leaving Galicia, arriving at Palacio de Cutre

Sunday 21^st July

Today started nicely with a fond farewell from my hosts at Casa Camino. (Their kitchen was amazing I thought). Once wobbling down the stony drive, I was off, not very confident that the GPS would take me directly down to the main road after its confusions on the way there and my host’s disparaging remarks about Garmin and Spain (see later near disaster). But soon enough I was on the motorway travelling approximately east. I was trying to remember, as I rode, my previous visit, and in fact other early expeditions to Europe. I could not quite get back in touch with them but I had a sense that my concerns and focuses while travelling had shifted. But this morning, with a good road, very little other traffic and courtesy of cruise control the first hour or so travelling was very relaxed. My equanimity gradually unravelled though. First, it started to drizzle and the temperature dropped, then I discovered that the signs indicating what in the UK would be a motorway service station, are in fact pointing to scratchy old petrol stations and two or three miles off the motorway in a forlorn town. But being fuelled up is a good feeling and, via one blocked off re-entry to the motorway, and much riding in drizzle behind slow moving cars, I was back up to speed, but getting damper and needing to find somewhere to re-establish homeostasis in the face of the growing pressures of the body and two cups of coffee, and three glasses of orange juice at breakfast. So the next phase of the journey was not as relaxed at it could have been. I eventually stopped at a service station – a rare cafeteria by the motorway. These places are definitely not the shiny chains that you encounter in the UK, but places with a few tables and a long bar, with some recently made food on top. I ordered café au lait and tortilla then headed off. All going reasonably well from the motorway to an A road but still not confident that the GPS would take me where I wanted to go, along the route that I expected. Ok, it said, turn right. I obeyed. Turn left to join the – number of the road I had just been on – and then the tarmac road turned into a woodland stony track plunging downwards, then into a muddy puddle, still with the GPS urging me on. But when the track curved off steeply down to the right I decided to cut my losses and turn the bike on what looked like the last bit of disused tarmac that remained from some ages old road – a godsend as to turn the fully laden bike on a narrow track running down hill would have been a huge challenge. Hopefully all this is captured on helmet cam.

But back we went this time through the mud without slowing down or skidding and another 4k down the road before turning off to the left, over a level crossing, down narrow twisty lanes. I have grown nervous about the entrance to rural hotels and campsites and the Palacio is no exception. It has a steep drive made of irregular cobbles. I stopped to gauge the challenge then went for it, going rather faster than I wanted to but making it up without dropping the bike – the vision of which always quickly flashes unhelpfully into my mind.

The Palacio is not what I imagined, especially after three days of rural simplicity and newly refurbed buildings. This is a rather swanky hotel/restaurant/wedding reception type place with floral wallpaper and floral coverings on everything possible, doyleys, antique dolls, rocking horses and cots on every landing. The staff that I have come across, though, seem friendly and helpful, telling me that the restaurant is closed on Sundays but offering a snack instead. In fact, now that I have gone down and been served by them a generous platter of cheese and meat, with two glasses of unusual white wine, their hospitality has won me over. I talked with one of the owners afterwards for quite a while about her daughter who is studying at Greenwich University. There was a wedding here last night and the last guests were driving off in Mercedes as I arrived and now workmen are dismantling the base of the marquee down on the lawn – using my favourite noisy power tool to undo the hundreds of screws.

My room is under the roof, with an old-fashioned bathroom suite and it required some window-opening to get a breeze into the musty atmosphere. So I made it with the usual minor dramas and high anxieties – leading to the usual sense of exhaustion. But the wifi seems strong here which is a real treat. I have to decide how to spend tomorrow and the squaring up to the challenge of riding up that dreaded drive if I ride out somewhere.

The GPS tells me that I spent four hours riding a total of 213 miles.

