Big Bird Bike Travels

Probably a three part series of our motorhome trip to Istanbul in 2018 and the eventual significance of a bracelet.

This will not be everybody’s cup of tea but needed to be done for my own satisfaction’ watch until you’re bored 😬

As is always the case there’s a tinge of sadness as I wave goodbye to my family at St Jouan after just a couple of days with Amy, Yann, Evan, Arthur and Yann’s family Luc, Servane and Yann’s brother Gwendal. Loneliness, just a hint, but positivity of seeing Sarah & Rob in the next day or so, and what more could one want than a relatively calm night crossing assured?

I was very comfortably accommodated in Chez Luc,, Yann’s folks’ new gite, should any reader be looking for a place on the outskirts of St Malo you know where to come! 😆

I may do a proper review of my trip once home as I’m just rattling this off on my phone in the boat’s bar.

Until then, or next time? Thanks for reading 🤗

Before sunrise I gazed out of my bedroom window and saw the wisps of orangey pink clouds with the pale blue sky above, the car was looking splendid, as always, in the car park below, and these two sights seem to mask the industrial estate on which the hotel is situated. I just see the things I like.

What followed was a roll in bed with some honey, well other than the bed that is, in the restaurant I had just a small roll with some butter and honey, washed down with half a glass of orange juice & a small coffee. 

As I lifted the lid of the hotplate my eyes, nose and mouth longed for the frittata but my redesigned inside is the boss these days and said “no, you’ve had enough or I’ll kick off”. This is what I would describe as ‘extreme grazing’, I think that I’ve always been a good grazer but this is a new level to the sport, and so I reluctantly resisted the tasty ‘afters’.

Before the sun had made a proper appearance I returned to yesterday’s road, the A66. I’d seen plenty of signs telling me that I was on Ruta de la Plata and mistakenly assumed that I was on the ‘Route of the Plains’, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Wiki:

Ruta de la Plata (Silver Route) is an ancient commercial and pilgrimage path that crosses the west of Spain from north to south, connecting Mérida to Astorga. An extended form begins further south in Seville and reaches north to the Bay of Biscay at Gijón. The path is used by the modern A-66 and AP-66 freeways, as well as by the older N-630 national road. Plata is commonly thought to derive from the modern Spanish word for silver, plata. The name actually derives from the Arabic word al-balat, which means cobbled paving and described the road as engineered by the Romans.

History lesson over, now back to almost the present, an apt word with Christmas looming.

It was cold, so much so that the heated seat and steering wheel were fired up, but with the cold weather came some lovely views. As I drove north and looked to my right I saw the sun not much above the horizon with the silhouette of a line of dark cypress trees set against the silvery cloud behind, a lovely sight which I could treasure. Inversions were commonplace but being on the motorway I couldn’t stop, and as is the case, photographs rarely do justice to being there.

I could really enjoy the scenery from the comfort of the car, not being distracted by freezing cold extremities, as would have been the case on the bike. Sounds like I’m getting soft in my old age? Well maybe I am!

With 170 miles to go and now being in the cloud at 2c it was yet another reminder, should I need one, that Herman the German was the right choice for mode of transportation. Ooh, now I’ve given him a name does that mean he is now part of the family like Reg the Rocket? If so, where does that leave the BMW K1600GT?

It was yet another lovely morning as I packed up the car on the sunshine coast, if the weather forecast is to be believed it’s not due to rain here for another 9 days and then it’s just for the one day. But it was only 2 hours before the windscreen wipers were getting a good thrashing about, temperatures dropped to 4c as I crossed the Sierra Morena north of Seville, but once I’d cleared the high plains things looked up, the sun re-emerged and it got to a relatively toasty 17c, although the wind chill factor determined that at motorway speeds the roof should stay up.

