Tear-arsing around Spanish trails with Trailblazers..

[dakarDude]

Just back from Competa, Spain. It all started when I saw a posting by JustStan saying he had been on an amazing offroading trip with Trailblazers of Spain.

I was on my lunch break at work when I saw his post, not having a great day I remember in all fairness, and I thought "ah what the heck", so I signed up for Trailblazers Competa offroading trip.

Liz of Trailblazers soon emailed me back saying there was no problem - everything was really easy to setup, it couldn't have been a nicer experience. I was keen to do some good offroading on a KTM, and with riding a 525EXC of my own, I wanted something similar. No problem there, Liz said I could take the 450EXC but warned me the 250 is more than enough. In the end, I stuck with the 450.

Next I just had to get my insurance for offroading. I got that through Endsleigh, who offer insurance for offroaders.

I already had my offroading gear from doing a little bit of laneing with fellow Tossers on this site, so it was just a good helping of beer tokens and a flight to sort. But, if you ddon't have offroading gear, Trailblazers have stacks of the stuff, so you can rent it from them.

I flew over with Monarch in the end out of Manchester on a cloudy cool early morning. But that didn't bother me, I alrready knew it was due to be over a 100 degrees where we were going

 

[dakarDude]

Arrival Day

I landed in Malaga and got off the plane to an absolute wall of heat. It really was scorching. The locals were telling me that it had been a bumper Summer and the temperatures were amazing even them at times.

But it was OK, being from Blighty, I just couldn't have given a s**t, I knew I was coming back to what will soon be another Winter of crappy English weather and wet and cold commutes on my bike. 100+ temperatures? Bring 'em on..

I get to the hotel, run and owned by a great guy called Antonio in Canillas, dump my gear and wait for Graham Ross (who runs the actual offroading side of Trailblazers). Liz tells me he is out with 2 Danish guys and will be back soon. So I have a couple of San Miguels and use the pool up on the roof. From there you can see all the mountains and offroad trails snaking up to the tops of them. I started to get really excited about grabbign a KTM and getting up there.

Bang on 17:00 and I hear 3 offroad bikes in the distance heading towards the hotel. Sure anough, in comes Graham, Jakob and Erik. Jakob and Erik are two Danish guys, father and son - here for some offroading.

They are all absolutely covered in dust and s**t and I'm thinking "wow, they look like they've really gone for it". Absolutely covered in dust - faces sand blasted, but all grinning from ear to ear having had some great laughs up in the mountains.

We get chatting in the workshop and we fix Erik's KTM 250 over a San Miguel - Erik had a bit of an off and broke the brake lever. Its soon ship shape and we all lube up the chains and generally check the bikes over.

Being bikers, we all get along straight away.

I'm then taken to the KTM 450 I'll be taking out. It looks spot on, all be it having had more stick than my 525 EXC back home. I can't wait to get out on it:



Everyone then heads off and gets ready to go and grab some food and beers later that night, agreeing to meet in the bar downstairs at 19:30.

 

[dakarDude]

Day 1 - Offroading Begins!

I wake up early, its really bright outside and not a cloud to be seen. Its already seriously hot. Why can the UK not get more of a dollop of this weather?

I choose not to get into my riding gear and opt to grab some breakfast downstairs with Erik and Jakob. We all end up grabbing a table and drinking fresh orange juice, having some nice toast and jam and coffee, laughing and joking and telling bike stories as we eat.

Erik is in the shipping business and it turns out he was actually in Baghdad when the Israelis carried out Operation Babylon, when they flattened the nucelar reactor at Osirak. Baghdad was plunged into darkness and he was right there as the Iraqi's blasted anti-aircraft fire up into the night sky.

Jakob, Erik's son, is a student and has got into bikes because of his dad's love them.

We all finish breakfast and I head up to my room to get into my riding gear.

I was a bit nervous I have to admit. Only 3 weeks before, I'd had a nasty off whilst out offroading on my 525 and the only words I can use to describe my feeling is to coin a phrase that Jono / Rudiemoto uses: "I'd lost my mojo".

Anyway, I get into my gear and straight off the banter starts. I pull on a KTM race jersey, but its spotlessly white and clean and the Danes start to laugh their arses off "you're gonna be a lot dirtier than that later"! You can always count on blokes to get the banter going.


Way too clean!


We're giving the bikes one last check over and who should turn up, a fellow Tosser Greg Masters! Greg knows Graham / Trailblazers having ridden trails with them and sorts out the Tossers in the Tejeda trips. We have a bit of banter and everyone agrees we'll go out for a meal the following night at Oscar's in Competa for beer and fun.

