Trip to Northern Spain (photos and vids coming later)

On the way to Bilbao Day 1. 15th july 2019

Leaving London on the A3 is getting familiar now, Elephant and Castle then Kennington Park Road (they seem so far away now and unfamiliar), Clapham, the surprise that Wandsworth is so far west, then Kingston bypass then speedy dual carriageway, the possible delays at Guildford, then the surprisingly nice scenery before Peterloo and finally the efficient M road that takes you right down to the roundabout entrance to the ferry port, past the hotel I stayed in many years ago before an early sailing.

On my arrival at the port a traffic steward warned me that the sailing was delayed but I got in the queue shortly followed by an affable Danish couple riding a BMW 1150RT, who, amongst other things recommended Poland as a beautiful and inexpensive biking destination – they go to get their teeth done there. The sun is shining and the temperature is in thelow to mid twenties.

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In front of me was an Englishman, living in Spain riding a Harley, with a kind of sub-hells angels jacket. He told me how it is always him who gets stopped and searched at security. Then a middle-aged couple from Manchester riding a diminutive and immaculate white scooter with designer suitcases strapped fore and aft. She is wearing a pink hoodie and matching shorts. He is similarly dressed in hoodie and completely unprotective gear. They are very funny. We all spend many hours conversing – because the delay seems to expand until the sun has gone down and it is dark. In the security shed we actually have to open ‘one bag’ each that a woman searches through with a torch, neglecting any other spaces. Then we are lined up under the glowing late evening sky to watch seemingly endless trucks, cars and motorcycles pour off the delayed and just docked boat that we need to board. This is very tiring and I am hungry by this time. I tried walking around, sitting on a step, leaning on the bike but there is no avoiding the fact that this is rather miserable.

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Finally, unexpectedly, we get waved on at 11 o’clock and about 40 motorcycle engines fire into life. Up the ramp onto the boat and then, one by one, down a steep ramp to the very bottom of the boat where we will have to all turn around when we leave and ride back up the steep ramp into the Spanish sunshine. I finally get to my cabin after going up then down then up again, hot and hungry and needing to plug everything in to get charged up. I drag out and bite into my Neal’s dairy wholemeal baguette and open my bottle of vinho verde, no longer chilled but cool enough and with its welcoming gentle fizz.

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By this time it is 11.30. Very many cabin announcements follow, including a description of how to get into a life jacket where every phrase is repeated twice to give you time to think about it. Finally I climb into bed well after midnight and see I have drunk nearly the whole bottle of wine.

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I woke up, slowly, to see that it was 8.30. We would stop at Roscoff at 9 to change crew. Not wanting to miss the sight of land, I made for the bar here for a (not very great) coffee and also not that fresh croissants then spend an hour swapping from sunny side (warm) to port side (better view but chilly) decks to see the crew leave in dribs and drabs pulling suitcases on wheels until the boat pulled out to sea.

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So, before we get off tomorrow morning, I need to work out, using my GPS and paper maps, an enjoyable route to my first hotel.

Later. My alarm is set for 6.45 (Spanish time). It took about two frustrating hours to work out how to load a trip into my GPS but with any luck I have an almost non-motorway route planned to my first hotel – which looks a little gem in the middle of a quite un inspiring town to the west of Burgos, with one or two interesting monasteries to visit en route. Before the struggle and after my petit dejeuner I lay on the bed here and dozed at first on top and eventually underneath the duvet where I fell asleep. I must have been tired. Today I wondered around the boat and started reading H is for Hawk. It is a brilliant start and because you know in advance that it is about loss its opening, mentioning the dismembered bodies of baby birds that never hatched, is harrowing. It will not be a book that takes weeks to read. Luckily I have packed another novel. I wonder what balance of riding and non-riding I will find on this trip.

