Big Bird Bike Travels

Yesterday was a bit of a toughie, 250 miles and eight hours on the road (stopping for coffee, lunch etc) so it was with some relief that I arrived at a lovely small family run hotel which oozes the quality I’ve been missing.

Let’s get the biking stuff out of the way first.

Imagine somebody said to you “We’re going to close the Lake District to everybody but you for one day. We’ll resurface all the roads you want to ride on, make them half as wide again, choose the perfect weather and whatever bike you want”. That’s what the first 100 miles were like yesterday, for fear of becoming boringly repetitive, for a motorcyclist or even a cyclist, northern Spain, I suppose like many hilly and mountainous places in Europe, is a ‘biker’s’ nirvana!

A fault with Reg though, I think his speedo must be far too optimistic and the position of the footrests seem to be too close to the road surface! 🤔 

Continue reading “Galicia -It’s Green!”

The two ‘Munsters’ who appear to be, and I use this term loosely, running this place, seem to delight at trying to outdo each other in surliness, they make Basil Fawlty look like he’s been to charm school!

On the plus side the room is cool, in a temperature way, without having to have the windows open to invite the local mozzies in for a party, so a decent night’s sleep is assured. It’s a large room with a good sized bathroom and all the hotel has varnished wood floors which gives a different, but pleasant feel. It’s very clean and the food in the restaurant was actually good, even though Herman barked at me “No paella” when I requested it. For the princely sum of £27 a night (room only) I can’t complain, and to be fair, if it wasn’t for those two it’d actually be excellent!

Continue reading “Fawlty Towers”

Sunday was always going to be my non biking day, so the fact that I woke to rain hammering down on my skylight window had no detrimental effect to my mood whatsoever, I might even go for a jog as I like running in the rain!

The main reason I wanted this to be Reg’s rest day is because I need to plan my route to southern Spain, taking into account the intense heat of the inland areas and the Covid rules should I decide to stick to the coast for the 800 mile journey. That will entail Spain, Portugal, Spain and having the attention span of something that doesn’t have a very good attention span, I’m veering towards the ‘wing it’ approach.

Nothing really seems to fit, I have no set destination in Portugal, am double jabbed and have all the documentation to prove it, the chances of being stopped and checked (if I can find a suitable gap in the border crossing a la Steve McQueen in The Great Escape) is almost zero, and in the worst case scenario, *Reg can outrun anything else that the authorities have*.

*Although this is true, I won’t actually do it, as spending a week reliving Papillon’s life on Devil’s Island, surviving off the occasional cockroach isn’t the type of holiday accommodation I was hoping for. You sense a Steve McQueen theme developing?

Update: Carlos lives close to the Portuguese border and he reckons (with having the documentation I already have) I won’t have a problem, any issues I’ll just mention his name 😆

Continue reading “It’s a Beautiful Life!”

My present stopover is a family run B&B three miles east of Ribadesella, and as FB friends have been urging me to get out swimming, from one of the many beautiful beaches, I had to think ‘travel light’ from a completely new angle. 

I managed to wrap my two Liteloks around the tiny backrest, as these would be needed to secure my helmet jeans and jacket whilst swimming. There is just enough space under the seat for my wallet, phone and room key. The rest of my stuff was in the Triumph shoulder bag which I left on a rock not far from where I swam. Everything went, dare I say ‘swimmingly’, and after my dip I dried off by walking the mile beach and back.

Continue reading “Being a Bather not a Biker”

Carlos has just sent me this of their tour 🤗

The 634 from the outskirts of the seaside village of Ribadesella to Ariondas is wide and smooth with sweeping bends pretty much all of the nine miles, and completely traffic free, at 7am. 

Six days ago I went to visit the lake at Covadonga, but once too much traffic gets up there they barrier the road off, maybe we should do that with The Lake District? 😆 So the only way you can see it once the barriers are down is to go by paid coach. The friendly girl on the gate said if I got there before 8.30am I could go up on the bike, free of charge as well!  When I was up in the mountains at La Raya it was too far to ride there so made a point of booking some accommodation not too far away to give it a second attempt.

It’s a 45 minute ride from here to the entrance so, to be on the safe side I got up just after 6am and was on the road by seven. I was looking forward to it but started to doubt things as I headed up the only road leading to the ‘check point’. Traffic was starting to build and I knew that all this wouldn’t be for just the monastery situated near the entrance. Knocking off a few overtakes ended up being a pointless exercise, and by the time I was about a mile away it was like Ambleside to Bowness on a Bank Holiday Monday. I got to the barriers to find them down at 7.45. The young man said that they closed them just after seven, but said I could come back at 9pm!

