Day 2 dawned bright and early as we had to be up and out of our cabin a half hour before docking into Santander at 8.00am and we wanted breakfast before as well.
I had already planned a route and imported it into the pitiful BMW Connected app and set it to “Winding”. That setting gives you three options: “Min:, “Max” and a middle setting. and I assume – because there’s no help file – that Min means it’s not too windy and max means it’s going to take you all round Will’s mother’s.
So off we went. And yes, it decided that what we really wanted to do on an RT touring bike on road tyres, two-up with luggage was to use gravel tracks… And that was when it was actually keeping Connected. I think BMW Motorrad are taking the piss calling it that, because for any navigation you have to use their app. To do so, you have to pair the phone to your bike – woe betide you if you want to use your phone with your intercom on any other bike, because the bike has to be the intermediary and you have to unpair your phone and intercom.
Once you’ve connected via Bluetooth and planned your route, you tell the app to navigate and then you have to set up an additional wireless connection to the RT just to see the maps.
So far, so good(!), but at a random – or many random – points on your journey, that wireless connection will drop out and to top it off the Bluetooth connection might also randomly drop out, leaving you to have to stop by the side of the road, open the storage compartment, re-establish the connection – which may or may not mean restarting the RT – and then get going again.
Later on, the RT decided it might just reboot itself completely, leaving you with a blank screen without any speed information, let alone any navigation.
It is utterly pants. It’s not even like the navigation system properly displays POIs or warns you of safety cameras, for instance. Indeed, at the start of Day 3, I was very low on fuel and the Connected (cr)app was telling me the nearest petrol station was 87km away when there was actually one showing on Google Maps and Apple Maps 3/4km away. But you can’t use those apps on the RT because BMW are too stupid to get CarPlay working on their bikes, whilst it’s working on their cars. It Connected or nothing!
Anyway, whinge over, we set off and then rerouted manually to at least see some scenic roads and stops for coffee along the way to our first night’s hotel, the Parador de Sos del Rey Católico.
Now I’d first heard of Paradores on the wonderful Harry’s Garage YouTube channel from some of his road trip videos and unknown to me to start with, this particular Parador was featured in Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’t excellent series, The Trip to Spain.
View from the terrace at the Parador de Sos del Rey Católico
Parador de Sos del Rey Católico Room
After a shower and a freshen-up – it had been quite a warm ride with us seeing 37°C at one point – we decided that wine and generous gins on an empty stomach would help help…
Before dinner, we headed off into Sos del Rey Católico itself for a little exercise despite it still being pretty bloody hot. The place is very hilly but very picturesque.
And then dinner: local food cooked to a very high standard. Very much recommended.
And finally, a little bit of footage from on the bike:
As I mentioned in an earlier post, following the shakedown trip to Berlin, we were heading off on a tour of Spain, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium in July.
We had ummed and ahhed about buying mesh jackets to wear instead of the Klim kit we have but thought that we would struggle for luggage space because we would need to stack the Latitude and Altitude gear somewhere if we were wearing mesh jackets and we were packing a lot of clothing already, given the quality of the hotels and restaurants we had booked, so decent shoes, trousers, shirts and dresses were already taking up a fair bit of space.
How much space? Well there was all the standard luggage space (including the optional top case) and on top of the top case we were again using the Kriega US-40 Rackpack but this time we had added one of my venerable old Kriega US-20 Drypacks on top using the wonderful strapping system engineered into these bags.
I also thought about buying a new drone to use on the journey but with only a week to go decided against buying it for now as the trip was going to be pretty mileage-intensive so stopping, setting up, filming, returning, repacking, etc. was probably off the table. Maybe next year?
A couple of days beforehand, I thought I’d just print out our travel documents. You may know we’d originally booked it for a week or two before before but Angelina’s graduation date was announced and clashed, so we had had to rebook… without the CClub Lounge access on our original booking. Luckily there must have been a last minute cancellation, so I managed to book the last two spots, meaning we could relax in a bit more peaceful surroundings and enjoy complimentary food and wine.
We headed off to Portsmouth after work on the Thursday, boarded and found our cabin. Two nights and one full day aboard awaited us. Sadly, Brittany Ferries’ “Salamanca” ship doesn’t have an actual gym or fitness suite and the spa was just a couple of chairs and a table near to the kids’ zone. Hardly relaxing. But the cabin was fine, the porthole looking out to sea was nice to have and the quality of the food and drink in the Lounge was good enough for us not to need to eat in the restaurants.
Overall? Pricey at £747 all-in one way, but comfortable if a bit boring and it got us to Santander on the Saturday morning ready to go. Would we do it again? Well, it gets you right into Northern Spain but £750 pays for a nice hotel or two and the petrol to ride down the West coast and through the Pyrenees.
