Trip to Spain

[SunEye]

Next Monday I'm off to Andalusia on my evo. I'm travelling with my friend who'll be riding a Triumph Rocket III and will therefore spend most of the time slowing me down and moaning about how uncomfortable his bike is.

Our plan is to reach the villa in Alhaurin el Grande on Wednesday evening so that my friend can get to Malaga airport on Thursday morning to pick up his wife and kids. Then we have 12 days of lazing around the pool and riding around Andalusia before we spend three days riding back to the UK.

The overall route for me will be as follows:

Bognor Regis -> Horsham -> Eurotunnel -> Poitiers
Poitiers -> Zaragoza
Zaragoza -> Alhaurin el Grande

Alhaurin el Grande -> Tortosa
Tortosa -> Clermont Ferrand
Clermont Ferrand -> Eurotunnel -> Horsham -> Bognor Regis

It works out at about 500 miles per day which will take us about 10 hours. If I get the chance I'll post some approximate route maps before I go. I won't be able to do so once en route, although I may be able to post a few photos on the way there and back from the hotels, but not once in Andalusia because the villa has no internet connection and I don't have one of those fancy smart phone thingies that connects to the internet via some sort of magic.

If anyone thinks this sort of trip involves lots of planning you are wrong. It involved a chat over a cuppa one evening and the ok from my friend's wife. Since then I've looked at a map and roughly guessed distances. And that's it. Now it's time to book Eurotunnel and hotels.

[J.P]

Another Sunner trip ahead, have fun.
Lots of miles but I know you've done the trip loads in the past.

[Davy]

500 is quite a lot of miles in a day. Wifey and I have been touring Europe every year for years now on every sort of bike. We book nothing just turn up and see how it goes never had an itchy bum moment yet. Enjoy.

[SunEye]

Yes 500 miles is a lot for many people, but we've done Le Havre to Alhaurin el Grande (1200 miles) in 2 days before and Bilbao to Alhaurin el Grande (600 miles) in one day. I have also ridden from Bognor Regis to Aviemore (600 miles) in a single day many times.

We have done Calais to Alhaurin el Grande in three days before, so we know what we are letting ourselves in for. At least this year the temperature in Spain is slightly lower than it was three years ago. Then it was over 40 degrees. That made for a very warm bit of riding.

I have toured without booking accommodation, mainly outside of the July/August holiday season and have stayed in some fabulous and unexpected places. For this trip we are booking accommodation so that we don't have to waste time trying to find somewhere after riding for 10 hours, although sometimes trying to find the place you've booked can waste a fair amount of time - a bit of research on Street View helps. Also because we have to be at our destination by a certain date we haven't got much flexibility in our itinerary. Sometimes you can find that booking ahead saves a few quid, although if you speak the language you can usually haggle a discount to the same price when you arrive at 7/8pm. We plan to spend about £25 per night each for bed and breakfast in 3 star hotels.

[spacemonkey]

Tortosa to Gibralter took me 11 hours in my MX5 last time I did it and I didn't hang around. Of course Andalucia is closer but it does take a long time. Watch out for dozing truckers...

[SunEye]

Originally Posted by spacemonkey

Tortosa to Gibralter took me 11 hours in my MX5 last time I did it and I didn't hang around. Of course Andalucia is closer but it does take a long time. Watch out for dozing truckers...

I'm expecting about 10-11 hours for Alhaurin el Grande to Tortosa. By the route we intend to take it is about 520 miles, about 80 miles less than driving from Gibraltar.

You are right about the dozing truckers. You see a lot of trucks that have gone into the ditches at the side of the road. Last time we witnessed a lorry shed its load of bricks on a motorway near Madrid. Luckily for us it was on the opposite carriageway and amazingly even though the road was busy nobody was hit by the falling bricks.

[Grumpy]

I have toured in Europe for more years than I care to think about. Apart from booking the accommodation at my destination, I've rarely booked hotels on route , it's part of the adventure
Have a great trip and enjoy.

