My France/Spain Trip (56k Warning)

[TheDonUK]

If you are up for a long, poorly written write-up with badly resized pictures then keep reading 

I had been thinking about doing this trip for most of the summer and would have just picked up my bags and left if I had applied for my passport renewal sooner… You lives and learns…

Day One: Monday

Route: London > Dover > Calais > St Ormer> Arras > Cambrai > St. Quentin > Reims > Troyes > Dijon

Woke Up at the ungodly hour of 2:50AM after a few hours sleep in order to catch the 5:30AM Ferry to Calais, with final check-in being at 5AM, Went outside, took a look up at the sky and thought “A bit of drizzle” so put the Waterproof trousers on but left the jacket in the tank bag, big mistake, From west London I made it onto the M20 Dover bound and it absolutely started pissing down, I cant remember it raining so hard for a good while, I’m thinking to myself it will pass, wrong again, it just got worse and turned into freezing hail, and soaked through my leather jacket and all 3 thermal layers I ended up in a petrol station 20 miles out from Dover filling up, whereby I happened to ask a guy in a jeep what time it was, I was shocked when I heard 4:45, 20 miles in 15 mins, what followed was a frantic dash for the port at silly speeds (thankfully the M20 is remarkably GATSO free). Anyway I made check-in right as they were closing and breathed a massive sigh of relief,

The only other biker on the ferry was a German guy who seemed nice enough in the rough English conversation we had, As we boarded the ferry we were both pointed to a little cubby hole for bikes under some stairs, my bike was secured down first by the deck hand (or are they sailors?), He then did the other bike, at which point the German guy exploded into fury at the poor guy because apparently it was tied down too tightly, He really reminded me of that Counter-Strike Kid Video, I pretty much left him alone after that not wanting to suffer his Roth

After getting used to the rolling of the ferry (I really don’t have sea legs)and arriving in France at the break of dawn I off the ferry in Calais and took it nice and easy riding on the right for the first time, but found myself on the auto route A26 instead of the Nroad’s I had planned during the crossing, Stayed on that until Arras where I rejoined my intended route down the French N-roads
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A gentle days riding in pretty piss poor French weather getting used to riding on the continent, the waterproofs never came off and the camera never came out. I ended up in a town called Chalon-e-Saome south of Dijon where I found a campsite and pitched my tent for the first time at round 6PM, Absolutely Shattered I turned in early for the night

[TheDonUK]

Day Two: Tuesday

Route: Macon > Lyon > Vienne > Valence > Orange > Nimes > Montpellier

Woke up at around 7:30AM to the sight of raindrops on my tent, It turns out that while my sleeping compartment had done its job of keeping me dry, the stuff I had left in the “porch” area had been flooded, everything important was in plastic bags but my summer gloves got absolutely soaked, I spent the next half hour fucking around trying to get a soaking tent back in its bag, hit the road with a fresh French baguette in me tank bag at around 08:30

Followed the A-roads down through Macon, and into Lyon, my first experience of city riding abroad, Lyon was pretty relaxed in hindsight and I would imagine it would be a great city to ride in, loads of Underpasses/Tunnels that had my Can sounding lovely, I rode around Lyon for a while getting a flavor of France’s 2nd City (No pics unfortunately), It gets the thumbs up from me, The Auto route goes directly through the centre and I found myself running parallel to the Rhone river quite scenic for a motorway, something we just don’t have back home, Stayed on the motorway for a little while until Vienne at which point I saw Yellow Bis signs (which someone had mentioned was a leading authority in French maps) for Nimes/Montpellier I have no idea what roads I was following but they were the first twisties of the trip, and really wetted my appetite for Spain/Pyrenees, I spend the next couple of hours winding around the French countryside before rejoining the A-road at Orange
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At this point my shagged front tyre was really becoming a problem, had not a lot of confidence with it on right handers on some of the more twisty roads, I only decided at this point that it might have been a good idea to have put a new tyre on before I left… You lives and learns.