Greg sets to and gets some pics of us all getting ready to head off (cheers Greg!):


Get her level for a quick check

...and then we're off!

 

[dakarDude]

I quickly spot the group isn't hanging about, and loads of Spanish riders come by without helmets on, wearing only flip-flops and shorts. "God they'd get peeled like a potato if they came off"!

We rip through the windey streets of Canillas under a blazing hot sun and cloudless blue skies, the KTM 450 giving as good as it got. I was loving it. None of the locals look at you disapprovingly, everyone has dirt bikes there, they're so right for the job.

We'd been told by Graham to expect a long, dry river bed that we would head up part way through the day and to watch for the little streams we would cross being slippery - and for God's sake, don't go over the side of any of the mountains . We would be in such remote spots on these rides that only helicopters can get to you in places and the authorities in Spain don't just come up there in helis unless its absolutely necessary.

Turns out Graham has had to put with a lot of motorcross riders going over to Spain all competing and making a mess of corners up on the mountain passes, quite often having to get KTM's out of trees down below after someone over-cooked a corner trying to keep up with one of their mates.

Soon, we leave the tarmac behind and we're absolutely flying up rocky climbs. I'm nervously picking my lines to avoid it going horribly wrong and doing my best to keep up with the rest of them. The Danish lads are quick, they've already had a couple of days at this so they're more than comfy with their bikes and the terrain now.

Then it happens, I pick a s**t line and end up in a rocky rut and don't give it enough beans to get me out of it, the 450 stalls and I'm left with my left and right foot on either side of the rut in the dust. Its eerily quiet. And seriously hot. By now, the other 3 are long gone, just a dusty cloud ahead of me from when they went through. I hoist the bike out of the rut, sweating like a rapist, swearing at myself for fecking it all up.

I start the bike, and tear off again, looking to find the others and catch them up - they've stopped and are drinking water. You get through about 3 to 3.5 litres a day here - and the other thing I notice, you NEVER need a pee!

We soon head off again, and eventually, we get to the river bed we'd been told about. We drop down into it and start heading up it at a really quick pace. A lot of it is shale and smallish stones, but every so often, there are larger stones sometimes tucked in there and they don't like to move when you hit them. Its difficult to spot them because they're embedded in with all the other stuff. I only hit one, but boy did I know about it. I'd never ridden at speeds like that in that type of terrain, I remember being up on the pegs and taking a quick glance at the speedo thinking "feck me, we're going at it here"!

The thing I will always remember about this run is the dog that chased Erik on his 250 KTM. I'll never know how that dog was able to chase him for so long. It went after him for nearly 1000m none stop.

The river bed ends under the arches of a road bridge, which is where we stopped in the shade to take a break:



After the river bed we head off for some lunch, some really nice fish and fries and coffee all laughing at what we'd just done.

The remainder of the day is trails with dust, more dust and even more dust and some of the best views ever. One thing I would say is, be really careful drinking in those views whilst doing this type of riding, you can suddenly find yourself getting dangerously close to the edges of the mountains and going over them, at which point it would be goodbye KTM 450 and goodbye to you

At the end of each day, we head back to the hotel and get the bikes put away and it always ends up with us having THAT BEER. The one that doesn't touch the sides because you've been riding so much and its just so hot.

 

[dakarDude]

Day 2 - Erik's back brake, riding down steep steps in a Spanish village and more...

We headed out and early on, Erik is finding his back brake is just not doing anything. He found out the hard way becuase he was descending a steep, rocky hill and found out late into that descent his brake was fooked. He told me later that day over a beer he was genuinely spooked and nearly sh*t himself when it happened

We quickly stop and start to check his bike to see what is wrong:






..and after checking all the usual stuff, Graham spots it, one of the breather tubes had gotten stuck into the workings of the brake behind the brake pedal! We yank it out and we're good to go again, but not before Jakob made a new friend that had come down the trail to see what we were doing:



We move onto some really great trails that have some thick vegetation to the left and right, palm trees with long branches that droop down across the trails, you learn to be quite good at quickly shifting your body and especially your head out of the way of them. Some of the stronger branches really hurt if you clip them. At one point I got a 1 inch thick branch smack me in the neck and I remember shouting "f*ck" after it caught me unawares.

By day two, I'm much more used to the bike and I'm keeping up with the group much better now. Things that used to phase me aren't doing, no dramas, just letting the bike go where it wants. I get the odd scare, but nothing too serious.