Day 6 Walking (part of) the Camino Primitivo

Day 6 Saturday 20^th July

I am moving into a different headspace. Its something about the discussions I have had with people here, including the hosts who have built up a lot of historical knowledge about the Camino walk and in particular this apparently lesser walked primitivo – which this hotel is sited on. And something about spending three hours today walking on the Camino route, with the smell of cow shit and eucalyptus, farmyard buildings, sleepy kittens lying in the middle of the warm road and the varied greetings of walkers – proper walkers. One group was boisterous, one or two extremely taciturn, most friendly.

I came back at about 2 and ate pistachios and Brie washed down with a beer I picked up a few days back. Since then I have been catching up, and trying to tell the GPS exactly where I need to go tomorrow. It seems there are two separate locations available – and obviously only one of them is right. Even the GPS coordinates point to what looks like the wrong location. It will be about 3 and a half hours travelling, and mostly on main roads but perhaps on a Sunday the roads are (even) quieter. Time seems to have slowed down since I have been here. I can’t believe that I still have two more hotels to travel to and experience. Tomorrow’s is fairly near the coast to the north west of the Picos and the last, in a way the most intriguing, is close to the Bardenas Reales dessert which I have only seen in photographs.

Day 5 Trip to Santiago de Compostela – and back

Day 5 Friday 19th July
I slept poorly last night which surprised me as the day’s riding – as well as the high anxiety of arrival was exhausting – and sleeping conditions were perfect – dark and silent (unlike London).

This is a small, intimate place, a beautifully restored old stone building with a fairly newly planted garden – some familiars like fig trees and olive trees. A young American couple are also here who are committed hikers. They leave today. Its misty this morning and I am restless unsure whether to hang about here and read, to go for a gentle walk or to get on the bike, brave the exit and steep re-entrance and take a quick blast down to Santiago de Compostela. I noticed that there is a Galician gin and I’d like to try to find some to bring home. So its either today or tomorrow to do that as on the third day – Sunday – I ride back in an easterly direction to hotel number 3, just north of the Picos.

Today I rode to Santiago de Compostela, mostly a pleasant ride but with some lost-getting due to the GPS mistaking a dusty old track for the trunk road that had been converted to a brand new motorway. As ever, taking a motorcycle into a big city where parking is difficult is not an enjoyable experience. In fact following a hastily entered location – the Cathedral – into the GPS I found myself riding up a steep cobbled lane to the front of the church surrounded by a sea of tourists feeling that my large motorcycle was rather out of place. So a hasty U-turn and I headed off back down the hill and out of the city via a stop at air conditioned Lidl. Returning here involved a similar ride to yesterday down a bewildering labyrinth of narrowing lanes, often covered with cow shit and gravel, between ancient buildings and beside stunning small churches made of pitted and dissolving stone and strange walled graveyards. Finally, my entrance up the steep gravel footpath went successfully. The garden here is beautiful. I can see it has been planned and planted maybe five years ago. With my new slight awareness, I actually know the names of some plants and trees – but not the beautiful pink flowering bush (see previous post) that greets you as you arrive at the top of the drive.

This evening two German walkers have arrived and we engaged in conversation sitting outside with very welcome early evening drinks – in impeccable English of course and they even spoke to each other in English in my company. They were dry and very funny (he told me that he had lived in a squat in the centre of London in the 1980s). Now that’s cosmopolitan. With the Americans last night who, apart from a brief (one word) greeting, were locked into their own private (self-concerned) conversation (sitting feet away from me), I was starting to ask myself – is it me? But people are so different.
After another dinner, I spent some time sitting on a stone bench on the terraced garden overlooking the drive and facing the sun, warm on my face, as it sinks slowly behind the hill. At 9pm, the sky is still a pure blue.
Tomorrow I will give myself a day off the bike in the sunshine and shade and perhaps walk back to the small church that I rode past this afternoon.

Riding West to Casa Camino Turismo Rural (and getting lost in the countryside)

It’s another lovely clear cool sunny morning and I’ve breakfasted and worked out that the journey to the next hotel, Casa Camino Turismo Rural (honestly, it gets great reviews) is between 3 and 4 hours away, in a westerly direction, mostly on main roads with no obvious nicer routes. I can hear the wheels of the room cleaners’ trolley in the corridor outside so will start to pack up (the food and drink in my fridge) and pack up the bike before it gets too warm.