Today’s first leg of 346 miles would be the longest time I’d spent behind a steering wheel, or in fact holding handlebars, since pre cancer. It went surprisingly well, I was no more tired than any normal sexagenarian would be, probably helped by having a ‘Grand Touring’ machine, or at least I can kid myself into thinking that.

The Kevin Mystery

For those of you who are still wondering about the note on my windscreen, it turned out to basically be an advert from a fellow Porsche owner wishing to sell his car. A little bit like a wrapped Christmas present, often turns out to be more exciting than when it’s unwrapped 😆.

If you didn’t already know, I at least ‘like’ everybody’s comment and mostly reply, but you probably don’t get a notification so I’m telling you now, but please don’t feel any NEED to comment. 🙂

About an hour before sunrise my daily routine starts with the opening of the bedroom curtains, then I return to bed with a brew and gaze out to the lights on the horizon and wonder what experiences the dark continent holds. But it doesn’t give me an overwhelming desire to go, it just interests me, and may feature on my bucket list. I did a lot of research on Morocco for our planned trip in 2020 and still have all those ‘must see’ places on my Google map, who knows what the future holds.

As the sun rises and the twinkling lights disappear sometimes the land is visible and sometimes not, but across to the right where Gibraltar is almost always clearly in view, so is the Moroccan mountain of Jebel Musa, such names conjure up mysteries yet to be discovered (in my limited tourist world).

Last year, heck was it only last year, well about twenty months ago to be more accurate, that I returned from La Gomera to Tenerife, and stayed in a hotel for ten days. It was too long, I felt it then and with hindsight I still feel it. Yes I would go out every day on the motorcycle and try to find the few roads on the island that I hadn’t already discovered, but to have one base for such a long time wasn’t for me, it didn’t sit well with my limited attention span, I think I need to be ‘doing’.

Neither Rachel nor I were never the sitting on the beach type, nor sunbathing by the pool, that was how we felt independently, and I think it is still very much me now. Our form of relaxation was about seeing new places, others may have thought that we couldn’t sit still and that’s possibly still the case with me.

Tomorrow will be my eighth and final night here, it hasn’t been too long, but long enough.

Going for a drive in this car is giving me a bigger kick than I expected. I love having a spin up into the hills to visit the sugar cube villages, for which Andalusia is famed, and also to catch glimpses of the vultures which inhabit the high rocks in the area. At no time have I wished to be on the bike, it’ll be interesting to find out how I feel when I jump aboard one of them on a cold sunny day ‘up north’.

I came down to the ‘coast of the sun’ for a couple of reasons, to help repair this battered body with some sunshine, or at least to visually help, and to treat it as a winter training camp, like I would have done when doing triathlon twelve years ago! It’s serving the purpose for the first reason, I think I’m looking better if nothing else, a bit of colour always helps. The winter training camp idea hasn’t worked. Yes I’ve increased the distances of my walks and did do a little swimming back in Portugal, but I’m afraid that’s been it. I’ve done a reasonable amount of walking down here but no jogging or swimming, my mind says I can do it but my body is objecting, for a change I’m listening to my body! 

No I haven’t headed home early, but still managed a few glasses of wine and whiskey with them in the Andalusian sunshine.

They’ve tracked me down to Estepona and we had a great few hours chewing the fat about pretty much everything. They’re down here in their motorhome, just spitting distance from my apartment, so it was lovely to have yet another catch up with friends now that Gav has headed back north on his motorcycle.

Apparently it’s where the rich and famous go, and the odd criminal, I’m not quite sure which category Gav fits into, possibly famous, just within the blog?

My decision to come to the Costa del Sol was driven by the name, it’s supposed to be the place for the best weather and my body needs some sun on it. Also I chose this particular criminal hideaway due to Gav staying here and I thought it would be a good opportunity for us to catch up. Catching up being an appropriate term as he ‘frog marched’ me the 4.5 mile walk from PB to Marbella. To be fair on him we did go at a pace which was suitable for me, slowly.