Being the hasty individual I am that had never crossed my mind “Naah it will be alright ile just take it easy” on roads like these that just weren’t happening.
After Orange I had started stopping at every bike dealership/shop I came across (which were surprisingly numerous) and asking in pigeon French “Nouvelle Bridgestone”, then taking the bemused owners outside so they could see the size, On the road from Orange to Nimes I must have gone in 4-5 bike shops most of which had nothing, a few of them having Michelin Pilot Roads, I was having none of it, I am a Bridgestone BT021/020 man, I have dispatched on these tyres and know what they are capable of, also I didn’t want to mix a Bridgestone Rear and a Michelin Front on roads I was unfamiliar with, Eventually I found a place that did a 021 Front for 130 Euros, I set off towards Montpellier with somewhat renewed confidence in my Bandits handling (I have a Bandit 6 BTW), As I approached Montpellier I saw signs for a Formulae 1 Hotel, I remembered someone had said before I left I was mad for camping and F1’s were cheap, It was almost dark at this point and 30 euros seemed fair to me, So I unloaded the bike in my room, and then set off to explore Montpellier’s nightlife and/or scrub in my new tyre, It was nice riding the bike with no luggage, for the first time as I had maximum traffic carving ability back, I ended up leaving my sensible attitude at the F1 hotel and ran through a full tank of petrol playing tag with two equally loony French bikers through the streets of Montpellier, we had some decent pizza at a place they insisted I go to once I had made tummy rubbing gestures .. We sat and eat, and communicated surprisingly well about bikes considering they didn’t speak English and my French consisted of “Ne Parlevou Francais” and listing the names of the places on my way. I didn’t get their names unfortunately and the camera was back in the hotel, Funny guys thought
We said our goodbyes and I headed back to the hotel, where I conked out at around 11.

[TheDonUK]

Day 3: Wednesday
Route: Montpellier > Bezier > Narbonne > Perpignan > Girona > Barcelona > Tarragona > Castillo > Valencia

Up early at 6:45AM intending to make Barcelona today, had a meager F1 breakfast consisting of partially toasted baguette and plain cornflakes. I hit the road around 7:30AM. Headed towards Perpignan via Bezier/Narbonne, By this time and after the antics of the previous night my front tyre was well and truly scrubbed and the Bandit was feeling really planted, but unfortunately at the same time my exhaust started playing up, The can fell off the link pipe, I put it down to me foolishly cleaning around the rubber bracket with WD40 before I left, So I used my shagged gloves that had been soaked the day before to reattach it and carried on pass perpignan and towards the Spanish border.

The previous two days had been pretty cold and/or wet but it seemed as soon as I crossed the Spanish border heading for Girona bam I was hit by a wall of Spanish heat, lovely it was . The rest of the day was spend with the leather jacket bungeed to the bike and with me in a T-shirt, Anyways I followed the lovely coastal road down to Barcelona
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Ihave been before but on foot not 2 wheels. When I got there I remembered how much I loved this city I hit the beach and chilled out for a bit checking the sexy senoritas
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before taking in Sagrada Familiar
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And just generally riding round in Barcelona, At this point I had switched into Courier mode and was finding the traffic relatively easy work, It is a total Free-For-All but it makes sense in a Spanish kind of way, if there’s a gap you just go for it, no waiting for a kind flash or a car to let you out, it seems everyone just goes where they want and expects everyone else to accommodate them, its like a school of fish, it just works.

By around 3-4PM I was starting to feel the heat of Barcelona riding and wanted to hit the open road again, so I did, Destination Valencia, Which after a long ride Through Tarragona / Castillo I made Valencia by dusk.

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Valencia is far, far bigger than I imagined, a massive city, low level but sprawling for miles, with horrendous traffic, everywhere else in France and Spain there was room to filter, even with panniers in a lot of cases, but here was total gridlock, avoid at rush hour.

