Discovering Spain 2022

Urban Rider

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Earlier this year the usual suspects - myself, Jon (BluesnTwos) and Ty (Easy Sushi) decided we were going to head south through France and have a play in Spain. As usual the only thing we actually booked was the Eurotunnel out and the ferry back. We’d all got some time available so booked the outbound train for Sun 3rd April, coming back on Mon 18th.. Camping gear was packed as we planned on doing this mostly under canvas and we readied ourselves for the off on the 3rd….

Now, if anyone remembers that far back It was cold, bloody cold in fact I’m confident that it was and still is the coldest day of this year so far. On the ride down to Folkestone it registered -6 :eek: and by the time we boarded the train we were frozen… Met an interesting character on board riding an old ex police bike and heading to Ukraine as a medic…Things weren’t much better when we rode off the train n Calais and were greeted with snow!!!!


More to come….
 

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We had decided to head down to Le Mans for our first night and we’re hoping for warmer weather the further south we rode. After a few hours riding the snow and I’ve disappeared but the temps stayed low. Frequent stops for coffee were required and we soon found ourselves in Le Mans where the temp had got up to a nearly tropical 10 degrees. We’d already decided that camping was a no-go for our first night so Air B&B rescued us with an apartment that had secure underground parking and comfortable beds.. Between us we paid no more than around £25 each and the apartment was great. That evening we wandered around the local area and had dinner out in a rather questionable establishment…
 

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Right then, after a decent nights sleep we set off the following morning under blue skies and bright sunshine. Still quite a chill in the air but from here on in the temps were only going one way. We’d decided we would aim for La Rochelle taking the fastest route but avoiding motorways. I love riding in France, the roads are great and scenery lovely providing you avoid the tolls and motorways. Heading south from Le Mans we made several stops for food and coffee. A nice little village we stopped in was Noyant slightly north east of Angers. Fresh (strong) coffee set us up well for the onward journey and we arrived in La Rochelle around 1630. We stopped in the town centre and quickly used Booking.com (our go to for non-camping accommodation). We came up trumps again with a lovely apartment on the outskirts of town.
we sorted our kit out, locked up the bikes got showered etc and headed into town for dinner and beer…
 

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Excellent.... How long did the surreptitiously placed proclamation remain on the BMW bag for? :)
 
Use a photo hosting site to post them on here or an app like Snapseed to edit/get them the right way up. :thumb2
 
Apologies all, been busy with the day job so no update tonight. Will crack on with it over the weekend.. Lots to cover including, self induced sickness (food poisoning), off-road adventures in the Picos, dropped bikes, fixed bikes and everything in between that makes up a great adventure..!
 
We all know that Blues & Two's doesn't drop his bike, or allow it to get dirty, so it can't be him ha ha.

But looking forward to the updates
 
Oooh you may be surprised on both accounts…..

Right then, onwards with the report…

we had a nice evening mooching about La Rochelle, beer and food were consumed and we started to hatch a plan for the following day. Jon mentioned that’s he’d like to visit San Sebastián which was a few hours south of La Rochelle and as we were neither time bound or had any sort of plan we decided on a coast road ride south to with a stop at Biarritz for some lunch.. As we walked back to the apartment we realised that the distance was somewhat longer than we originally planned and was all uphill. Arriving back at the apartment we were all knackered and sweaty but ready for our beds….
 

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The following morning we woke to grey skies and drizzle, like all riders with no plan other than to head south we took a decision to start heading Southeast and agreed that our destination for the day should be Pau. I’ve been through Pau before and it’s a great town to wander around, people watch and it’s on the very edge of the Pyranees. We stopped in a service station and started to look for accommodation. By now we’d been carrying our camping gear around for 2 days and whilst we all wanted to set up camp we were also coming to the realisation that we can rent apartments/houses very reasonably using either Booking.com or AirB&B and today was no different. I can’t remember exactly who found it ( my gut tells me it was Jon) but he found a themed apartment right in the middle of town for a very reasonable price. So that was it, accommodation booked we headed to Pau… By now the weather had warmed up nicely and we rode with blue skies and sunshine for the rest of the day. We stopped in a small village called Garein for the inevitable coffee and something to eat contemplating how lucky we were given how the trip had started…
 

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On arrival in Pau it soon became apparent that gaining entry to the themed apartment was not going to be as straightforward as we thought. Firstly we had to locate a hidden key box on the ss
treet. Once we opened that we had to find a second key box which would give us entry to the apartment. After several minutes of 3 toddlers trying to understand the instructions in obviously bad translated English we were granted access. I stepped inside to find I’d been transported for hardy adventure biker to f***in Hogwarts!!!!
 

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We had a great night out in Pau, although we were all shocked just how expensive it was. We walked into a bar and ordered 3 beers, the barman was a Brit so we asked him to recommend a nice restaurant in the town that we could go to for dinner. He told us that everywhere is really expensive but that there was a good place a few hundred yards from his bar and then asked us for €26 for the 3 beers!!!!
He was right though, the food was great and not too pricy but we were still shocked by the perceived increase in cost of everything in France since our last visit (pre covid)…

The following morning we woke to bright skies, well eventually we did. Jon and I got up early doors to go for a run. Opened the door to the street and right there on the floor in front of the door was a dog shite that looked like it had fallen from an elephant!!! Dirty bastards, never understood why people don’t clean up after their dogs. Anyway as we were on our run we saw the team of street cleaners out doing exactly what the dog owners should have done…
Run complete, showers taken, bags packed and we were ready to depart with only one thing on our minds. Today we enter Spain…
 

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The sky was blue and the sun was shining the morning we left Pau and it wouldn’t be long before the familiarity of riding through the mountains was felt by us all. Lovely twisties with little traffic was the order of the day with the occasional patch of frozen snow or ice just to keep us on our toes. We entered a tunnel just south of Urdos which went on for a while and when we exited we immediately felt the warmth of the sun and our surroundings had changed. We pulled over on the N330 (Canfranc) for a brew and to take in the views. We’d arrived in Spain without really knowing it, we didn’t see any signs or border markers. Just into the tunnel in France and out of it in Spain…
We set our destination to Huesca where we would stop for coffee and determine our next move with a few stops along the way for photo opportunities…
 

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A couple of hours later and we were sat outside in 25 degrees, blue skies and warm sun drinking strong Spanish coffee on the streets of Huesca. By now I’d kind of had enough of carrying all the camping gear around and not using it so we started to look for campsites that could accommodate us. Booking .com came up trumps again and we soon found ourselves heading to Lake Caspe for a few nights… The ride there was uneventful, the roads were long and straight and apart from being chased by a psychotic loon in a 4x4 we found ourselves arriving at the campsite a few hours later.
Lake Caspe is beautiful, the campsite was lovely, although a bit hard underground with gravel pitches. We’d decided to stay there for x2 nights for a bit of R&R but circumstance would determine another route…
 

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