[SunEye]

Just got back from my trip to Andalucia. I'll go into the most eventful part in detail in another thread. Here I'll stick mainly to the riding. I'll write about each day and post the few pics that I took.

For luggage I used an Ortlieb 49 litre rack pack strapped on with two Rok Straps and a Bags Connection Trip QL tank bag, which is great for wallet, phone, keys and waterproofs.

I rode in an Alpinestars mesh jacket, which has a removable waterproof lining, Draggin Jeans, under which I wear cycling shorts (for extra comfort) and some Knox Flex Lite knee protectors. My boots are TCX Jupiter Gore-Tex and my gloves are Racer ones that are fitted with the TFL Cool System which reflects near infrared radiation which helps prevent the gloves getting really hot in the sun. Despite not being vented my hands only get slightly sweaty even at over 35 degrees in sunshine that is so strong that to bare skin it feels like it's burning after just a few seconds.

In order to cover the mileage we needed to cover in a sensible amount of time generally the only time we would stop was for fuel. This tended to be every 140 miles. The maximum distance I got before my fuel light came on was 155 miles. That equates to about 65mpg (assuming that I overfilled the bike a little, which I do when touring). Normally I get about 55mpg.

[SunEye]

Mon July 27th Bognor Regis to Poitiers (500 miles - a bit over 12 hours)
An early start (slightly later than planned because I'm lazy) got me to Horsham to meet my friend Adie and to Eurotunnel in Folkstone just in time for our 9:50 check-in closure time only to find that there was about a one hour delay. We eventually got to Calais at 1pm. Then it was motorway all the way to Poitiers, about 400 miles. There was a very strong cross wind on the first section of motorway that runs along the channel coast. It almost started raining near Abbeville, but it never quite got going, but it was threatening enough to get us to put on our waterproofs when we stopped for fuel.

Our route took us via Le Mans and Tours. It gave us the opportunity to test Adie's sat nav for the first time. For some reason after Rouen it seemed to want to take us via Caen, so I had to step in and direct us onto the motorway to Le Mans. Luckily I knew the route having ridden and driven it before. Other than that it was all plain sailing, except for locating the hotel. The sat nav took us to one street away behind the hotel. Luckily I'd looked up the hotel's location on Street View so I was able to locate it by finding the BMW dealership that it is opposite.

We arrived at about 8pm. As it was my birthday my girlfriend had driven from Nantes to meet us. She also found us a bistro to have a meal at in the centre of Poitiers next to the Palais de Justice.

[SunEye]

Tue July 28th Poitiers to Zaragoza (430 miles 9 hours)
After eating as many crepes as I could manage for breakfast we left Poitiers at about 10:30 heading down the N10 via Angouleme to Bordeaux. Part way along the N10 Adie decided to use his sat nav to find a petrol station. This took us 5km off the N10 along some tiny roads to a village supermarket petrol station. Great that a sat nav can find petrol in the middle of nowhere, but strange that it didn't find the petrol station that was just a few km down the N10 from where we turned off to find petrol.

Just after Bordeaux we decided to leave the motorway and head across country. When we left the motorway as I accelerated away from the junction the bike bogged down and stuttered, the traction control light was flashing madly. I gave it more throttle, but the bike carried on stuttering and then suddenly accelerated away and started behaving normally. From that point onwards whenever I accelerated in first gear it did the same. So I pulled over and turned the bike off. After I turned it back on it behaved perfectly. I can only assume that the ECU had a funny five minutes.

We bravely followed the sat nav through the forest south of Bordeaux. It took us via the most direct route to Pau and straight through the centre of Pau and onto the D934 to the Col du Pourtalet. It did try to take us up a bit of road that had been bypassed many years ago despite the sat nav having the latest map updates. Riding with a sat nav definitely benefits from having a reasonable knowledge of where you are actually going and what road signs to follow for those times when your sat nav is being stupid.