Out of Spain into France. So that was the Atlantic Ocean over to the Mediterranean Sea then. And goodbye Spain, hello France. 910km so far, riding the BMW R1250RT along the N-260 (and others) from La Seu d’Urgell in the Spanish Pyrenees to Banyuls-sur-Mer on the French coast. We also diverted up to ride the infamous Gorges de Galamus.
Once we got to our hotel and parked up – after the BMW Connected app decided we should approach it from a footpath above – we checked in to our room.
Côté Thalasso Banyuls-sur-Mer
I have no idea what that clicking is in the video, and no, I didn’t mean the old biddy walking down the corridor…
Food at the Côté Thalasso Banyuls-sur-Mer exceeded expectations; the tasting menu was superb with the beef and dauphinois potatoes a high point before this dessert. A lovely local red wine too.
So Banyuls-sur-Mer was better than expected and they were kind enough to let us keep the RT parked outside reception where they could keep an eye on it. We decided to pin it to win it to get to our next stay, but first we explored the harbour.
So it was holiday time again and despite working until late on the Friday and hence only doing last minute packing, I found myself heading off at Oh Dark Hundred on Saturday, 1st June to the Eurotunnel to meet up with Yox and Purge.
Yox had organised the crossing tickets as well as working out a route that linked up a number of great biking roads in and around the Pyrenees, so we were heading off there with a view to getting all the way down to the Pyrenees by nightfall. The benefit of travelling off-peak as far as the French are concerned should have been that we wouldn’t need to book any hotels in advance and hence we wouldn’t have any pressure to be at a pre-determined destination on any day.
They both took the mick out of the lack of tread on my sporty tyres which I’d though would be fine for the trip … without realising I’d done the 2,100 mile Ardèche trip on the same tyres before… And so we turned out onto the motorways and headed South. As it transpired, the motorways were a leeeetle bit abrasive and by the time we’d lost and found Purge around Paris and made our way down to Clermont-Ferrand, the tyres were well and truly shagged and wouldn’t make it home. Ah!
Purge and I were both using Tom-Tom Rider satnavs – mine a more recent model after my other one was stolen by my psycho ex-girlfriend – and both had been updated to the latest maps … which showed the hotel we selected as being halfway up a hill in a residential area. It wasn’t there, of course, but we went back to where Yox’s Co-Pilot Android software (the same I use on my iPhone) had guided him. I then went in and negotiated a decent room rate for the three of us with use of their own garage for the first overnight stay. Then shower, change, beers and a huge evening meal before bed.
Day Two and we were heading off via Millau towards Perpignan. The twisting roads of the Haute-Pyrenees were fabulous but tiring so as we rode into Quillan, we found a traditional-looking hotel, the Hotel La Chaumiere, to check into. As it was Yox’s birthday, the beers, the wine and the food were on Purge and I.
The view from my balcony
The meal also included the heaviest wine bottle I’ve ever seen: truly bizarre (but tasty)!
The heaviest wine bottle ever
After dinner, it was up to our rooms … and I discovered that my carefully-arranged base layers had flown off the balcony and were laying in front of the restaurant. Ah!
Day Three and it was time to sort out my racing slicks. We delayed breakfast and I then spent the next half an hour ringing around all the motorcycle dealers and tyre depots to see if I could get sorted. They were all shut, despite it being a Monday, as they’d been open on the Saturday. Oh to be French! So I decided to press on into Andorra alone – our planned destination – to try to find tyres and let Yox and Purge head off into Spain to play on the roads. This included my first real view of some of the passes and cols and snow-capped peaks.
Note racing slicks…
Instagram version!
Some epic twisty roads towards Andorra then saw me going through the 2.8km long Túnel d’Envalira which was like going through a refrigerator!
Emerged from the Túnel d’Envalira
Then it was down into Andorra. As I came close to Andorra la Vella, I passed by a KTM dealer and popped inside to see if they could sort me out with tyres using my best Spanglish. They were really helpful and directed me to a car/bike dealer nearby that happened to be a Kawasaki franchise. So in I went, agreed a deal to get new tyres fitted that afternoon and then went off to find us a hotel, the Novotel. While the tyres were being fitted – a process that took the entire afternoon… – I went out scouting for dinner and found an excellent tapas restaurant.
Out with the old…
…in with the new
When Purge and Yox arrived after enjoying what they said were some of the best roads they’d seen, it was off to eat.
Allow me to explain through the medium of interpretive dance
Day Four and we were heading off to Bagnères-de-Luchon via the twisties. Epic roads out of Andorra – back the way I’d come – and this time, I’d set up my helmet camera to capture some of the footage:
It was warm and sunny … and snowy at the top of the Pyrenees which meant the scenery was spectacular.
