Pedro

Hey @Tango, I’m back home, you’re safe now!

Ever since I announced I was going past his way, he disappeared.

Better start posting Steve McQueen posters everywhere so that people know what look you’re going for when buying one of those hipster modded bikes, with an open helmet and a fag on the corner of your mouth. Except his was more or less stock and wasn’t modded by a hipster, what can we learn from this @Tym?

Took this a few minutes ago.

Looks like paint, half dried paint.

Apart from the obvious body kit and wheels, what is special about that?

Very nice!

Did you know Scooby Doo?

On our last day, things could have ended on a happier note. Portugal was going through a lot of forest fires, but we still tried to make the best of the morning, at least to give Barbara a glimpse into what northern Portugal has to offer. Packing the bikes at 9:30, not exactly an early start. And getting into it, already in the distance you can see the smoke haze. One hour into it, and an espresso stop. The pace is relentless The views from the top of my favourite Castle, I don't like the smokey air. And the view from our lunch stop, a few delicious and very good value sandwiches made at the local firefighter house bar A couple of hours later, and we stop by the Douro. It was pretty clear that we were going into the deep smoke, so stopped to make a decision on route. Initially, the small road I was going through would take too long, three or four hours to get to Porto while enduring thick smoke was no way to enjoy it. Also, second more direct route took us very close to one of the big fires, I didn't like that idea at all as with heat and wind things quickly turn from adventure into disaster. We would get to Regua and then get on a big motorway, a little bit more distance but safer. Still had to do 45 minutes or an hour to get there, shortly after, what is usually a very scenic typical Douro vineyard view looked like this: The motorway wasn't more pleasant... sometimes with fires illuminating the haze that now was very thick and ever present. I stopped taking pictures, it just wasn't pleasurable. We returned the bikes at around 18:30, and then, instead of going to visit Porto for a night, hoped in my car and drove to Sofia's, almost 300km away. It was not the end of the trip I wanted, and it is heartbreaking as there is talk of a lot of these fires being caused by criminals. Now the weather has changed a little and that area is getting back under control, so all is looking better.

Indeed, Bob.

New day, heading to Portugal. We left Potes while it was still a little cold, but sunny enough. Stopped for breakfast and parked next to a very odd looking Land Rover. After a brief stop at a lookout, which was mostly taken over by me having a few work calls and emails, we pointed the bikes towards Portugal. Hopped on a very boring motorway for a little bit, then some main roads, and we made it to the border quite early. We were to spend the night very close to the border, sleep in one of my favourite places and have dinner at my favourite Trasmontano restaurant. I had called and asked for my favourite rice to go along with the usual grilled beef. In the meantime, we made time by showing Barbara a little bit around the area. We got ourselves installed, and walked up to have dinner at an appropriate time. I loved it, didn't disappoint. We made it back to the hotel under an amazing sky, at around 22:30 the full moon lit the clouds from behind, and it looked even better in real life. The reason we stayed here was partly because it wasn't too far away from the Picos da Europa, but also because Northern Portugal was plagued with a natural disaster in the form of forest fires. The air was very smokey, the country was in panic, and we wanted to see if that got a little bit resolved before venturing farther on. That was left for tomorrow.

