Homeward bound...

The interactive map of the route

All good things come to an end, and the following Wednesday morning it was unfortunately that time.


Myself and my riding companion (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) saddled up and hit the road remarkably early, due to said companion's fetishistic belief in getting on the road before sparrow fart, despite the fact that we were on holiday and under no time pressure whatsoever. Our objective on day one of the return trip was the Novotel in Valladolid, where I'd booked a couple of rooms. We compromised on the route, swapping some of my riding companion's favoured Portuguese toll motorway blasting for a chance to take the N2 north for the first 60 or 70 miles. Personally, I'd have done the full 250 miles on the truly awesome N2, and just accepted that I wasn't going to get to bed until 10pm, but it takes all sorts.

A word about the N2. Portugal is, or was, a country with a third world transport infrastructure, and the N2 was the trunk road out of Faro and to all points North, via every fold of the mountainous terrain. For very small values of trunk. Or road, to be honest. And, since it was a poorly surfaced twisty tarmac goat track, carrying large amounts of traffic,private and commercial, most of it driven by Portuguese drivers (for whom driving tests were unheard of relatively recently), it quickly and deservedly earned its reputation as by far the most dangerous road in the whole of Europe.

Enter the EU, bearing a strategic vision! If your local road network is full of potholes and getting worse,you'll be reassured to know that your taxes are being spent on the roads.

In Portugal.

Big signs proclaim the EU's (i.e. my) generosity, and a stunning job they have done. The N2 is now a perfectly surfaced, constant width ribbon of twisty tarmac, with decent road markings and consistent signage all along its 250 mile-odd length. Where it was too narrow, civil engineers have widened it, where the bridges were inadequate they have been rebuilt, and the result is the most stunning stretch of shimmering tarmac I have ever ridden.

All of which would be pretty academic if it was still choked with lorries, but the EU - once it had resurfaced the entire N2, immediately followed it up by building a whole network of high quality toll motorways nearby, effectively rendering the freshly surfaced motorcycle mecca of the N2 entirely redundant for anybody more interested in getting from A to B than in wearing out the edges of their tyres.

So, that's 250 miles of perfectly surfaced empty ultra-twisty road in a country bathed in brilliant sunshine for most of the year, with hardly any traffic clogging it.

The motorcycling equivalent of an orgasm, I suggest. Actually, multiple orgasms.

So we hit the N2. And then we stopped in a small town to get cash out of a hole in the wall, and while my GPS was busy looking for a satellite again, I promptly went up the wrong high-quality EU-surfaced road on the way out of town. By the time the GPS found its towel, we were in the wrong place, but not far away from the right place as the crow flies, so I hit roads that took us towards the N2 (rather than backtracking fifteen miles as my GPS kept suggesting. On we rode, following a twisty but recently expensively EU resurfaced and widened road up into the mountains, heading North and almost parallel to the N2. And then, suddenly the EU money ran out, along with the road, and the perfectly surfaced road was replaced by a gravel track climbing up the side of the biggest adjacent mountain!

Still, it headed in the right direction, while my GPS decided that the only option was to backtrack halfway to Faro, so we followed it for several miles, through gully and up ravine, miles from the nearest tarmac road - tarmac roads being remarkably rare thereabouts. The enormous white space on the road map I later looked at is for real! Eventually, we crossed the top of the mountain on our chosen goat track and headed down the other side, hitting tarmac on another EU surfaced road that took us back on to the main N2.

A dirt road, somewhere in the Portuguese mountains... ...North of Faro. This bit was at the bottom when we rejoined the road. the bit at the top of the mountain was rather more goat track and less dirt motorway...

The N2 was everything it was billed to be, and the next 50 miles of hot ultra-twisty tarmac was just brilliant, in a pegscrapinglytastic kind of way. If you ever get the chance to ride it, jump at it. Enough said...

At Gomes-Aires we abandoned the awesome N2 and joined the efficient IP1 - and I managed to lose my automated toll ticket at this point while trying to jam it into a pocket, only realising later when it was time to pay; that cost me!

And then it was boring. In fact, the trip from hereon was only enlivened by my riding companion's constant griping, and his terminally annoying habit of stopping every 20 miles and putting five euros worth of fuel in his tank, so he could take his padded (!) UK winter-spec (!!) leather jacket off for a moment in the furnace-like 90 degree heat and grab a few sips of water. Then he'd put it all back on again, pause for a moment to berate yours truly for not putting my sweaty gloves on quickly enough for his liking, and then chug off again for another 20 miles at a maddening and invariable 65mph! We did this for the rest of the morning, while I humoured him, and the one time I did fill up with fuel, he almost had an aneurism over the fact that I was still filling up while he was putting his helmet on. Come lunchtime and my intention to stop for some food and a rest was greeted as if I'd shat in his cornflakes. In hindsight I wish I had.