Once we were into the Haute-Pyrenees again, we went up a few of the Cols that feature in the Tour de France as well as a few others:
Col du Port
On one descent, I was able to coast for over 3 miles, overtaking cars and lorries with the engine off! Yox also did the reveal on his luxury item: he’d brought some fine coffee and a little fold-up stove to brew it on, so we had coffee at the Col du Port … and he set fire to a picnic table by mistake.
Finally we made it into Bagnères-de-Luchon where we pulled up in the square next to the Hôtel Panoramic where I did the usual and we checked in.
Bagnères-de-Luchon
Bagnères-de-Luchon
Bagnères-de-Luchon
Day Five and we were headed off to Spain via a few more peaks which were covered in snow … which we duly played in. Obviously.
I’m snow angel
Eejit dance
Talking of playing, Yox had rigged up his camera and followed me off down one of the descents:
After a day’s bend-swinging (including a visit to our spiritual home, a village called Perves), we were tired and decided to cut our intended journey short, so we checked in to the fabulous Hotel Cotori in El Pont de Suert.
Hotel Cotori
That’s a pedestrian square… We were recommended a decent tapas restaurant where, despite the protestations of the owner, I went ahead and ordered us a whole selection of dishes that just kept on coming. Delicious! And all finished off by us.
Day Six and it was breakfast with two grumpy buggers. Something about a blue ZRX’s alarm going off at 3.15am. I was unaware of this, given I was sound asleep at the back of the hotel…
So the plan for the day was to head back into France, but we hadn’t reckoned on the nature of the route being so twisty and covering a large vertical variance: up and down like a whore’s drawers! This wasn’t helped by finding out when we were there that the famous Col du Tormalet was shut due to there being 6-9m of snow on the road at the summit!
More epic roads and scenery though. Tired and getting late, we diverted into Lourdes to find a hotel for the night … and we found one: a €29 a night one that we christened “Hotel Paradiso” that probably charged the rooms out by the hour too… What a dive! Lourdes in general – and our hotel in particular – was full of gangs of schoolkids with various coloured beanie hats and scarves being led around by Catholic priests. What a strange place!
I woke up quite hot at around 3am and my body heat had ‘refreshed’ the mattress such that there was a smell of urine from the depths of the mattress (itself on a plastic-covered bed base). I couldn’t wait to get a shower in the morning! Purge had the evening before found a dead insect in his sheets!
Day Seven. Keen to get a move on and put the Hotel Paradiso behind us, we headed back into Spain via a whole load more passes, peaks and valleys.
Photo!
We got as far as Jaca in Aragon and after filling up we headed to the Hotel & Spa Real Jaca which did us a great deal for the rooms and underground parking with breakfast. The only downside was the Saga louts that checked in later: a whole coachload of OAPs that swooped on the restaurant to scoff the food.
Day Eight and I woke up to the “shh” of car tyres on wet roads. Looking out of the window, I could see it was absolutely tipping down: not good considering we were hoping to get to Le Mans by the evening. So we had breakfast, checked out and headed out into torrential rain at around 9.00am, up and up into the Pyrenees towards France. My vented race boots started leaking after 16 miles but fortunately the rest of my riding gear was keeping me dry. Stupidly, I’d not worn a base layer under my T-shirt and hadn’t zipped-in the liner to my riding gear either, so the combination of rain storms and altitude meant I was getting really cold. By the time of our first fuel stop into France, I was grateful to be able to put on some more clothes before we headed off back into the worst riding conditions any of us had ever seen (in my case, in 35 years of riding).
The autoroute around Bordeaux was more like a canal and at one point it felt like I was sitting on a chair while someone directed a fire hose at me, the rain was so heavy.
Towards Paris it stopped raining and near Tours at another fuel stop, we decided to pin it and win it: we wouldn’t bother stopping for the night near Le Mans; we’d just keep going for the other 300 miles to the Eurotunnel station and see if we could get on a day early, ratther than getting changed out of our wet gear and potentially facing another day’s wet riding on the Sunday.
We arrived at around 10.15pm, some 780 miles later and were pleased to be put onto the 11.45pm crossing, so we finally had something to eat and drink and on we went.
Homeward bound
Back onto English soil at around 11.45pm UK time, we went our separate ways and I blasted back towards London and my apartment, which I reached at around 12.30am.
Roughly 2,100 miles again. Another epic Euroblast.
So yes, I’d ummed and ahhed about getting a new bike for the trip before I left and more or less settled on a new Triumph Sprint GT 1050 but knew I’d not be able to get it run in and sorted before the off. Blue Rex was epic in the twisties and looks the bollocks too, but on the motorways above 90mph for mile after mile and hour after hour it’s a bit of an effort plus some fixed luggage makes sense. So I’m test riding a Sprint next weekend and will probably place an order there and then so I can have it properly sorted before next year’s planned Eurothrash two-up with GT to the Alps.
Or maybe a late summer long weekend sortie across the Channel just to get a feel for it… 😉
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