In the morning, the outside of our hotel was full of bikes ready to go out, most of them to one way or the other catch a ferry in Santander or Bilbao, returning back home to the UK. We get on the motorway for a bit, then onto smaller roads heading through a particularly ugly part of Spain into the Picos da Europa. Every small town seemed desolate and sad, might be just me but those small villages and towns in that area suck the life out of you. We stopped for a coffee and some breakfast in the form of toast or whatever. No chance of that, nothing to eat whatsoever, in a cafe , they had coffee, coffee with milk, and all sorts of spirits. We had a pretty horrible coffee and left. Eventually, making it to the start of our third mountain range in this trip, after the Alps and the Pyrenees. The weather had given us a little bit of a hint of rain, and a few sprinkles, so the waterproofs were partially on. The cold in the Spanish plains also made it easy to want to put them on, but now that the pace had slowed we were much more comfortable. A stop in a village where we slept last year on our way to England, to plan things and figure out a place to sleep that night. After a little, we found our bearing. @Sofia remembered a viewing point where we were riding past, so we stopped there, there were a few big birds there, which were very interesting to see but kind of hidden by the clouds. It's still very cool to see vultures and eagles up in the air not very far away from you. Didn't get any nice pictures of them, though. Our final stop, to book a place for the night. We were ready to stop, so it only took 15 or 20 minutes to get there, a nice little apartment a few minutes from the little town of Potes. We left the luggage and went to Potes to buy groceries to cook dinner and eat "at home". Potes looks very quaint and cute in the pictures, but was really a busy tourist trap. Most shops were for souvenirs, most cafes were horrible, we had a little walk around, sat in a cafe for a while and then gave up and went away. Back home, Sofia and Barbara talked to our Dutch neighbors for a while, while I caught up with work. That night we ate some portobello mushroom linguine, drank some below average spanish wine, and went to be a little tired.

You star!

We got up to a cold morning, the cars (not covered like the bikes were) were starting to get a bit of a frosty look to them. To prevent the girls having to ride around on the soft gravel, I maneuvered the Honda NC750X (@JustaPor) onto the front of the house, these are cool little bikes and the frunk is an addictive thing to have on a bike. Again, I'll post my opinion on them later on, same as on the 1250GS. We slept on the outskirts of Lourdes, and first thing was heading up the Pyrenees to the Col D'Aubisque, from South to North, half way up the mountain @Sofia stopped to see a honey stall. The owner was a very nice elderly man whose hives were just in sight behind the stall. Sadly the honey was all packed in plastic containers with lids that pop off, however tempting it would have been to bring honey from such a cool location, you could see the potential for a big mess if one of those lids pops off mid trip. Going up the Col de Soulor And a stop at the Col D'Aubisque for a coffee. When I was here last week it was not sunny at all, there were hardly any bikes coming up and bikers basquing in the sun, but it didn't look any less pretty in the rain. A bunch of british bikers turned up, and didn't say hello back to the girls even though they did greet them in English. Having a portuguese plate Barbara was obviously in disguise, but I really don't understand why some brits do that, we had the same in Yorkshire last year. Anyway, it was glorious up there. A little more than an hour after, we stop for lunch in a little village, having spotted a small grocery shop. Couldn't be any more french, that, I had a nice jambon beurre, and we sat outside watching France happening. A guy bought his baguette for lunch, and 10 minutes after came back for a bottle of red wine, his Citroen CX15 having clearly endured a pretty hard existence so far. It was a lovely place to stop. I guided the small group via a small roads through very green valleys, and then up the mountains that I had previously seen through deep fog and under rain. Strike a pose: And just like that, we were down the mountains and onto the Spanish side of the Basque country. We rode to Pamplona for the night, and stayed in a hotel in the outskirts of town. In hindsight, we should have looked for something near the centre as that would have allowed us to walk out in search of a nice place to eat, Pamplona must have plenty. Instead, we ate in the hotel's restaurant, they advertised it as a special restaurant but it turned out to be very mediocre, a true disappointment. I did my best to impersonate a Bond villain, while sat in an armchair. Next day, onto the Picos da Europa.