They also have massive bendy busses that clog up everything, one managed to block 4 main roads at an big intersection, saw Brown signs with a picture of a tent and just followed those to a campsite just south of Valencia in some sort of national park, set up the tent and got eaten alive by loads of little bastard mosquitoes, will be taking insect repellant next time. Flipped a coin in the tent before I went sleep Heads I cut across to Madrid, Tails I carried on down the coast towards Gibraltar via Alicante, It was heads, which is good as I was by my calculations getting low on euros.

[TheDonUK]

Day 4: Thursday

Route: Valencia > Madrid (Main Roads mostly) > Guadalajara > Jadraque > Alamazan > Soria > Arnedo > Pamplona

Set off early and hit a petrol station just out of Valencia, I was still adjusting to the fact that 70% of petrol stations have an attendant, who’s job it is to fill up the petrol, some seemed genuinely offended/annoyed when I politely declined their offer for them to do it I let a couple of them do it at first but it always ends up on a odd price like 16.47 Euros, I do my own petrol, I know exactly how much is in there (Important when on a bike with a crappy tank range and I don’t end up with a gang of change in my pocket. In some weird cases they hover around you to take the pump the 30cm from your hand back into its holster.

I digress got on some twisties
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before hitting the only real road towards Madrid, the trip there was uneventful and mundane, essentially riding through a flat desert, until around 30 miles out where there are some fast sweeping corners.

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Madrid is too similar to the hustle and bustle of London for my liking so stayed for an hour or two (The Bernabau Stadium is very ugly in person) and then had to hit a little town northeast of Madrid called Guadalajara, as my girlfriends family come Guadalajara in Mexico. After I got the picture I decided after the long ride to Madrid I wanted a nicer ride up north, so picked out a nice looking route in the eventual direction of Pamplona up north.

If I could have read the Spanish road sign saying the next 20/30 miles of this “Road” have the worst “Surface” known to man I might have gone another way.
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Had to stand on the pegs at around 10mph the whole way in constant fear of a puncture or loosing the front end at the hint of braking. 110% Concentration for this, Im a City rider first and was totally out of my element off-roading on a fully laden bandit. After somehow avoiding the puncture the road became a road again and a pretty damn good one at that, you got an idea what they were doing, I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time… In a year or so it might be very nice.
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Spent the rest of the day riding on the best roads of the trip so far
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A bit of everything, Hairpins,
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Sweeping bends,
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Straights just long enough for you to pass any traffic safely then right back into the twisties once you had .
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Made it to Pamplona at night and fucked around for an hour trying to find a hotel, eventually making it all the way back to the signs I saw on the approach for a 3 star hotel, which was not bad at 40 euros, and it was massive with secure underground parking and a restaurant (for the record Bonito Con Tomatoes is some sort of Fish/Haddock dish, not what I was expecting but it did the job.

[TheDonUK]

Day 5: Friday

Route: Pamplona > Jaca >Biescas > N260 > Andorra > Perpignan > Narbonne > Bezier > Montpellier

This was the most technically challenging day I have ever spent on a motorcycle and also the best in terms of finding out what me and the bike could do. Started out at what felt like subzero Pamplona
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Bolloxed around for ages trying to find the N260 winding its way through the Pyrenees to Andorra, but my god was it worth it, the best road I have ever ridden, words do it no justice, not even the pictures, The shiznit as they say, the dogs danglies. Do whatever you have to do to ride this road, Ride through France, boat to Santander, it doesn’t matter this is Mecca . I couldn’t bring myself to stop riding this flowing road for more pics…
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Immediately after taking that last pic a group of 4 GB bikers came flying past, I ended up riding with them for a hour or so, one of the guys was called Mick from New Forrest on an old 71’ Moto Guzzi with what to me looked like bloody knobblies and me on my bandit left his mates on Gixxers/VFR’s for dust, it was silly we ended up waiting at one town for 10 mins for them … The others dident seem willing to get on the power until bolt upright, which was very rarely on roads like this, Mick compensated for lack of power with comically wide entry lines into some corners… but hey it worked :up to the guy. They had taken the ferry from santander and were exploring the pyrnese headed to Andorra in a couple of days, I said goodbye at this petrol station and took this crappy picture, we then went our separate ways

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The rest of the ride on the eastern part of the N260 was equally amazing, again a bit of everything, excellent road…
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Through this ride with some of the heights I was at the bike was struggling hard at the high altitudes, breathing like an asthmatic through a straw, Andorra Is very high up and the bike did not like running up here, but the decent down the freezing mountains
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into France and towards perpignan was a second set of challenges to the spectacular first part of the day, twisty downhill mountain roads for 100 miles or so with each corner taking me lower and lower and with the bikes performance coming back gradually during the descent.

