Pyrenees 2006

Monday - And they're off...!

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After a very smooth and comfortable night we went for the buffet breakfast. After queuing for the food you then queue to pay for it, if you're unlucky you also queue for a seat.

As the ferry doesn't dock until 12:30 there's no rush over breakfast. Dave J, John and Dave S

In fact we spent the morning mooching about the boat looking for something to do.

13.05 and we've rolled off the boat jostling with the cars to exit Santander's ferry port, rather embarrassingly, we went the wrong way and had a short tour of the dock before getting on the right road. Well, at least it entertained the locals.

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It was a relief to get off the busy motorway out of Santander and on to the Ca261 road, its marked with a green border on Michelin maps, which suggests it's a scenic road, and it certainly turned out to be. In the far distance is Santander 13 miles away (as the crow flies).

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At roughly 70 miles long, this stretch of road was probably the best of the day, but you will need a detailed map to find it. Michelin Map 572 Regional Espana shows most of it, just cutting off the end bit to Bilbao. The road numbers from Santander are ca-261 > bi-630 > bi-636 > Bilbao.

After Bilbao it was just a matter of riding on to Jaca, it sure was hot though, peaking at 34C/93F... phewww! On my RT with its full fairing, that would have been HOT, but on the GS it was great, lots of cool air blowing about :)

It was 19.13 when we arrived at the A Boira Hotel, I'd pre booked it a couple of months earlier to make the first (short) day in Spain easier. Complete with secure lockup garage for the bikes, I can recommend it. After a quick shower and change I tried to download the GPS's track log to my mini laptop, but it didn't recognise the GPS as a USB devise <groan!> so I spent the next hour on the hotel's computer downloading Garmin drivers at 27kb/sec to try and sort it out, but I still couldn't make it work, had I not spent the last two days prepping the GS this would have been checked and resolved...  in frustration I gave up and went with the others looking for dinner.

Dave S & Gee in the Otel :)

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The A Boira hotel was €47 Euro for a shared twin room + €8 for breakfast, (£18.78 each)

Wandering around Jaca old town looking for 'real' food (as opposed to tapas)

After a brief search we found the Heladeria Cafeteria for our evening meal and had a great time. The food was excellent and the barman (sat on the far left) was happy to chat with us between serving the tables. Yet again, John's animal magnetism gets him in to trouble, apparently she wanted to be called 'senorita' (young woman?) or some such thing :)

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Today's route in yellow from Santander to Jaca - 245 miles

The vertical profile from the GPS's stored trail points. You can see the first peak clearly 20 miles after leaving Santander. Clearly, it should be a known Coll, but if it is, I don't know its name, sorry.

Maximum temperature today was 34C/93F, Pheww! a very warm day compared to yesterday.

Garmin trail and waypoints download for today

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