For the first time in three years the weather forecast is predictable and the weather is fairly stable in Western Europe at the beginning of my journey. The bike is in mint condition (in spite of the 110000 km on the clock) everything is ready - and I feel a bit weird; this is all too good to be true. Certainly if all is this good, the bike will explode on the first few miles into the trip? But this morning I am relieved to see that there is blue skies and no rain in all of Western Europe - except at the Eastern end of Lake Zurich where I live:
I feel better now, knowing that mother nature is still trying its best to deter me from my endeavour. As a result I set out fairly late at 10.30 am, heading out of Switzerland on the motorway to Geneva.
The weather improves with every mile I am biking westwards. The temperature is also absolutely ideal for motorbiking - all day it's between 16 and 22 degrees centigrade. At Neuchâtel the sun comes out. By 1430 hours I am in France and the fun begins; Savoie, Ain and Isère are three of my favourite French departments, and I see a lot of each of them. Here is a view from the Col de Clergeon:
Though I started late I end the day after 530 km at 1800 hours at the hotel 'Chez Rene' in Beaurepaire in the Isère department. The hotel is quiet and the first (though certainly not the last) four-course French diner of this voyage is a fine end to a splendid first day. The Internet in the hotel however is about as fast as transmitting data via Morse code - a shame given that this was the first town in France to get street lighting.
The landlord yesterday was quite exacting about his statement that breakfast will be served at 8 am sharp. So I ensure that I am
on time - only to find the front door, the reception and the restaurant firmly locked with no staff at all in sight. Vive La France.
Swiss precision meets Latin lifestyle. I try again at 9 am - and now there is life in the kitchen. The usual French excuse for a breakfast (jam, baguette and croissant, washed down with milk coffee) is only bearable by the outlook of another fine diner tonight.
Outside it is already 14 degrees by 8.30 am and the sun is shining out of an immaculate blue sky.
Due to the delayed breakfast it is 10 am when I set out. Ardèche, Haute-Loire and Lozère are under my wheels today - and they
are truly spectacular motorbike areas. The progress is slow, especially while biking through the Margeride, a high plateau with
few inhabitants and just a lot of narrow, winding country lanes.
Then I bike for about 40 km through the valley of the Tarn river - any biker who ever biked through France has heard legends about this
valley. And this time of the year the place is not overcrowded with tourists, even on a Sunday, like it often is during
peak season. But it is getting fairly hot in the valley, nearly 30 degrees. I stop and open all the vents on my protective
clothing to let as much air in as possible.
After the valley of the Tarn comes the Millau Viaduct - I ride straight underneath it, and I suppose I am the only foreign biker ever NOT to take any pictures of it - apologies to Norman Foster. The only pic I shot today was one of the bike, so that you know what I am riding on:
All I have to show for over eight solid hours on the bike are a measly 400 km - I can hear my readers from North America having a
laugh at that. But doing an average of 50 kilometres per hour on these roads is no mean feat. Everyone who doubts that is most welcome to give it
a try and beat that average.
The day ends at Lacaune in the south of the Tarn department. While riding into town I spot a young couple with a pram on the
sidewalk and ask them which of the two hotels in town would be the better one. They recommend the "Relais de Fusies" in the town
centre. That turns out to be a good choice for 65 Euros - a fine old building with thick walls and conveniently cool inside.
However, their restaurant is closed today, so I pick up my dinner at a pizza parlour around the corner - not really something up to yesterdays 4-course French dinner.
The hotel is nearly 1000 metres above sea level, yet the outside temperature at 8 am this morning is already 16 degrees. Today will be a scorcher, that is for sure.
After breakfast I give the hotel owner a hand putting his (broken down) Renault Caravelle on a trailer. It is funny how this French car now needs a German towcar plus a Spanish trailer to get it moving...
The breakfast is at 8 am, and here the staff is on time, so I manage to set out at 9 am on my third day of biking. As you can see from the map below, Aude, Ariège and the Pyrenees are on for today. The roads are empty, winding and slow, just as I like it, though my progress isn't any faster than yesterday. I stop for fuel whenever I can. During the past few years most petrol stations in larger towns have started to accept foreign credit cards when filling up outside hours or at those many fully automated pumps. But down here in the sticks there are still many supermarket filling stations where only the sodded French "Carte Bleue" is accepted.
After 9 hours on the bike I end the day after 430 km in the town of Arreau in the foothills of the Pyrenees. The two-star rural hotel charges 60 Euros for diner, bed and breakfast. The place is old and creaky, and so is the couple running the place, but all I need after a day on the bike is a pillow for my head and a quiet room - which I have here outside of the town much more than in one of the places in the town centre.
The weather is rather strange this morning; it's only 12 degrees when I pack the bike, but once I ride up the first mountain it quickly warms up to 22 degrees - only to go down to 14 degrees in the next valley. We have a low inversion on the French side of the mountains, ending at about 800 metres above sea. Warm air is sitting on top of it, meaning that at noon today I ride at 18 degrees 200 metres above sea level, only to hit 26 degrees minutes later at over 1600 metres on top of the next mountain pass.
From Arreau I am biking due south over the mountains into Aragon on the Spanish side. Right after passing the border the gutted French road turns into a smooth, wide and winding wet dream for motorbikers. These Spaniards certainly keep their road system in much better nick than the French.