One part that really did spook us all a little bit was a section where we dropped down through a dry ditch and then up on the other side where the trail suddenly went very thin - the problem was a fence ran along the side of it on the left (you woulnt want to catch your left bar / lever on it!), and to your right it was gnarly with a drop. Jakob took a bad line in this section he told me later that day, and ended up in the drop and going over some really rocky stuff, unable to climb back up for quite a while. I think this is shown in the video I'll post.

The temperature was really high on this day I remember. Graham tells me most people wait for October when it starts to cool down.

Eventually we leave the offroad sections and we end up at a small Spanish town on the way back to base. Its tiny but through the middle of it, there is a steep descent down steps. I remember taking a big deep breath before I went over the top step. I had my back brake on for most of it, God knows what amount of rubber I left behind on those sun-bleached steps, but I was absolutely cacking it. The problem is you all group up at the bottom becuase you go back out on a road and have to have your wits about you before going into it. The fear is the steps are slippy and even braking "feels funny" on them and using the front is not a good idea unless you want to go over the bars. Anyway, we got to the bottom OK, but Erik, like me, had one or two braking scares coming down them.

We tear arse back to a new base to complete the day, this time to a hotel by the sea, where its much more lively at night when it cools down. On the way, Jakob gets stung badly by something that's got in his helmet. You can see he is hurting by his riding body language, we all stop and check the side of his head to find a small puncture mark in his head where he is bleeding. We get back to the hotel and squeeze a lemon onto the sting to try to get rid of it with the acids in the lemon. No good, so I go through my gear and find insect sting wipes. Those Kentucky Fried Chicken type wipes but to get rid of stings. It works, and Jakob's miles happier and we all drink beers in the hotel bar getting stared at by the locals becuase we're all covered in dust and sweating like you woudn't believe. It must have looked crazy to anyone not into doing this stuff, you're all armoured up with big boots and they're there in shorts and light t-shirts.

We all dump our gear and dive into the sea to cool off. I'll never forget that day, it was brilliant and it was one of those classic "I'm not going home, I'm staying here" experiences.

 

[dakarDude]

A night at Oscar's in Competa..

We all got together on the third night at "Oscar's" in Competa. Its a great little restaurant and we all sat outside to eat and drink.

A fellow Tosser Greg Masters turned up with his daughter and some of her friends, Liz and Graham from Trailblazers also came along (Graham wore his hurrendously loud superhero shirt which I took the p*ss out of enormously), Erik and Jakob the two Danish riders came and ... my German mate Jurgen hit town!

He arrived that night on his trusty GS an hour before we were due to go out - we heard him coming flying through the mountains on his bike towards the hotel. I met Jurgen when I toured Spain and Morocco in August 2010, I was pitching my tent in San Sebastian and he came over with a San Miguel and said hello. A top bloke and it was bloody great to see him again. He's a serious overlander and loves his GS. The best part, he would be coming offroading with us on the Trailblazer Honda 450 Graham had ready for him!

Here is his bike:



..and here we all are having beer and food (Greg is at the top left, Graham, in the wild shirt, is at the top of the table with Liz, Jurgen is to the right, Greg's daughter and friends at the bottom left and right):



Jakob left early to go to a few bars with the girls, and we found him flat out on the tiles of the terrace back at the hotel when we got back, he was in a bit of a state, I thought I would do the honourable thing and get his picture



..and the drinking continued, here's Jurgen and Erik have some scoops :

 

[dakarDude]

The Last Day - 2 Off's in the space of 30 mins...

I'd ridden OK during the week, I was pretty chuffed I hadn't had any real dramas, a few scares, definitely, but no off's or a broken KTM.

We all got up and had some breakfast, but sadly, Erik and Jakob had to leave for Denmark - we said our goodbyes and off they went to the airport.

That left myself and Jurgen with Graham, and one newcomer, a guy called Jeremy who was out here at his parent's place on holiday with his family. He wanted to get out on a bike and escape the wife and kids for a bit

We sadlled up, Jurgen took the Honda 450 and Jeremy and I got the KTM 450's.

Today we took a great trail, part of which was from my frist day. We were headed somewhere new though, to some Moors ruins right on the coast high up.

Again, it was hot and we were drinking water like lunatics.