When I got to Perpignan around dusk something must have switched in my head, as far as I was concerned it could never get any better than today, I had done what I had set out to do and now it was time to go home (and I was running out of Euros). What followed was the longest continuous period of flat-out riding I have ever done, did the 160KM’s to Montpellier in under an hour from Perpignan including petrol stops, I got to the F1 Hotel I had stayed in on day 2 around 10 and crashed out after a shower and some French CSI .
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[TheDonUK]

Day 6: Saturday (The Longest day)

Route: Montpellier > Millau > Clermont Ferrand > Orleans > Paris > Arras > Calais > Dover > London

Rolled out of bed around 10 after forgetting to set my alarm, started out with the intentions of getting gently to Clermont Ferrand today and then get home the next day, taking in the Millau Bridge en route. Got to Millau an hour or two later and admired the amazing bridge/view,
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It is truly on a massive scale that you only realize when you cross it. About 20 miles out from Millau I had switched to reserve (my reserve tank lasts around 20 miles of regular riding), I had not seen a petrol station for ages and as it turns out did not for another 20 miles after Millau, which I had to ride away from at around 45 mph on the hard shoulder to eek whatever I could out of my remaining petrol, somehow I managed to get 40 miles on reserve, a new personal best and on fumes managed to get within 1km of a service station, had a hard push the rest of the way but it could have been allot worse. After seeing how much I could get out of a reserve tank it left me wondering what was the most I could get from a full tank, so the trip to Clermont Ferrand was done at a very leisurely 60/70mph getting overtaken by caravans and whatnot because I pretty religiously kept below 7k revs (bandit makes its power from 7k onwards so my logic was keep it under this and I would get more bang for my buck). Hit Clermont Fr around 2/3 in the afternoon and was really tired, the back to back 12+ hour days were catching up with me, I saw signs for Paris and thought that would be my destination for today, A 450km ride to Paris followed taking in Orleans/Tours En route. I used to auto routes to get to Paris and found a way of dodging most of the cost, at every toll gate I said I had lost my ticket and said the name of the next closest major town/city to the south of me so I paid a lesser toll (what would have been 25 euros was 5), Im not particularly proud of scamming the French toll system but funds were very low at this point and I really didn’t fancy running out. For the record the Auto route network is well maintained and worth the toll if you are intent on covering serious distance quickly, you can see where the money goes…

Once I arrived at Paris the bike was running really badly (I couldn’t blame it on altitude this time) and I could not find a cheap hotel for the life of me, Being there I remembered why I avoided it on the way down, especially as I was there at rush hour, The bandit was only breathing over 8k revs so I ended up riding like a total twat at high speed through Paris heading up on the A1, at some point in Paris I had decided I might as well try and make it home today I had come this far already, It seemed when I got anywhere near Calais on the outward or return leg the rain came down, so out came the waterproofs for the first time in a while and after a grueling ride to Calais I brought tickets for the 9:30 Ferry to Dover and boarded the ferry on my reserve tank (mistake). Had a big meal of bangers/mash/chips/veg on the ferry which was needed after eating very little and riding a long way, picked up some duty-free Tequila/Vodka and just chilled for the next hour of the crossing. Came off the ferry to a cold England and foolishly passed a BP petrol station on the other side of a duel-carriageway as I was heading for the M20, I had assumed there would be a services pretty soon, I was gutted to see “Services 27 Miles”… I ended up running out at a roundabout in Ashford trying to find a petrol station, standing there in dismay after a long bloody day I hailed down some little Blue Fiat, A very eccentric but lovely French lady called Emmanuel stopped and after hearing my predicament told me to hop in and she would take me to a petrol station and back again, We had quite a laugh on the way there as she was very funny, and very tired after a long days work in a hospital I think she said, and me knackered too. She emptied out 3 little 0.5 Liter water bottles she had and I filled them up, We decided it would be a good idea if she stopped smoking for the trip back, lovely woman, would accept no money for her troubles so I waved her goodbye and set off back to the petrol station myself, and then Onwards on the M20/M25 to finally reach home at 1:15AM having covered something like 750/800 miles today, but it was good to be home.

