Elche to Faro

The interactive map of the route

This was it, the last day of my run into Faro, the last 450 miles of my not-exactly-epic-but-still-quite-a-long-way-really trip down to the Faro rally, and the last day for which I was going to have to nurse my ever-deteriorating clutch plates. If I could get to Faro, I knew there was a BMW dealer where I could get the bike fettled.



After a pleasant breakfast, surrounded by nubile volleyball players, I left the air-conditioned comfort of the hotel and rode into the blast-furnace heat of another blistering day. After a few kilometres, the newly built roads surrounding the industrial park gave way to older roads that the GPS did have a handle on, and I rejoined the coastal autopista, heading west towards Granada and the ferries to Spanish Africa. I had been surprised yesterday to see a couple of motorway signs with arabic translations on, and as I headed west they became more common. As also did large numbers of transit vans and people carriers crammed with entire extended families of presumably north african extraction, roof racks piled high with goods and chattles, making their heavily laden way towards the port. I passed seemingly hundreds of them, on the road, broken down at the side of the road or in the service areas, as I headed West towards Granada. Memorably, I saw one old transit with the back end balanced precariously on bricks on the hard shoulder, a pair of legs protruding from underneath and with the back axle out next to it!

The coastal autopista peters out into a mere autovia and then turns south into Andalucia, heading for Almeria, Malaga, Cadiz and Gibraltar, but I needed to head west, on the A92, towards Granada and Seville. This turned out to be a single ribbon of twisting, snaking dual-carriageway, getting on for 200 miles long, tracking west through arid, spaghetti western-esque terrain. It was blisteringly hot, habitation beyond the very occasional petrol station seemed non-existent, and there was nothing to do except ride, at a.. progressive pace. My GPS is a wondrous device, as it bleeped to warn me of the two places on the A92 where I might expect to encounter the Guardia Civil, and indeed at those locations, I came across fairly miserable looking traffic cops on BMW RT's, sheltering in the shade of motorway bridges, looking for revenue opportunities while avoiding heatstroke.

Pausing only to drink water, and to take on fuel, I pushed on until I hit the Seville ringroad, then joined the Autopista del Quinto Centenario, the main E1, for the final Spanish leg of the trip to Faro. When I stopped for juice one last time in Spain, I decided to phone my host in Faro and tell him my ETA.

The A49, stretching back into Spain... I stopped here for my final fill-up on Spanish soil. It hadn't rained here for months. Which is why the cloudburst that occurred while I was filling up caused some consternation...

I'm not certain, but it is just possible that hesitating before getting back on the bike (because of the freak unseasonal rain shower) at that crucial juncture saved me from an extremely unpleasant and fiery death.

When I did throw a leg over the bike, I nearly fell off again. 6 months of blazing sun followed by a rain shower equals an ice rink. Eventually, I slid my way back onto the autovia towards Portugal, and very quickly the rain passed and the sun dried the tarmac.

It wasn't that long before I was cresting thepenultimate rise before the bridge that would take me into Portugal.

Portugal, at last.

I was particularly intrigued by the giant mushroom-cloud shaped rock-formation I caught a glimpse of ahead of me.

When I crested the next and last rise, I realised that the giant mushroom cloud shaped rock formation had orange flames in it, and was in fact a giant mushroom cloud.

I realised that I would be passing quite close to whatever it was that had exploded. Very close, I realised. As I approached the bridge, the traffic had come to a halt and I filtered up between the two lanes of traffic until I reached the middle of the bridge and I could see what had stopped the traffic.

Armageddon.

The entire western end of the bridge was engulfed in flame. It looked like a plane had crashed. Later it transpired that a tanker loaded with volatile chemicals had suffered a front tyre blow-out, had got a serious weave on, and had then driven straight off the side of the bridge, hitting the rock face on the Portuguese side of the marshes that border the river, and exploding spectacularly. There was no sign of the driver, or the lorry - bar a number of pieces of smoking debris laying on the bridge deck.

By the time it occured to me to get my camera out, the flames had subsided somewhat.

The flames had subsided substantially when I finally reached for the camera... The tanker truck which exploded had ploughed through the crash barriers and slammed head-on onto the rock face, before detonating.	Another angle on the fire. There are pieces of smoking debris spread across the bridge deck near the site of the explosion.
The ambulance was somewhat redundant. The truck has vanished, and the driver with it.	Chasing the flames... Tinder dry after months without rain, the grass and vegetation on these dry marshes burnt fiercely, as fire engines and crews chased the flames to try and head them off. The fire was winning at this point...
Firefighting control helicopter... According to Louis, we were very likely to be treated to the big fire-bombing planes - Portugal has terrible forest fire problems, and this grass fire was getting out of control.

Then suddenly, as the spreading flames started to get away from the fire crews, there was a sudden wind squall that nearly blew the bike over, and fanned the flames terribly, before the heavens opened again for the first time in 6 months, and deposited several gallons of water per square foot in about 15 minutes, sparing the fire crews blushes, and sparing me from being doused with fire retardents dropped by aircraft, apparently the next level of response. Freak weather isn't always a bad thing...

The westbound side of the bridge was obviously a bit dodgy - there was no guard rail, it was covered in bits of toasted truck, it had first been blown up and then been engulfed in a high intensity fireball for an hour or so. In the UK, we could have been waiting there months while the HSE faffed about. The Buncefield site, next to my office, is still cordoned off after 6 months while they ponce about writing reports on the explosion. In Portugal, a collective effort by the Spanish Guardia Civil and a Portuguese road crew had cut through the concrete lane divider, lifted the cut sections clear and coned up a diversion onto the other side of the bridge within an hour of the fire being out.

Pity about the huge trench where the divider had been.

Still, I missed the Spanish copper, and in any case if I had hit him I was only about 20 metres from the Portuguese border...

And so on to Faro, and Casa Louis, my almost terminally knackered clutch struggling and starting to slip as it climbed the hill to my genial host's rather spectacular villa. An evening of good food, good company and good beer, at extraordinarily paltry prices, and all was right with the world...




X-posted to khaylock, uk_bikers, motorcycles

Coming next: The Faro Rally...