Pyrenees 2006

Sunday - Here we go again...!

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A trip to the Pyrenees seemed inevitable after reading on the internet of deserted roads and fantastic scenery - and an easy method of getting there was also readily available via Brittany Ferries' Plymouth - Santander ferry. Significantly quicker than P&O's Portsmouth-Bilbao ferry, it saves around 1,400 road miles, and possibly four days riding through France.

Brittany's Plymouth to Santander ferry, the easy way to Northern Spain.

With the idea of the trip sold to friends, I now had to come up with a suitable route that would fit in with the ferry dates and our plans. After weeks pouring over Michelin maps and Garmin's Mapsource, this is what I came up with. Yellow route out from Santander through north east Spain. A two night stop over on the coast, then purple route back through Andorra and southern France.

But, our trip to the Pyrenees didn't have an easy start. Three weeks before the big trip Patto's R1100RT blew up on the A1 while he was heading home, the resulting oil loss sprayed all over his brother Neil who was following - what a mess. To make matters even worse the replacement engine fitted a week later turned out to be duff, It rattled like a bag of spanners! All that hard work and Patto was out of the race and he still had his bike to fix :(

Then it was my turn, three days before the trip I was taking parts up to Patto's place when I stopped behind a large flatbed lorry waiting to go over a hump back bridge. The moment I stopped, the lorry started reversing - and despite my sounding my horn, he ran back in to me - smashing the front of the bike in and pushing me backwards down the road. I was unhurt but the bike was a complete mess. The next day, after ringing my insurance company I rang Helphire. Because the accident wasn't my fault Helphire were able to offer me a hire bike for our trip at no expense, I was offered a Honda Blackbird or a BMW 1200GS, well what would you choose! The 1200GS was delivered next day, and I spent the last two days before the trip fitting Topbox, Autocom, PMR radio, GPS and a clever little sensor on trial from Actisense that would monitor ambient temperatures and record them to the GPS's track log.

So, with Patto out, the riders were:

• Dave S   Suzuki 650 Burgman

• Dave J    Suzuki 650sv

• John        Honda CBR600rr

• Gee         Kawasaki GPZ500

• Ebbo       BMW 1200GS

08.00 Sunday 14th May.

Those last two days were very busy, I didn't finish packing and prepping the bike until 1AM the morning we were setting off, lots of things just didn't get done, but we all made it to a cold meeting at Pontefract services (9.5C/49.1F to be precise) That's my 1200GS hire bike on the left and Gee with his GPZ500, and yes, that is a Little Chef in the background, but we only had coffee, honest!

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On trial this trip David S and I were trying bike to bike radios. Dave had a Starcom intercom with a Kenwood TK3107 radio, I was using an Autocom Active-Rider with an Alan 456r radio, It should have been a Kenwood like Dave's but there just wasn't room under the 1200GS's seat to fit it in. We had a quick radio check in the car park and after setting the right channel, all seemed to be working fine. We soon found on the motorway at 70 mph we couldn't communicate, there was just too much background noise to understand what was being said. I had my mic right on my lips as Autocom advise, as did Dave, but above 50mph it was useless.

09.40 The weather was brightening up when we meet up with Dave J at Boxtree Farm cafe just off the M62, Stratford Rd. Pity we were just a little too early for the cafe opening (10am Sunday) but we fuelled up ok and headed off for Bristol.

L to R - Dave J, Dave S, John & Gee.

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11.28 Asda supermarket cafe, just off the M5 Bristol as suggested by friend Malcolm (cheers bud). It was warming up nicely now, 22C/71F and jacket liners were being stowed away, hopefully we wouldn't need them anymore, just another 120 miles to go.

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15.10 Plymouth, we made it, all fully fuelled up and ready for clean start tomorrow. Passports and booking references were produced at the Kiosk and we were duly booked in. Boarding had already started so we rode straight on, no waiting, great!

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The 1200GS had been great all the way down, a bit chilly at the beginning (well, perishing actually) and the first long ride of the year and no sore rear - great! The radios had proved useful once our speed dropped below 50mph, then we were were able to discus navigation, food, the weather, great fun!

The car deck of the Pont Avon. It's really clean and tidy. There were lots of bikes as you can see, and a few more came on after us. The French crew quickly secure them down with a cushion over the seat and a ratchet strap. After grabbing our overnight bags, we joined a group heading noisily for the cabins, a passenger was heard to say in jest 'oh my god, the bikers are here!' this was greeted with more friendly jeers, everyone's in a party mood. The fun ended when we arrived at the information desk to obtain our cabin number, I produced the travel document the guy at the kiosk had given us, but it wasn't mine, I'd been given the wrong one! The French girl on the desk wasn't helpful at all, insisting we had a 2 berth inside cabin. It was eventually sorted out, but with no apologies. Mr Saunders, if you're looking for your travel document, I still have it :)

We had two cabins booked with Brittany at a cost of just under £300 each return. That seems a lot of money, but it saves two long rides through France, fuel bills, motorway tolls and at least two night's accommodation, and after all that, you're still going to need a ferry somewhere to cross the channel. It makes using this ferry seem quite reasonable. 

This was one of the cabins complete with toilet, shower and a nice big porthole (which will come back to haunt me). Two ready made up bunks are hidden in the ceiling and fold down, and the seat on the left folds into another bunk. I had planned to log the ships route on the GPS through that window but couldn't get a scrap of a signal through the glass, it must be heavily metalised to keep the heat of the sun out, what a shame :(

And this is the buffet restaurant soon after we set sail. I didn't think it was a patch on P&O's buffet on the Hull - Zeebrugge run, fair enough I only paid around £6.50 for fish and chips, but there wasn't that much to choose from, and the fish wasn't that great ether.

But it had been a very successful first day, 320 miles travelled (400 miles for John and Gee who live further North). I usually expect us to travel 100 miles every two hours by motorway including refuels and breaks and that's pretty much what we achieved. .

Thanks to Michael of Sprint ST.org who put me in touch with Phil at Actisense  I can now produce a temperature graph in Excel for each day.

As you can see the day started very cool, below 10C, then rose to 24C before falling to a very comfortable 20C (perfect for biking).

Tomorrow should prove an interesting day, the forecast was very good and we had around 230 miles to ride to our first nights stop Jaca.

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