Big Bird Bike Travels

Most of the places I go to are strictly native speaking, I’m cool with that and have mastered “I’m sorry but I cannot speak” Italian, French and Spanish, in their national tongue. Of course it doesn’t stop them wittering on in their native dialect, to which the encounter either descends into the Google translate app, or a game of charades. 

Trigueros is a one horse town without the horse! I like it though, this is not a place Brits abroad come to, and hence the English language doesn’t feature highly on the list of importance for the locals.

On our travels, Rachel always used to be a bit ‘wide eyed’ at my choices of local cuisine, I’d rather try my hand, or should I say mouth, with local fare, isn’t that part of the experience of travel? I must admit that I’ve had my bum bitten on a couple of occasions, in more senses than one!

But getting back to where I am now. A little bar restaurant was recommended to me, so after a beer to kill time until food got served from 9pm, I used translate to leave it to the barman to choose my food. I included I liked meat, fish, chips & potatoes.

On arrival of my two courses, two things were immediately apparent, firstly, I know where the horse went! Secondly, fish. In England we think of fish as cod, salmon, trout, even prawns and mussels. But my plate obviously contained something quite different, no it wasn’t a huge albatross egg, oh no, this was fishy, in more ways than one! You can sprinkle and fry tentacles as much as you like, but this was definitely not a fish dish I was accustomed to! 

So far, so good…….

Sunday – Salamanca to Mérida

True to form I woke to brass monkey weather, a decent layer of frost on the bike seat made me in no rush to hit the (thankfully) dry roads. After a leisurely loading up of Reg, my first stop was down to the local garage to give him his first wash since leaving Carlisle. Once done and refuelled it was now a respectable 3C, but remained pretty much the same for the next 50 miles.

The frosty bike seat seemed to confirm that today I will be leaving Salamanca in -1c, and if the forecasted +17c for my arrival in Mérida (just 170 miles south of here) remains true, it will be reason enough to encourage me to keep heading in that direction!

Yesterday’s 230 mile ride south from Santander to Salamanca was dry but very cold, probably due to the last 200 miles being at over 2,500’. I really felt like I was riding along the roof of northern Spain, although too far east to be in the stunningly beautiful snow covered Picos Mountains, which were clearly in view across to my right. The landscape and big skies’ made me think of the term ‘High Plain’ but even though I may be riding a modern day version of a horse, I don’t really fit the Clint Eastwood film ‘High Plains Drifter’.

I got a good getaway from the ferry port and after a coffee stop about 50 miles into this leg, a fellow Brit motorcyclist rolled up on his Yamaha MT-07. After identifying me as being one of his fellow ferry motorcyclists, my Madrid bound counterpart said he had ridden (along the same road) in hailstones. I looked back north to see the dark clouds, but had stayed ahead in the sunshine, and continued to do so for the rest of the chilly trip.

“Boring isn’t it” says the octogenarian, by way of initiating a conversation with me. “Well if you want to get to Spain with a vehicle it’s either this or drive through France” I replied in a friendly manner. That was enough to allow him to continue with what he really wanted to tell me, which was that in his younger days he sailed around the world in his yacht. I seem to be getting adept at replying to people in such a way that it encourages them to tell me more. A shame I didn’t have this skill as a police officer, it may have come in handy, and prevented me from being labelled as one of the two “most boring bastards in the world”, the other of course being my work partner and buddy Andy M. In our defence the prisoner did say this as we slammed the cell door shut on him.

So back to Captain Pugwash, he seemed a thoroughly decent chap, slightly slimmer than his cartoon namesake, but it took intervention of his wife, presumably returning from the ladies room, to stunt his enthusiasm to tell me his life story. Nevertheless, he still had sufficient time to give me his first hand experience of several countries around the world before she dragged him off to the restaurant, probably muttering in his ear “For goodness sake Arthur, leave the young lad alone”!

I don’t know if he was called Arthur, but he looked like one, or at least how I perceive what an ‘Arthur’ looks like. Who I do know the names of are the ‘Pauls’ and Roger, no not Roger the cabin boy! Any similarity to the Captain Pugwash fable ends here. The Pauls and Roger are fellow bikers, I won’t bore you with the details but suffice to say, all interesting chaps in their own right.

Sitting in a quiet corner of the Commodore Lounge I have time to ponder the trip, and feel better about it. When in England I was starting to question what I was doing, leaving behind family and friends made me question myself. But sitting here I feel more positive, forward thinking, not looking at back. When in Exmouth and Portsmouth I could easily have headed north back into my comfort zone, I was tempted, but now I’m halfway to Spain I’m trying to grasp the nettle, and although it doesn’t hurt at the moment, I suspect it will.