In the morning we avoided the hotel's overpriced breakfast, packed the bikes, and had a lovely fresh croissant (or two ) on a patisserie, along with juice and coffee. You can love or hate France and the French, but nothing beats a nice still warm croissant in the morning! No pictures of that as we were eating outside and I was trying to keep the pastry from flying away with breakfast stealing winds! By 08:30 we were already traveling, as we left town the police was closing down a street for some kind of protest, I suppose people there aren't happy with the state of their town either. We rode through little pretty villages and tree lined roads for 20 or 30km, and got on the motorway heading for Carcassone. We were on a schedule as this part of the trip wasn't planned before, the girls were supposed to catch the ferry from Italy back to Barcelona, but after having a not very pleasant ride on the first trip, and hearing my praises on the beauty of the french side of the Pyrenees, they decided to give up on Barcelone and ride all the way back. Hence, we had a timetable to maintain, easy enough miles but it did mean there had to be motorway bits. We had maybe 200 or 250km to get to Carcassone, and doing that we were expecting to get out of the wind storms that affected the area we were on, so the motorway provided the relief we needed, and indeed after a couple of hours we were in Carcassone where the winds were now just a breeze. We went on a walk, but the place felt like too much of a tourist trap on Sunday. We didn't do ourselves any favors by parking a little far from the castle, we ended up going for a nice walk, eating a pretty shitty sandwich on a place I chose , and moved on. Walking back to the bikes, I came upon @Skippy's old bike. From Carcassone onwards, we rode more or less the same route I had ridden by myself when entering France a week before. I was keen on showing that area to the girls. Eventually, stopping to figure out where to sleep on the same pretty castle I visited before. We were quickly running out of daylight, so hurriedly booked the same place I had also stayed before. Unfortunately being a Sunday they didn't have a dinner meal available. I ended up riding to Lourdes to buy something for an in house picnic. The two open supermarkets didn't have bread, so that was out, carrying pizzas by myself was also not a possibility, so ended up getting Indian takeaway. Two different biryanis, some sort of chicken nuggets with red seasoning and onions, and something else. That's what I ended up with as they messed the order completely. Along with a bottle of wine, and that was it. Lack of plates and other things meant we had it from cups, the ladies had fun but I honestly was not happy about it. Next day, Pyrenees and onto Spain.

Barolo is very nice, very pretty town and the surrounding farms on top of each hill like little castles. It's clearly a motorcycle destination as we saw lots of groups of Italian bikes riding through, we arrived on a friday and there were lots of them, and on saturday when we left in the morning there were lots more. There was even a guy taking pictures of bikers on the road with a sign for a website, but I forgot about the name and didn't find it on google. Will look into it a little more. What I don't really like about Barolo is their very typical, very old school red wine, they call it the king of wines but I really don't agree. I'll consider it a pretty motorcycle destination but not really a wine one. Anyway, in the morning we set off in perfect motorcycling weather, heading to France. An hour and a half hours later, espresso stop. We chose a nice and wide main road to cross into France, the Col de Larche, at just a smidge under 2000 meters was nice and smooth, wide roads, nice going to make progress. Still, it's as tall as the Serra da Estrela, Continental Portugal's highest mountain. Picnic stop for lunch in Jausiers, already in France. We were going to keep on country roads, but on the map they seemed easy and pointing more or less straight in the destination we were aiming for, which was to go past near Carcassone the next day. The scenery we found was great, and really surprised me since I was hoping for something a little boring. Firstly still high up in the mountains: And then lowering onto farm lands, through tiny roads, no markings and a little bumpy, we were making slowish progress, but steady and pointing the right way. What you can't see in the pictures is the high winds, those really picked up and made it a little uncomfortable. The mountains gave way to farms, and those led to gorges We didn't stop for many pictures as we needed to move, but the scenery really surprised me as by looking at the map it seemed like it would disappoint after the mountains. Eventually we got onto properly wide and main roads, and that made us keep a higher average speed, but the winds were merciless. This region of France was under a yellow warning for high winds, with 20 to 30 knot winds through two or three days. A little tired of it, we got off the road at 18:00, a little earlier than planned, and just found the closest "cheap" hotel. This was in Pont-Saint-Esprit, the hotel was a little poor, shabby, not expensive while not really good value either, but in the center of town so we could have a little walk before dinner. The town was a disgrace, it might have been vibrant 10 years ago but has fallen in disgrace. Lots of abandoned houses, lots of closed businesses that looked like they have been closed for a while. This was a saturday afternoon and the best restaurant in town was closed for dinner, only reopening on tuesday? The real estate agent's shop itself looked half abandoned, and most of the adds showed no price. It really felt like a ghost town in the making. We did have a walk, still enduring the high winds. We picked the cheaper of the two restaurants available, but the most inviting by looking at the warm lights inside from now a quickly darkening street. The meal was a very pleasant surprise, and we all liked it quite a bit, washed it down with some local wine from a place where we had ridden a couple of hours prior. As I type this, Sofia is looking and sorting some invoices, and I reflect on what a good business it must be to have a restaurant in Italy, but I'll leave those reflections to the final post. Next day, onwards onto the Pyrenees.