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The final journey home: Portsmouth to Cambridge via the ill-fated M25

Just for completeness, here are the last stages of the journey home, to be fleshed out later:
I slept poorly on the boat,
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in fact I slept badly for the whole trip! Gathering down on the very lowest deck as the boat came in to Portsmouth was a nice opportunity to chat to the others with bikes.
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They were a pleasantly friendly and interesting group which restored my positive feelings towards bikers. There were at least 4 other 1200gs bikes there including the new water cooled model which its owner was very pleased with though the electric suspension turfed him off the bike when his pillion got off for the first time, he said. We made it up the very steep ramp and then I sped out of the port and up onto the motorway and up the A3 to the M25 at a really good pace. The bike’s fuel gauge has not been its strongest feature and it is on its third one since I’ve owned it. Telling me I had 66 miles left, then 68 then 72 miles should have made me stop for petrol but I thought I could make the next stop apparently 25 miles away. But of course I ground to a halt by the exit to the M40 and had to be rescued and re-fuelled by the RAC – the first time I have called them out.
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I also learnt that 40 minutes of leaving the ignition on to keep the hazard lights flashing drains the battery to a point where it needs an on-hand RAC person’s charger to get the engine going.

When riding in the rain in Spain, water leaked into the tiny hole in the GPS screen (caused by me dropping it a couple of years back). So the route only starts from after I filled up with petrol near Uxbridge and is inaccurate.
Coming home at EveryTrail

Eventually, after stopping for something to eat at South Mimms on the A1 – which seems more like a business meeting centre than a motorway service station, I got home by 4pm.

Home after bike trip
I have to say I was exhausted – and still am. But It was a successful trip and most of the lessons I learnt from my last trip to Sweden I was able to put in to practice.

mileage

Day 1 Home to Portsmouth and on the ship

After an hour contacting the electricity board (its new incarnation) and ordering sinks, I squeezed my bags into Bertha’s panniers, filled up the oil and the vodka bottles strapped on the back and prepared to set sail. Unfortunately an earlier event with my GPS meant that it had forgotten its relationship with my earphones so I had to unmount and retreat indoors to the instructions and start afresh and fiddle about as I rode out of Cambridge before I could hear any directions.
Its 133 miles from home to the Brittany Ferries terminal in Portsmouth. There was little traffic on the road from Cambridge to the A1 but the M25 was queuing for much of the time I was on it, thankfully turning off for the A3, leaving another jam behind, to find my Little Chef I remember from my last trip, now renovated with smart red upholstery but still serving tea and scones for less than £5. Another stop for petrol and by the time I arrived at the terminal I was just waved through and up onto the boat without even a chance to stop and remove my super efficient earplugs so had no idea what anyone was telling me. Luckily everyone is well trained in exaggerated arm movements and I squeezed up about an inch behind another BMW or similar adventure bike with ABR magazine stickers and hard core luggage. Up on deck, a gnarled and bearded Spanish biker attempted to engage me in banter as we gazed down on the last cars and trucks driving on below. I realised – we both realised – that there is a great gulf between Spanish and English. I think he asked me some questions about my trip but I gazed at him completely uncomprehending. In the end I understood something, that its two hours ride from Santander, where we arrive, and his home town on the coast. He gave me a sticker of his motorcycle club.
I retreated to sundeck 6, the deck where the dog owners have to stow their annoying dogs and have them ticked off by a Frenchman with a clipboard. ‘Name?, you mean our name or the dogs’?’ Eventually we left 25 minutes late and I watched beautiful old Portsmouth pass by in the late afternoon sun as we sailed out into the sea, the green and bizarre Isle of Wight out on the right hand side (is that port or starboard?) as we sailed further out. One day perhaps we will all wake up and the Isle of Wight will have disappeared in the night. There will just be one of those slight inclines of the head, as if to say ‘well, that’s just one of those things’.
Finally I got into my cabin (the delay was to get the slow moving cleaners off the boat). This is one of the smaller cabins I’ve had, on the inside, so no view of the sea passing. Now I just need to wait till the children have all gone to bed and make my way up to find something to eat.
I ventured out to chose paella and a small bottle of white wine followed by another glass of wine and a couple of cigarettes on the cooling breezy deck in the dark, while the first live act in the bar started, a young woman in a black dress and too much make up sang to a recorded synthesised track, and small children ran in circles and screamed up above. Others watched English football on screens. Now I’m back in my cabin with Seven Pillars of Wisdom discussing the Arab encampment by night above Wejh. ‘Life in Wejh was interesting’, the chapter starts.
Getting the bikes off the boat will be interesting. There’s a mass of them and most of us will have to push our bikes backwards to drive them up the ramp into Santander.