I have received complaints about not posting enough pictures, so I did a few today and even went to the exceptional extend of getting off my bike to take some of them. Here are the best of them:
The above is a picture taken in a layby in Aragon, the one below shows you that biking the Pyrenees in Navarre is just like biking the Alps - except that you have the road and the mountains to yourself and not have to share them with a zillion other people.
At Ainsa I turn west on the "old" N260 (the new one was build a while back further south) via Broto and Biescas. At Biescas I head north again, once more into France and over the mountains, only to turn south again at Arette and head back into Spain - this is just some of the greatest biking possible. Endless, winding and empty roads, and even the petrol costs "only" 1.35 Euros in Spain...
I end the day after another 400 spectacular kilometres at Aoiz just a few miles away from Pamplona. The hotel Ekai has three stars and the 29 degrees outside temperature are nicely offset by the aircon being pre-set by the friendly staff to 19 degrees. An excellent three-course diner with coffee sets me back by 13 Euros - back home in Switzerland our local Pizza service charges 18 Euros for a small pizza.
Another day of unbroken blue skies today, though the temperature charts indicate that some parts of the country might get a bit uncomfortably hot this afternoon:
As a precaution against heatstroke I think it will be a wise move to stick close to the cooler coast of the Bay of Biscay.
Just after 9 am I leave the hotel and head around Pamplona on the motorway. Just as expected it gets to 26 degrees by 10.30 am - and then I reach the coast near Zumaia, where a thin fog covers the sun and the temperature drops to 15 degrees as anticipated. The price I have to pay for riding through the cool coastal air is that I have to bike through the Basque country - which is not to my liking. It is not only the large population, it is especially the people themselves; all road signs are in Basque language (imagine an Aztec warrior trying to speak in Dutch language and you are not far off) and even electronic sign boards on roadworks show whether you have to wait or can drive on only in Basque - as a foreigner you have to wait for what the locals do. Add to that political graffiti everywhere plus the odd van full of Tannoy speakers blaring some propaganda and I feel like I am biking through an old Guareschi novel from the 1950's. Everything here states "we don't need anyone here that was not born and bred here". Ulster in the 1980's was more inviting...
But a few miles beyond Bilbao I am in Cantabria where Spanish is spoken and the road along the coast is much more fun. Here is a snapshot of it:
This road is also very popular with pilgrims hiking along the Camino de Santiago. It's not as bad as further south on the main pilgrims route, but one has to expect some guy leading a less than docile donkey or some pushbiker in an advanced stage of religious delirium at every corner, so I have to look out extra sharply. After nine hours on the bike I end the day at Llanes in Asturias. The place is full of simple "Hostales" for the pilgrims, but thankfully they also offer some refined accommodation outside town for the more discerning traveller. Tonight a cold front should pass through and ensure that conditions will be reasonably cool further inland, too, so hopefully I can ride in the mountains again tomorrow.
The hotel has no restaurant, so yesterday evening I walked the mile into town to pick up some diner - for Spain the town centre is rather expensive, I suppose that is another result of the endless stream of pilgrims.
Having finished the day with a two mile walk means that I slept like a rock last night. In the morning I am woken up by a strange, hissing noise - it's the heaters in the room being on at full blast. Outside it is 14 degrees - the average Spaniard probably thinks this is Siberia. For me that is just about right.
Other than the French, here in Spain people also know what a man-sized breakfast has to look like; bread rolls, sausages, tortillas and cheese will ensure that I won't run out of steam on my way back into the (now nicely cooled-down) mountains.
There is a "Farmacia" near the hotel where I stop to buy some lotion for my blisters - I am not having blisters on my feet like many of those footsore pilgrims, no. Befittingly I am developing blisters on my right hand from keeping the throttle open. My pampered office hands are not used to more than tinkering with a computer keyboard these days. As expected the pharmacy has whole racks of the stuff ready at hand for worn out pilgrims. The lotion I am given proves to be excellent - I reckon that by tomorrow those blisters will be gone.
It's nearly 10 o'clock when I set out from Llanes. It is overcast, but the cold front has not brought any rain, as expected. I am heading south, back into the mountains, and it is rather cool. But I prefer that rather than burning heat. This is the Picos de Europa National Park. If you've ever been here, then you probably know where this buck is located:
However, you may remember the buck somewhat less obfuscated; it is located at about 1500 metres above sea - which today is about 200 metres above the base of the clouds, i. e. the buck, my Tigger and myself are in dense clouds.
Back down in the valley I need a "cafe con leche" to warm myself up again - luckily there are cafes in every village, note the stork nesting on the church spire:
My route leads further west via the Riano and Luna reservoirs. Practically everyone takes the new motorway around the Luna reservoir, so I have the old (and for Spain rather badly potholed) country road on the eastern shore to myself:
From the well known buck I am heading to another place I know very well, though you may never have heard about it; the town of Villablino, where my old bike "Kitty" broke down in 2006 (you can read all about it here). From Villablino I am heading south into the Sierra de la Cabrera. The road can well and truly apply for the title "the loneliest road in the Iberian peninsula". For over 100 km there is just nothing but a few slate mines and ghost villages. The road winds up to 1850 metres above sea (it's seven degrees centigrade up there...) and there is absolutely nothing out here. More out of necessity than by design I end the day after 530 km in the town of La Bañeza, simply because it is the first inhabited place after that long stretch of wilderness.
What an extraordinary ride to mark the end of my westward journey. Here is the altitude profile of those six days of biking:
Below is the usual map with my GPS tracklog.