Hamburger soup?

Da fuck? It's turning into an R6

Served a good purpose of washing some of the mud off the GS, I was a little embarrassed to return it in the state it was in and would have had to wash it before.

Morning came, and by 08:45 we were almost done with packing the bikes. Took us a while to leave, but eventually we set going and got on the motorway to cover some ground, first stop was Piacenza for some coffee. Like the star I am, I navigated into town and parked a few meters before the center of town, which is generally banned to most traffic. It was nice to walk 5 minutes into the center of town and we had a little moment enjoying an espresso in the Piazza di Cavalli. A few tables were looking very Italian with people enjoying snacks and cold wine, at 11:50. I'm 100% ok with that , but we had to move. Again another bit of fast road, and we stopped in Asti to have some sandwiches made at breakfast. Into the center of town at almost 15:00, and we stopped in a very Italian piazza, complete with complementary very photogenic Ducati for pictures, for an espresso. From Asti, we rode small roads to Barolo, making our way onto the Alps. The original plan was to ride to the Mediterranean, Cinque Terre and all that and the girls would get on the ferry back to Barcelona, while I would ride back. This plan was discarded, and they decided to forget about Barcelona and enjoy the ride back, this was what was now happening. Sofia always wanted to visit Barolo, even though not being a fan of the local wine, so we stopped by. It's a very manicured wine region, small, so every small vineyard looks like a well tended to garden, the town itself is both very touristy but also very quaint and well kept, it's iconic. They don´t half charge for their wine, here. Barolo looked really Italian, really nice, and nobody wanted to get back on the road, so the decision was made and we booked the cheapest accommodation in the vicinity, an apartment for the 3 of us, 500 meters out of town. Stopped by a grocery store, bought wine and risotto, a couple of entrees, and made it to our home for the night. The apartment turned out to be a huge surprise, it was spacious, had a space outside with an amazing view to Barolo, and a fully equipped kitchen. We were very happy that that was the cheapest we had that night, so proceeded to make ourselves at home. @Sofia was very happy It was a good night. Next day, onto France.

After dinner, on the previous night, we stayed up talking and drinking wine as the weather changed and turned into wind and thunder, then heavy rain. I used to spend holidays at a camping place with my parents as a boy, in their caravan, and I forgot how nice it is to listen to the rain and weather cozied into bed without the shelter of a proper isolating house. We had a lovely night that night, and slept deeply. The next morning, we wake up to rain. It looks like rain outside, the forecast is unequivocal, etc, but we suit up anyway and decide to make the best of it. On the previous day, checking on google maps and waze, we realize that the mountain pass we were taking from Lake Iseo to Lake Garda, is closed. If this trip had a theme that has to be it! However, considering the nasty weather maybe it wouldn't have been very nice to lead the ladies up a mountain pass, instead we take the nicer less high roads to Riva del Garda, and stop there for lunch. I didn't take many pictures as the navigation was pretty straight forward so I didn't need the phone on the handlebars, plus it was raining so hard all of the time that I didn't want to take my gloves off and get my hands wet. The only time I stopped for pictures was right next to Lake Garda, coming back home after lunch, the lake is so big and the weather was so bad that it waves big enough to splash onto the road. I had never seen a lake like that. That road has lots of small tunnels and is quite interesting to ride through, in and out of the tunnels with the lake on your side. A little past 18:00 and we were back to have a nice warm shower and get dinner going. That night, as well, we ate on our cabin as well. I, again, cooked some pasta with anchovies and onion, which turned out way better than the one with tomato and peas of the night before. We got ready to leave the lakes and start heading back towards home.