It was Jurgen and Jeremy's first day so they were taking it easy, so I went in second place today behind Graham. By day three, I was a lot more confident and really opening up the 450. The one thing none of us could do, even the Danish guys, was keep up with Graham. You just can't. He's one hell of a good rider. To try to keep up would mean you would kill yourself. Simple as that. You'd head over a mountain side and never be seen again.

Graham had been telling me they have a lot of quad bike accidents up there, they go off the side of the mountains and the drops are so far, they just can't get the crashed quads back up.

The first section of offraod was a medium sized hill climb over loose stones, Graham flew up it without any dramas, I followed and made it to the top feeling pretty chuffed I'd managed it.

We then got to a more technical climb. I'd managed this on the first day (miraculously), so I thought "OK, I did it the other day, let's do it again".

The thing is with this climb, is you can skip it and go round it and climb slowly round the back. But I chose to repeat the climb. It starts with a rut that zig zags up the first part of the hill, then it goes dusty and loose but there is a tree on the left of the climb. You have to avoid that and get your body under its main branch that sticks out over the section you ride up. And above all, dont ease off on the throttle. The day before I arrived, Jakob let off the throttle at the last part of this climb and came off his bike.

I started the climb, got through the zig zag of ruts, then opened up the throttle some more to climb the last part. It all went wrong and the bike went too much left and headed towards the trunk of the tree.

There was no way I was gonna hit that tree head on so I pulled the bike right, ducked under the branch but it was too late, I'd lost some power and the leaning of the bike to the right meant the inevitable off I was dreading was coming. I always dread those hill climb offs, that horrible feeling of going backwards and you can't do much about it.

I got my right leg down onto the dusty ground and after the 450 KTM headed sharply right and landed on its right side, it began sliding down the hill.

By now, I too began coming down the hill, at this point on both feet, but completely lost my footing and went head first. I landed on my stomach, and the mouth guard on the helmet slammed into the ground in front of me, it was a really nasty sound and I was in a cloud of dust heading down to the bottom of the hill on my stomach.

I came to a stop and as I did, Jurgen and Jeremy arrived on their 450's to see me do a daffy impression. Apart from a few bruises to my ribs and a sore neck, I was in good shape. The Klim TekVest had done a brilliant job. The Klim race shirt was fooked though, it looked like I'd been hit with buckshot on the chest. The Klim F4 was also fine, how I will never know.

The bike, well, not great, managed to pick it up, and slowly get it to the bottom of the hill with Jurgen and Jeremy's help. Jurgen had been filming, but we later found when we went over the footage, he arrived too late but filmed the aftermath. I'll try and get that video and link it on here but right now, he's still out there.

The KTM 450 now had a broken front brake lever, leaving me with about 2.5" of lever left - but braking with that amputated lever was not going to be fun.

Graham checked the bike and warned me that knackered brake would be at risk of locking the bike up and so told me to go carefully.

We set off - and in no time at all, Graham's words proved to be dead right......

 

[dakarDude]

A final nasty off and the Moors ruins..

We headed off again, deciding we would fix the brake lever at Graham's place.

We were riding at 30-35mph across a dusty stretch of track with the occasional ruts that you had to avoid.

Then it happened, my already broken front brake completely gave in and locked. The bike washed out, and I remember hearing that horrible gravelly sound when a front brake is starting to make a front tyre wash out from under you. I was flung forward really quickly and the 450 was down again, only 10 minutes after my last off on the hill climb. This time my left forearm took the brunt of it. And my now already ruined Klim Revolt jersey had a big hole in the left sleeve. Now it was the clutches turn, it broke off completely except for a coupld of inches. So now the bike had stumps where the brake and clutch should have been. And we were miles from anywhere.

I tried to push the KTM to see what effect the broken brake had on the actual brakes themselves. It was locked solid.

Graham by now knew something was up and had come back to us.

He took a look at the 450 and agreed this wasn't good and said that he would ride it back to his place to fix it. I was relieved, I knew with my level of riding I would have been in a bad way riding that bike. So we swapped bikes, and Graham rode like a trojan with that knackered 450 to his house over some pretty fierce stuff and fixed the brake and clutch.

We stopped for lunch at Alberdinis, a great little restaurant on the top of hills there before heading out one last time to the Moors ruins.

The offroading to the ruins was tough at times, a lot of ascents with those tight turns. Like Hardknott Pass in the UK in a couple of places, but with added extra of very loose rocks and stones and dust.

There were times Jurgen and Jeremy struggled a bit, I did too. For them it was their first day. Our last section to the ruins was a steep rocky descent, one of the steepest I think we wet on. We had to get the bikes to the bottom. We took our turns heading down, back brakes on for a lot of it. It was really hot I remember. But the views.....:

 

[dakarDude]

The 450 back at base for the last time...