I’m here at Casa Camino Turismo Rural. It took 4 hours and 10 minutes of riding to get here.

The most enjoyable parts of the journey were when I found the N120 going west out of Carrion. The vista was golden. Even the tarmac was orange and weathered. A little way from the road is a gravel footpath where pilgrims walking on the Camino were to be seen, alone, in pairs or in small groups, typically with backpacks, sunhats and a walking staff, but good things come to an end and it was kind of inevitable to join the motorway for this long journey west. I stopped at a bleak service station and ordered café au lait with the only edible thing on view – a chocolate covered doughnut (actually pretty tasty) – but got served with a slice of tortilla which (all for around €2) I ate greedily sitting uncomfortably on a bar stool, feeling a bit uncomfortable. Was there a headwind or are my earplugs starting to shrink? The wind noise was tiring. In fact the whole journey ended up tiring with over four hours of riding. The end was also the nightmare scenario – the GPS taking me first off the motorway, and then onto progressively smaller and more isolated roads and track and when it proudly announced ‘arriving at destination on left’ there was nothing to be seen – just a field. Google maps came to my aid and I drove around a large circle of lanes past two tractors and just overshot the steep gravel entrance to this hotel. Getting up it involved some anxious and high revving turns and wobbly blast up to the top (all captured embarrassingly on helmet cam where it looks so easy to just go – which is what I didn’t). And while I was searching on my phone I could see I had missed a phone call of something unexpected to deal with from home. So my arrival was a bundle of anxiety.

But I am in my room now, welcomed by a nice Brit who makes this feel like being personally welcomed into his home (which I suppose it is), with an offer ‘to eat with us’ meaning with the pilgrims and other guests who frequent this hotel (there were two young American walkers). It will be interesting to see who turns up at dinner and whether there will be conversation (there wasn’t). I was thinking, on watching the walkers this morning, that many do this walk for deeply personal reasons, not seldom to do with loss – expected and unexpected – as my friend David pointed out quite a few years ago. In fact seeing them brought tears to my eyes as I rode.

Riding the Picos again: Day 3 Weds 17th July

(edited vids to come – I promise)

Last night I loaded two trips up to the Picos and back again, onto the GPS. Today I rode those routes, 229 miles, 6 ½ hours of riding. The trip starts out with about 30k of dead straight road, but it is rather beautiful, in a golden landscape and with almost no other traffic. You see your destination, the Picos de Europe in the distance that gets ever closer until you are winding up ever tighter bends, then round a stunning turquoise lake on your left at Riano. But a twist takes you from bright sunshine into low cloud and the temperature falls to about 15 degrees, then there is green again and you are in Cangas de Onis. That’s where I fill up with petrol in a slightly grumpy petrol station and afterwards park up by the road by a car wash and munch my baguette and cheese and speak to H on the phone about the death of a friend of a friend.

So I am heading into the second, longer route that I plotted, on this road AS-114 east to Panes, then a turn to the right, south towards ever-busy Potes, then after missing my turn in the town centre, and turning round, a fork off to the left and back into the mountains. Lots more turns, most of them easy in 3^rd or 4^th gear but one or two in 1^st gear including a famous lookout that I remember riding through on my last trip in 2013 only from the other direction – but it was covered in low cloud then too and nothing was apparent to be looked at apart from the statue of the animal – what was it? A giant hare? After this point the road surface gets worse and big trucks full of gravel are blocking one lane. The new stretches of tarmac, never more than a mile, are lovely to ride on though without centre lines which are important on these twisty roads where vans and cars often come toward you taking up more than their own lane. Eventually I get down to flat ground at Guardo, tired from that type of riding, and really relish the long straight back to where I am staying.

I will post some edited footage from the helmet cam soon.

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