Anyway, the sedate progress (and the whinging) resumed until we hit the Spanish border, at which point traffic slowed to a crawl on a narrow road alongside yet another new motorway being built to link the two antagonistic neighbours. And as I overtook a couple of slow-moving lorries, that was the last I saw of my riding companion, who had obviously given up overtaking for lent or something. I slowed down later when the road turned to dual carriageway, and eventually parked up in a lay-by and waited for him, to no avail. Somehow he managed to chug past me while I waited next to the road, probably while I sent him a text message to suggest a meeting point. Anyway, I then rode the next 130 miles at an even more maddening 60mph or less in order to allow my two wheeled brother (who had actually fucked off ahead of me) more time to catch up, before discovering at my suggested rendezvous a text to tell me that he was almost at our destination and would meet me there.

Except that when I finally got to Valladolid, and fought my way (with the aid of the GPS) through the most hideous set of roadworks known to man (or woman) to the hotel, he wasn't there. He had apparently been puttering aimlessly around Valladolid for the last hour looking for it. So when I texted him that I was outside the hotel, hoping that he might have got the beers in, I was surprised to get a sequence of irate texts demanding directions from who knows where to the hotel! Like I knew! And since the individual in question was refusing to answer his phone, I gave him some fairly sketchy directions from the autopista based on my vague memories of the GPS-led route I had followed and waited for him to call back.

About two hours later, the intellectual giant finally phoned me, in an apopleptic rage with me, having spent a further two hours riding aimlessly in ever decreasing circles around Valladolid. Apparently this was all entirely my fault. Including the bit where he ended up on a housing estate several miles outside town. I think I found this funnier than he did. And he still wanted directions. Except that he didn't know where he was. And he wanted them then and there. From me.

I did my best. I really did.

To express his thanks, the charmless wanker fucked off into the night without a further word, leaving me holding the bill for the room I'd booked for him.

And has only spoken to me since to confirm that he is no longer talking to me!

Anyway, I decided that I wouldn't let unpleasant and unexpected events balls up the end of my so far excellent holiday, and hatched a new plan. I suddenly found myself with three days to enjoy the South of France and absolutely nothing planned for them. I'd do the trip in three bites, I resolved. Bordeaux the following night, Angers the night after and then the short hop to Le Havre for the ferry and home.

The next day I took a leisurely start and then headed for France. I was rained on a bit during the day, the autopista dragged on a little, and the proliferation of peages every few miles on both sides of the border was most frustrating, as well as expensive.

Spanish toll plaza... Soaking the French...

Nevertheless, I made it at a reasonable hour, put the bike in the underground car-park, and then checked in, to discover a non-airconditioned room with a view overlooking a huge cemetary. The former bothered me much more than the latter, especially later, when it was frankly hideously uncomfortable, but in the meantime I grabbed a shower and then took advice from the hotel receptionist and hopped onto one of the shiny new trams from the stop outside the hotel into the centre of town, just as a massive and spectacular thunderstorm started. Payoff for reaching the town centre was finding an excellent restaurant and enjoying a beautiful if somewhat expensive steak au poivre. I then got soaked in a biblical deluge waiting for the tram back to the hotel. And so to bed.

The next day I planned to ride the back roads to Angers, and struck out across the French countryside on the N roads. The weather was pleasant, the traffic was light, the riding fun and rural France is a beautiful place for the most part.

Hay sculpture... This tickled me so I stopped for a photo...

On a whim, I took a detour to visit UK ex-pats and friends Pam and Mal in their new french hideaway. I drank their tea (soya milk.. just say no!) and took a tour of their historic home (formerly owned by a resistance heroine!), then resumed my journey north.

Angers was a rather less inspiring place, and my arse exploding while I was there rather accentuated my opinion of the place (Soya milk allergy, perhaps? No idea...). However, the next day I was expecting a quick hop up to La Daviais to drop in on Paul for a cuppa, and then an even briefer hop to Le Havre and then home. I took a spin with Paul up to the local bike shop in Avranches, and then we said our goodbyes and I headed for Le Havre. I ended up taking a wrong turn just outside the town, and thus being forced into a completely redundant but unavoidable 30 mile plus detour, and then eventually I made it back to the port, just in time to discover... nothing. A dark and quiet terminal. yes, my 8pm boat back to blighty was, in fact, an 8am boat.

Arse!

So, I've just ridden 300 miles and I'm stuck in la belle France just after 8pm on a Sunday evening. It says something for the miles that I've ridden on this trip that rather than decide to look for a hotel, I decided that what I really would rather do was get on the Chunnel train. From Calais. So I hit the road and did the 200 miles north to Calais, pausing only as it turned chilly (relatively) to change into the leather jacket that I'd been carrying redundantly bungied to the bike for the last 2000 miles around Europe. £70 and 4 hours later I was on the train, and half an hour after that I was reminding myself that we ride on the left (and adjusting my little taped arrow to match), and pulling out onto the M20 into chilly drizzle. Welcome home!

The last 400 odd miles were the worst, right through the night and into the following morning - M20, M25, M4, A48 and home. I make that an 800+ mile day.

And then I went to bed for a long time!



And that's the final part of my long overdue tale of tarmac terrorism!

And yes, those of you who cried off after initially saying you would come, you missed a blinder! It really was a blast!



X-posted to khaylock, uk_bikers, motorcycles