San Pedro de Alcantara Los Palancias y Villafranca
Well. We're greeted by a bright blue sky and beautiful sunshine. Perfect.
Best get to it, then.
The run is up into the mountains on the road to Ronda, and then South West to the coast again, all through the mountains, and the roads look like fun. We remind ourselves the night before that today would be Sunday, and no doubt the locals will be out in force, so we should keep that in mind. The road up to Ronda is particularly impressive. Great views, but you dare not take your eyes off the road for too long as there's always something to do. Evidently the Spanish Police use it for pursuit training and you can see why- it has absolutely everything and it's half an hour of total engaging fun. We do note that there's a few bikes out- I see two rocket pilots really coming quickly the other way and cornering about as fast as I think humanly possible.
The Guardia Civil are posted about half way up under a tree. There's some flashing of lights from the other way giving us a clue and we drift through unobtrusively.
We reach the top of the run and stop to head South West. We're about five minutes in to that when what I call a 'Conger' of Sports bikes come over a crest into a corner. They're all a ball hair width away from each other. It looks impressive in flow, but in my view stupidly impressive and its something I really don't like to see- one mistake from the chappy in front, and no matter how good you are, and by my reckoning things would be all over. I've seen it on YouTube too, bollocks to that. Anyway-I back off, more wary now. I don't like that at all.
Well, I'm glad that I do. Minutes later we see a smaller conger of bikes coming up and over on a right hander. The third bike, what looks like a red and white CBR, has misjudged it and isn't making the corner. He misses our very own ballistic by about a foot- and then there's the matter of little old me. For a nano-second I think 'are you going to turn then mate?' before I take evasive action. If I didn't he'd have been through me. In the end he misses me by what must be inches
What a tool. Anyway, I'm glad I followed my instincts. We stop for a coffee and an underwear check. Brian sums it up... 'he nearly got me, I thought that was you gone'.
Right about now I could do with one of these..
Back on the road and there's more motorcycle madness. A group of cruiser riders opt to cut the corner on a left hander; an RT or something does the same. Be careful out there folks. This time I have video, and there's some choice commentary at particular points
Quite
Aside from the kamikaze motorists, the run is very pleasant, and it doesn't spoil anything for me and it's another hour or so of good (if not very suspicious) riding.
Soon enough the mountains dwindle to the sea and we're down on the front to cross to Gibraltar.
With some careful work we leap frog to the front of the queue, getting past hundreds of cars in the process. I say 'Nice motor mister' to a guy driving a Hummer, so he lets me through a tricky squeeze bit. It was a tactical lie, and a useful one
Crossing the border itself is easy. The Spanish side bods ignore us, but the Gibraltar side, in their UK style Police uniform they want to see our passports. Odd.. the bloke has the strangest accent. Back to it and we're soon riding across the airport runway to the rock (you have to by the way, it isn't faulty navigation). We're presented with a Cepsa station with petrol at an irresistible £1 a litre. Ah, that calls for a fill up!
Gibraltar seems to have an impossible amount of traffic for such a tiny place. The recent prosperity shows. We fear we need to park up in have to walk in, but with some ingenuity and patience we find our way in to town, not helped by a young bloody muppet on a scooter who decides to stop and answer his mobile phone on a roundabout. We get some parking though and have a tat seeking stroll. Stickers bought. We then drop by for Fish and Chips at the Angry Friar.
It was welcome enough even though there was more than a hint of Findus about it.
Shame, there was a proper Fish and Chip shop along the way, but they were closed, I guess Sunday is still special to a degree over here in Gib. We also had London Pride. The concencus amongst ourselves was that it was more origin of Chisuico rather than Chiswick, and had been nearer to Lagos than London's Talgarth Roundabout. Still, again it was alright enough and better once ballistic's suggestion of bunging a spoon in it to get rid of the fizz was put in to action.
We chatted with a fella and his grandson who were day trippers from the humungous P&O Ventura which was in at the port. It felt like being at home briefly.. quite strange. I might have made a pitch to hang around in Gibraltar for a novelty night out on the tap, but the accommodation was prohibitively expensive and it wasn't worth it even for that novelty night. It's a shame because I had a very good curry here once (mind you, it was in 1992). Even though I'd gotten recent a Chop Suey fix I'm definitely getting the fancies for it. Must be a kind of home sickness.
We figured this would make a good quiz question.. 'Where abouts are we?'. (Yes, of course, not now, as you already know of course).
Out of Gibraltar and soon enough we're on our way to Spain again.
An easy cross of the border, and then its off to Tarifa for the view across to Africa. But the view it wil be only be for now- Brian has limited time and I have other agenda items to see to. Still, there's always later for that
We head up now towards Seville. There's nothing on that triangle between Huelva to the North West, Seville to the North, and the south where we are, just marshland with no means to cross in to Portugal should that be required. Our conclusion: It's the Norfolk of Iberia
We stop in a town to look for accommodation. There's some sort of festival on and we can't get in with some very odd looking people milling about. Next town. There's nothing here. The hotel has closed and there is absolutely nothing here. Shrugs are exchanged from the bikes. Definitely a touch of the King's Lynn about it here.
Finally, in the next town we find a hotel on the main drag. They're nice helpful folk and see us park the bikes up snug to the front of the place on the pavement.
We wander and find this place has much more to offer. It's very pleasant stroll around the town on Sunday night and everyone is out walking, taking the night air, having drinks. Very pleasant. We join in and have much cheaper Sangria. We then have a Doner Kebab for tea. Classy