Luckily the ride up to the Col du Pourtalet was not too busy with traffic. It's not a route across the Pyrenees that lorries use, so it was just cars that we had to overtake and there weren't that many of them. 10km from the summit I got bored of following Adie peg scraping his Triumph Rocket III around the corners and passed him to enjoy the last bit of the twisty climb at my own pace on the type of road I really enjoy. About 1km from the summit of the col we encountered a herd of cows making their way down the road. It was milking time and they were taking themselves back to their farm. The traffic has to just stop and let the cows walk amongst them down the road.

At the top of the Col du Pourtalet


The way down on the Spanish side is not as twisty and was warmer. The heat gradually building to a hot 30+ degrees as we rode down the A23 motorway towards Zaragoza. Once at Zaragoza the sat nav chose to take what it thought was the quickest route by taking us off the motorway and through the outskirts of the town. We weren't that bothered because we knew where the hotel was having stayed there before and it is easy to find as it is just off junction 311a of the A-2. It was just interesting to see where the sat nav took us.

We arrived at our 4 star hotel at about 7:30. The great thing about the current exchange rate and the poor Spanish economy is that a hotel like ours in a non tourist area that was built at the time of the economic crash and was designed for business customers has had to slash its prices in order to stay open. Our luxurious twin room with breakfast and secure underground parking cost about £30 each.

[SunEye]

Wed July 29th Zaragoza to Alhaurin el Grande (550 miles 11 hours)
We tried to make an early start, but didn't get away until about 9am. We decided to program the sat nav with some specific points on our route so that it would take us along the route we wanted to go. That seemed to work ok.

As soon as we started I noticed a problem with my clutch. It wouldn't fully disengage. I suspected that it needed bleeding, it tends to need that every few thousand miles (is that normal?), but I wasn't going to unload my bike and get the tools out from under the seat so I just did clutch-less gear changes.

It was not too hot at the start, probably only mid 20s, which made riding quite comfortable until about midday by which time the temperature had reached over 30. By mid afternoon it was in the late 30s, which is akin to sitting in front of a fan heater. Not overly pleasant, but you quickly get used to it. At every fuel stop you have an ice cream and drink up to a litre of liquid and that makes things feel much better.

We took the A23 motorway from Zaragoza to Teruel. Then normal roads to Requena then the N322 to Albecete and on to Jaen where we picked up the A44 motorway to Grenada and then the A92, AP46 and A7 motorways to Malaga and then the A404 to Alhaurin el Grande.

About 300 miles into our journey just after a village called Reolid on the A322 about 50 miles after Albecete I managed to run into the back of Adie as he sat at a red traffic light. Totally my fault because I wasn't paying attention to the road ahead. I'll go into details in a separate thread, but suffice it to say that neither of us suffered injuries that required hospitalisation and that after some bodging and tweaking with the aid of some local mechanics both bikes were rideable.

We still had 250 miles to go so we carried on, eventually reaching our villa at about 8pm. After a quick shower it was off into town for a steak dinner, a few beers, and some ice cream. All of which was made slightly more difficult for me because I couldn't used my right thumb which had been hurt in the accident earlier.

[SunEye]

Adie's wife and kids arrived the day after us and after a few days rest to help us recover from our injuries:

me - sore right thumb, left wrist, left upper arm, left big toe
Adie - sore right leg, sore right middle fingers

we improved the bodging done to the bikes to ensure they would be ok to ride home.

This is the bodge done to my bike


During our first week at the villa I managed to break a toe in the swimming pool (the poximal phalanx of the second toe on my left foot as I subsequently found out) which made riding my bike impossible for at least another week. The villa has no internet connection and the data connection on my phone doesn't work so there was nothing to do but laze around enjoying the sunshine and the pool and catch up on some reading. Which is what I'd planned to do, but interspersed with a bit of biking.

[utopia]

That's a very resourceful bodge on the front mudguard.
Those plastic rulers can be quite brittle though ...did it last the distance ?

[SunEye]

The ruler has lasted for almost 2000 miles since its installation. I too was concerned about its brittleness, but it has done its job very well. It is starting to show some signs of stress so it may not have lasted much longer, but I had a spare just in case.

[slob]

Good work, I'm looking forward to reading the return journey