The next day the girls went on a little walk around the camping and the lake, mostly relaxing, while I decided to go up to ride through Passo de Baremone and Passo di Maniva. I did a little research online and found these to probably be a lot cooler than the Via del Sale, while at the same time more off the beaten path. Sadly, riding up to Baremone I found out the road was closed for repairs. I insisted because I could make it to the unpaved section after the tarmac, but the amount of trucks that took the whole road was a little bit of a challenge. As I waited on a bend for a truck to come pass a fellow biker was following the truck down and told me there was no chance of passing as they wouldn't allow it. The trucks didn't have it easy though, some corners were too tight for them so they went down the pass by going forward and reverse instead of turning around the bends, not to mention they weren't exactly coordinated and often there were trucks driving on both directions. Pretty views, though! I decided to go around the mountain via proper roads and get to Maniva, on the other side, and then see if I could get on the pass. The roads up to Maniva ski station were nice tarmac and a pleasure to ride on gay tires, smooth and grippy but a little bumpy. On the way up came upon two kids on serious supermotos so had a little bit of a spirited ride up there chasing them, we got to the ski station and they quickly turned back and raced back down Up in Maniva, the pass was also closed right at the start, which was a shame because it looked really nice. The weather was closing quick, though, so made it down as the GS felt nice with absolutely no luggage but that meant I also didn't have any waterproofs. Went down Bagolino, home of the Bagoss cheese and maybe capital of the 4x4 Panda, and stopped by a grocery store on the way back home. Bought fruit, cheese, ham, pasta, lovely anchovies and tomato, as I was going to cook dinner tonight and the next day, and to prepare for two breakfasts. Back near the lake, the weather was summer like, so Sofia and I went for a walk to buy salt, the only supply I had forgotten. Somehow, the walk to buy salt turned into a big walk and we all went to see a fortress built by Napoleon. I wasn't impressed with all the walking. I had brought some Monogramo Felicetti, which is very nice pasta that had never seen for sale in Portugal, and got to work with dinner and making my fancy puttanesca. The ladies were lovingly watching from a distance sipping on wine. The result was very nice. Anchovies from the Ligurian sea, nice olive oil and amazing pasta along with Bagoss cheese. The cheese is a bit too strong, but had to be tried for being so local.

From Mandello del Lario, we set off not too early not too late, but as is the theme of this trip we quickly came upon a flooded tunnel, had to be diverted up a mountain pass I was avoiding because of construction, and proceeded to stay stuck in traffic going up it. Eventually by almost 11AM we were up at Culmine di San Pietro, which deserved a stop if nothing else but for the name We had a quick espresso stop, and proceeded. Through a gorge and some nice mountain roads we arrived at San Pellegrino. San Pellegrino was a great stop. We came upon a proper food shop, cheeses, hams, wine and beer, etc... My new best friend made me the most amazing sandwich with 24 month prosciutto, cheese and olive oil, which was simply amazing and probably the best sandwich I ever had. Basically a ham and cheese, though Perfect lunch stop, serious shop: Sadly, I was dragged away. I could have contemplated a love affair with an Italian cheese expert and sandwich maker otherwise. We carried on towards lake Idro.. A couple more mountain passes and roads, and Lake Idro awaits in glorious sunshine. Lake Idro is very small compared to all the other big lakes, we settled onto our accommodation for 3 nights in a camping cabin / bungalow. The next day was destined for relaxation and the following for exploring around Lake Garda. First night, we walked up to a nearby little restaurant / pizzeria, and had a lovely budget friendly meal. Barbara won the night by choosing a lovely pasta:

Cheers Bob, but probably easier on those tires going down than up.