..and that was my first offroading experience in Spain

It was amazing, scarey at times and incredibly hot.

I will try and link to some videos of it here soon. Jurgen also has some footage to give me when he gets back to Dresden.

Met some great people whilst doing this, Trailblazers I cannot recommend highly enough, Liz and Graham there are great people and run a good company - and Graham doesn't make it regimented, so you feel at ease whilst you are offroading.

Couple of last pics before I put the 450 KTM away for the last time...






..and a big thanks to JustStan on here for his original post about Trailblazers, without that I'd never have gone I don't think!

Right, I'm off to buy a replacement Klim Revolt jersey for the one that got ruined

 

[corsicandreamer]

Cheers Dude cheered me up reading that, sounds like you had a good time and the peak trails will be a dodle for you now

 

[Greg Masters]

My girls enjoyed meeting Jakob.

 

[dakarDude]

Cheers Dude cheered me up reading that, sounds like you had a good time and the peak trails will be a dodle for you now

Glad you liked it C/D

Get out there, its fantastic. And it stays light longer lol

..and you just don't pee!!!

 

[dakarDude]

My girls want to know if you got Jacob's telephone number.

No I am not gay / fighting for the pink team. And he cannot drink to save his life lol. You will have a PM in 2 mins......

 

[Erik M]

With trailblazers in Southern Spain

Hej Dakardude and Greg
Nice pictures and nice reading
look forward to see the videoes from the riding.
This has been amongst my top 10 hollidays even it was hot like in hell
( allthough I havent been their as I cant speak the needed language to get in (G))
all the best

Erik

 

[Greg Masters]

Erik

Welcome to the forum!

Greg

 

[abrasion]

Great ride report, glad you enjoyed yourself.
Will tell my WIFE JustStan that you said hi.

 

[Greg Masters]

Hej Dakardude and Greg
Nice pictures ...

Erik

I found another picture of you!

Greg

 

[Mr.awesome]

Hey hey..

Hey its Jakob here..

Should've thought your occupation was being a writer, you summarized the trip very well i think..

Well, i tried to look up the girls at facebook, but im not a skilled user of it, so i couldn't find any of them really.. I tried to look for both Catie Briggs and Katie briggs, also Nicole masters and nicole masters and i didn't know the last girls surname, but there were more then 500 results, so i gave up eventually, since the images are incredibly small, so it was impossible to locate any of them.

Anyway due to contry codes and what not, i think its easier to get in touch with me via e-mail instead of my cell phone. my e-mail adress is: Jakobmp AT hotmail.com

Btw. Thanks some good days James you're a great guy..!


-Jakob

 

[dakarDude]

Great ride report, glad you enjoyed yourself.
Will tell my WIFE JustStan that you said hi.

Thanks abrasion!

Nicknames, they're so gender-less at times

 

[dakarDude]

Hi Jakob / Erik!

Welcome to ukgsers.com. You will find plenty of lunatics on here, I promise The one to watch for is that Greg Masters character, I hear he has tendancies towards pink pants.

What a great laugh it was, seems so long ago now I'm back in a wet and cold UK, where it is now dark by 20:30

Great to meet you both, had a great time and want to get back there again.

I'm starting to edit some video and will post it soon. Ideally, would like to add in Jurgens video (which includes the three of us from the Friday hauling my KTM 450 off that hill - what a mess)!

Good news is that all the video we got from Day 2 is all captured, including the reverse video where you are both behind.

A shame you missed my two crashes on the Friday, Jakob, that hill climb that caught you out also got me I ruined a race jersey up there and TWO levers, Graham wasn't too happy lol!

Quick update on our mucker Jurgen the German overlander: he has reached Orgiva tonight

Hey its Jakob here..

Should've thought your occupation was being a writer, you summarized the trip very well i think..

Well, i tried to look up the girls at facebook, but im not a skilled user of it, so i couldn't find any of them really.. I tried to look for both Catie Briggs and Katie briggs, also Nicole masters and nicole masters and i didn't know the last girls surname, but there were more then 500 results, so i gave up eventually, since the images are incredibly small, so it was impossible to locate any of them.

Anyway due to contry codes and what not, i think its easier to get in touch with me via e-mail instead of my cell phone. my e-mail adress is: Jakobmp AT hotmail.com

Btw. Thanks some good days James you're a great guy..!


-Jakob