Northern Spain
I just returned from Northern Spain last month. Took the ferry from Plymouth to Santander - only 24 hours compared with Portsmouth to Bilbao. It arrives 9.00 am in Santander so you get in a full day riding, whereas the 36 hour boat to Bilbao arrives 3.30pm and costs more money to-boot!. The caberet on the boat was great followed by a disco which got us to bed rather later than we had intended (2.30 am).
From Santander you can do the Picos D'Europa mountains by lunch time. Roads are first class and cops are virtually nil. What police you do see are in such delipidated wagons (jeeps) they would never take chase. In general road manners are no where as good as France, so watch out on blind mountain bends where the buses/lorries need to miss overhanging rocks.
We headed inland then north to the Pyrenees and followed the entire length of mountains thu the National Reserve and then onto Andora. The combination of bends and superb tarmac was fantastic. You need to exceed the speed limit to do them full justice. There are a lot of ski holiday hostels in the Pyrenees so finding accomodation was easy, but inland it was hard.
Some of the roads inland were not so well surfaced and hard going for the XX, but still a challenge. As well as the odd stone lying on these roads, there seems to be an abundance of bullshit (not bull shit but the real brown stuff), hence the challenge to keep a safe line.
In Andora you get a chance of duty free m/cycle stuff and being the second trip to Andora this year we had vowed to pick up new helmets and poser sun glasses. But as in May, the weather was so piggin hot in Andora de Vella that we just wanted to get back up the mountains for some cool temperatures. Beware the tarmac temperatures above 2000 metres as they will be as cold tyres are to the lowland roads.
We returned to UK via France spending three days in Dordogne, another place for twistie freaks. Via Caen to Portsmouth. Not one speed camera during the whole 2300 miles, just one friggin Frog radar trap one mile from Caen Ferry waiting for the Brits to fly by.
Just happened we were pulling into the gas station at that point, so we gave hom the V-ictory sign and a laugh !!!!!!