Heading for Brittany Ferries Portsmouth

Next year’s tour

Despite western Europe having better weather, better food and drink, nice accommodation, languages that I can make myself understood in, and being closer to home I am drawn, for my travels, to those former communist eastern countries. Perhaps they are more slavicly exotic. They are certainly less familiar and harder to understand how things work. No sooner am I home from one motorcycle camping adventure than I am thinking about the next. I have been looking at Ukraine but I think it is too ambitious, certainly too far. Its exciting because it is on the easterly road to Russia and the stans and finally China. Instead I’m starting to look at Hungary and Slovenia to add to a trip that includes Germany, Austria, Czech republic and Slovakia (a country I’ve been wanting to revisit for a while).
The next stop is trip planning.

Gallows Hill to Home

Last day Cumbria to home

This is such a good campsite. Its just a field with some basic facilities and it can only make a small amount of money for its owner but it does a good job. Its on a gentle slope and had a beautiful view over the valley. Chickens scratch around the site and in the next field are sheep and horses. On my two visits its not been crowded and reminds me of the Wee Campsite up in Scotland that was hopeless in terms of noise and disturbance as everyone was packed so close like terraced housing. But in contrast Gallows Hill has so much space. Its also perfectly placed for a journey from the south up to Scotland.

Traveling back home was easy. With earplugs in I sat in the outside lane for much of the journey and thundered back home. Out of curiosity I left the A1 to see what Grantham had to offer, assuming it would be a pretty coaching town like Stamford. If it was I didn’t see it. Tired after just over two hours on the bike I tried to park in a car park there but it was built on such a steep slope that it was impossible to get off the bike and put the bike on its stand (I carry a small block of wood nowadays for these places) so I headed off – without earplugs. Already I can’t believe how I used to ride without them. They make you go faster!

The whole trip was 1400 miles with 33 hours of riding.

So now I’m back home and thinking about the next trip. Lets chose somewhere a little more exotic and somewhere with better weather.

What I ought o learn from this trip: if you are travelling somewhere where wet weather is likely (Scotland, Norway – you get the idea) its really better to book hotels than try to camp.

Suggestions?

Stats:

Miles 204.7Average 58Max 86Riding time 3.5

Back in sunny England

Another five hours or was it four – it’s impossible to tell though my knees and right index finger were painful – ride took me safely over the border back to Cumbria where though it’s blustery (a breezy day is what BBC news said on the large tv at the M6 service station where I surrendered to batter and chips and beans – the TV also showed the infamous London riots where people looted sportswear and TVs) The sun is shining brightly. But there are dark clouds and those vertical lines way off on the north that tell you it’s raining. It really is blowing here. I’ve put the tent up against a low wall and some bushes in the direction of the wind and banged those pegs in hard with a rock from the wall.

I don’t have the energy to drive down to buy some dinner. I have enough here and some beer and lovely coffee for the morning assuming I can get the stove to light in this gale.

Gallows Hill campsite, Cumbria
Camping close to the wall
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Look it isn’t raining


My thought about Scotland is that it is so rugged. It is rewarding but you have to pay a high price and with travelling by bike, living in a tent and solitude there is little to bulwark you against the rain and midge attacks. Maybe I would go back but in a decent car and with company. (I keep telling a BIG fly not to keep coming back in here (my vestibule) but he won’t listen.


Tomorrow is simple; 12 miles on the A66 to Scotch Corner then straight down the A1 almost to home. Let’s hope it’s not too gusty.

Stats:

Miles 225.3Average 45.2Max speed 85Hours ridden 5