The Porsche blends in well in such surroundings, albeit mine is at the very cheap end of the spectrum. Ferrari, Maserati, Bentley, Lamborghini etc were fairly commonplace, so my Boxster was more akin to a Ford Focus in Carlisle.

To be honest Puerto Banus was a bit too flash/upmarket/up itself/out of my budget (choose whichever you think I mean) for my liking, so I decided on Estepona as my next base just 15 miles down the coast, but not before Gav and I had eaten out together a couple of times and caught up with each others’ lives.

Tuesday morning I was pleased to leave the apartment in PB and as I couldn’t access the accommodation in Estepona until early afternoon Gav’s suggestion of the A-397 to Ronda would fit nicely into my day. I don’t think I’ve ever before looked forward so much to going for a drive in a car, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. It’s one of those roads which could definitely bite you on the bum if you weren’t careful. The prominence of warning signs for speed detection by drone and the motorcycle accidents came as no surprise on such a wide twisty road. I stopped for morning coffee break at the bikers’ cafe, but on this weekday I was the only tear-arse in there.

I got a lot of enjoyment from the more sporting drive offered by the paddle shifters (as opposed to the usual auto mode), but after a shortish period of limited thrashing I decided that it would be better for my health and bank account to refrain from such reckless acts.

After Ronda I headed for an old favourite of mine, the sugar cube village of Casares where vultures dare, I love watching them soaring on the thermals above the village and they didn’t seem to be distracted by the sun glinting off my bald head.

Third time lucky

After two not so great stopovers I struck gold in Estepona, it only took a couple of minutes for me to decide to extend my stay from 3 to 8 nights in this lovely apartment, so I will commence my journey north from here on 20th.

My escape from the Cadiz prison cell went according to plan so I headed south for one hour to the scene of The Battle of Trafalgar, well not exactly the scene, but as close as a landlubber can get. Unsurprisingly the Spanish have made no tourist attraction of this momentous defeat to the British Royal Navy back in 1805 and advanced signage is conspicuous by its absence, but Google maps doesn’t harbour such grudges so it guided me easily to Cape Trafalgar. The only battles taking place now are that of the surf boarders with the waves, along this stretch of the coastline it seems to be one of the ‘go to’ places for the sport.

I’d initially driven past the €3 car park assuming it was a tourist rip off trap, not that €3 for as long as you want is much of a rip off. But as I drove down the narrow road, which quickly changed into something more suited to a 4×4 than a low slung sports car with tyre profiles the thickness of rubber bands, I found that there were in fact no other places to park. I returned to the excellent value car park where the attendants gave the Boxster pole position next to their hut, and and were complimentary towards my choice of chariot.

There are a few stalls (lining the sandy lane leading to the barriered off road to the lighthouse), where the merchandise on offer mainly comprised of home made bead and leather wrist bracelets. The two cafes on the same road were very inviting and the one I chose was particularly characterful. The hand written sign prohibiting drug use added to the air of authenticity that this was in fact a genuine surfers’ hot spot, not that I’m judging or anything.

The area had an ambience of friendliness about it with most people being considerably younger than me and smiling, probably due to the effect of the drugs, the dreadlocks and campervans complete the picture of the place.

With the roof down, as it had been for all the trip, the drive across to Puerto Banus was very pleasant, By the time I hit the dreaded A7 near Gibraltar temperatures were hitting 25c, and consideration had to be given to the impact of the sun on my slightly receding hairline. As usual, the entry to the A7 commenced Wacky Races, but I was not taking part and just enjoyed life in the ‘slow lane’.

I was going to book some accommodation on the Costa del Sol for about eleven nights, but after my experience of the cell in Cadiz I decided to air on the side of caution and just book 3 in Puerto Banus, it turned out to be a good move. Suffice to say the apartment failed to meet my expectations, maybe in my old age my expectations are unrealistically high, but I will stick with the standards I expect and refrain from turning into a grumpy old man.

Next entry: More from Puerto Banus