Having pondered my options, including setting off at 6am tomorrow, I decided that I won’t bother as the place will obviously be rammed and therefore diminish the whole appeal of the place. So we’ll have to do with an internet photo.

The plus side to just turning around and riding back meant that I will get some breakfast, which is only served from 8.30am, AND I can hopefully find my wallet, which like many things now, I seem to be misplacing. Back in my room I reverted to talking to myself yet again “Now don’t panic” I kept repeating as I searched through all my belongings whilst at the same time running images of the last 12 hours through my mind. I was right not to panic, isn’t funny that when you find what you lost everything fits into place and the memory comes flooding back? “Oh yeah, I remember now”!

Continue reading “A Different Kind of Day”

I refrained from replying with the obvious when a fellow guest this morning asked me if I was an artist? Maybe he’d seen me in the bar last night, but it seems word is getting around that I’m the ‘English guy who does the creative filming around here’! 😆 The owner is quite pleased with that time lapse I did the other day and has put it on their Facebook page, I won’t hold my breath for the royalties to come flooding in, I’m just pleased they liked it. 

I enjoyed this morning’s gentle tootle down from La Raya, apparently the highest village in Asturia, and I had in my head that I was heading south once I arrived at the village of Collanzo, I knew that I’d be going on minor roads and after I passed through the narrow gorge follows the Aller River for a short distance. I noticed a large sign which said something along the lines of moto something not permitted, but gave it scant regard as the road was actually attributed with a number. When I entered the tiny village of Ruayer the road suddenly got very narrow and steep and as I zig-zagged between the houses the tarmac had turned to concrete and became ridged, presumably to aid grip. As I left the other side of the village the road turned to a track. Possibly it’s do-able, possibly not, but being on my own and contemplating the significance of a puncture I decided against risking it. Rachel would be proud, usually when we were in a tricky situation in the motorhome I would say something like “We’ve been through worse than this” or “Have I ever got us into a situation we couldn’t get out of”? She was the cautious one, or should I say, wise one? So it’s quite an achievement for me to tell myself NOT to do something!

I had the GoPro mounted on my chest at this point and therefore you can hear me talking to myself about the conundrum, however you can’t hear the conversation at the Relive app won’t play sound other than its own music.

So it was a short ride out, I returned back to the hotel and basically phaffed until Santiago arrived.

Continue reading “Road to Nowhere (Wednesday)”

I don’t know the reason for this, maybe because having walked into the bar at 8.15pm I said to the barman “Lo normal por favor” (“The usual please”), or was it because, when in the restaurant, I ordered for the first time a second vino tinto? Well whatever the reason, after dinner, the owner brought a small unlabelled bottle of clear liquid to accompany my cafe Americane, and gesticulated for me to top up my coffee with it. Having sniffed it and detected a hint of alcohol content, I duly obliged, coz that’s the kind of guy I am. How much to put in I had no guidance, but I felt it needed a double dose, if not to dilute the strength of the coffee at least! Afterwards as I meandered into the bar, the young barmaid gave me another half glass, which I duly obliged to sip. I left the glass on the bar whilst I walked  back through to the restaurant to ask the waiter “Quesque se, what is it, que”? To which he replied “From the grape, 40%”. I returned to my half glass to find it full, the owner had topped it up! By 10.30pm I resembled some typical old drunk propping up the bar, but like the young barmaid said “It’ll help you sleep”.

Talking about bedrooms brings me to another subject, that of the time lapse film. My bedroom is on the lower ground floor, some may say basement, but it has and air of chic about it, especially after a few glasses of 40%. The time lapse was taken from a bedroom on the second floor, draw your own conclusions……. 🤔 I set it filming at 6am and ran it for three hours. Oh, you want to know what I’m doing in somebody else’s bedroom at 6am? Well no doubt you would, but the boring truth of the matter is that it was an empty room, for the only time I was allowed access. Yes, life can be quite mundane can’t it, and nothing like your mind was envisaging?!

I’d asked for the room specifically for that purpose as it gives a great view of the mountain, but the room was taken for the duration of my stay, however I got a WhatsApp from the owner last night to say somebody had cancelled so he let me use the room for that purpose. Yes I really am like my road sign!

Now for the biking day so look away now if it’s not your thing.

Continue reading “It’s clear to me”

I haven’t been able to speed it up yet but eventually I will.

youtu.be/qLtwi4W_o90

A great ride out exploring a little of green Spain, but not such a great day back at base camp with a few technical issues! Here are some stills to keep you going until I eventually sort out video, which may be a day or so. Also I may get around to doing some ramblings at some point……..