All in all this trip was exactly what I needed it involved a bit of absolutely everything, amazingly Twisty roads, Very fast flowing sweeping roads, Straight desert riding, Impromptu off-roading, a bit of snow riding, some very naughty speeding and some of the best times I have had on two wheels, I will be definitely returning next year to Spain/Pyrenees having learned some valuable lessons.

I will give myself far more time maybe 2/3 Weeks next time to explore everything in more depth, and really take my time, as it was I took the first week of my second year at uni off to do this trip because my passport renewal took ages to come through so perhaps I rushed a bit too much wanting to see everything in a relatively short space of time also I will never assume there will be a petrol station nearby, nor that if there is, it will be manned or accept foreign credit cards. I also know now to start the trip with fresh tyres and at the very least get a fly screen for my bandit (Which never failed to get me where I was going, it ran rough as a knackered old mutt at times but it always kept on going...)

If you have been thinking about touring France/Spain all I can say is go for it, and whatever you do include the N260 road in the Spanish Pyrenees, that will stick in my mind as the best road ever.

Total Distance: 3421 Miles
Days: 6
Countries: 4
Number of times Flashed by forward facing French cameras: enough to loose my license many times over…
Memories: Countless

[sagalout]

Great write up It did sound like you were fitting a bit too much into 6 days, but well done for getting out there and doing it.

How did you find travelling by yourself?

[Gordon T]

Excellent report ...... Jealous doesnt come into it. Did you find out why your Bandit started running rough?

[Shay HTFC]

Wow that looks amazing. Cannot wait to do my full license and get out into Europe.

Spain is on my list a long with Switzerland / Austria / Alps and Scandinavia.

Looks like you had a great time. Nice one!

[TheDonUK]

Riding solo was no problem for me, Most of my mates arent bikers so i end up riding solo most of the time. I have no problem spending time in my own company...

I also felt it allowed me to meet some of the people i did, like the two bikers in montpellier and Mick and his mates in the pyrneese, if i was with mates we would most likely stuck to our own... But then i did miss chating about all the events after each days riding. If you can are fine in your own company i think it allows you more freedom to do exactly what you want.

And as to the bandit running rough, At altitude it was deffo that, but i also think my new exhaust system is blowing... im not happy for the money i paid, im gonna sort that out next week...

When you go to accelerate it stutters badly and jerks untill you hit aorund 8k revs then its better, feels like a blowing exhaust, but the air filter could also be blocked up, as i say im gonna get the bike looked over my a mate next week.

Shay: Do it, wherever you go just get out there away from the awful driving and weather over here...

[Qube77]

Thanks for the write up, it was a great read and some smashing photos.

I hope that one day I will get myself sorted out and tour around France.
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Current Bike - Bandit 650s
Next Bike - ????

[instigator]

Top write up mate, made me jealous. I had such a trip planned for a 2 weeks ago but quitting my job put that idea on the backburner. Try belgium and germany next time, absolutely cracking roads around the ardennes.

[colin1]

great right up
great pics
____________________
colin1 is officially faster than god

[TheDonUK]

Yea i had Germany ie the nurburgring on the agenda for next years trip, its a bit of a toss up between that and belgium as you suggest or the boat to santander this time and do the pyrnesse completely, maybe ile do the pyrenese and then cut up towards germany belgium, i remember seeing signs for brussels around lyon/orange