Spain - where to ? Must see?

Micky said:

Bikes in the sheep hold on Sunday ferry ... Ill ride down next time

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That looks busy!

So. Just got home and plan B turned out to be plan A - Spain.
Hull Rotterdam ferry was already booked so we stuck with it. Day 1 motorway to a Campenile close to Orleans. Day 2 was morning on the slab then afternoon on back roads through the Dordogne - loverly, over night in Agen. Day 3 Agen - over the Pyrenees to Estella, Day 4 cross country to Potes. Played on the glorious N-621 and N625.
From then we worked our way across country over the top of Leon into Portugal to Erada. Overnight in Beltone and discovered the stunning 230 from Covilha. Now rated amongst my top routes.
We carried on north going into the Douro valley and worked north into Chavez. Next day we headed west and stumbled across a stunning little town called Granja that is next to a Lake. Took the afternoon and to sit in the sun and drink beer.
Next day was again cross country in a very rural parts then back into Spain for lunch by the sea at Baiona, followed by a few hours on the Slab to Verín. Last full day was back into the Picos to an excellent hotel on the N-621 at Boca de Huergano. With the final day to the Santander - Plymouth crossing. Having done the number crunching it cost us £50 extra each to jump on that ferry against the slog back to Rotterdam. Only down side was the slog to East York’s arriving home at 1am this morning.
Total 2900 miles.
Rates as one of our best tours.

And the bike !
Six weeks old, 1250 GSA, my 4th GSA. Love it. It was faultless. Engine is excellent. TFT is good but connectivity hit and miss. Suspension good, brakes spot on - but that engine !!! Fab! Bike came with A41’s which have been impressive but slightly noisy off the front. Wearing well with excellent grip right to the edges and pretty quick turn in.



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Looks like a great trip. One question: You say your bike is a GSA but it looks like a GS to me.)

Think I know what bike I own. But I guess you’ve spotted mag wheels rather than spokes ?


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I guess protection is mandatory in that part of Spain. haha

Tripleblack13 said:

Think I know what bike I own. But I guess you’ve spotted mag wheels rather than spokes ?


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That's what threw me! But then I looked at the pics and I thought it didn't look hefty enough! I am a muppet, though.

ChrisHem said:

I guess protection is mandatory in that part of Spain. haha

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Was in France. But we did some safe riding that day


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Quinten said:

That's what threw me! But then I looked at the pics and I thought it didn't look hefty enough! I am a muppet, though.

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I think the colour scheme makes it look less hefty.


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So. Just got home and plan B turned out to be plan A - Spain.

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Envying you.
Seems like you guys had excellent weather too.

I'm a little out of the loop with regard to options on the new 1250, so bear with me; am I to understand that you can now stipulate a GSA with cast/mag wheels?

If so (genuine question, honest) what is the point? Surely (ok, I won't call you Shirley), the "A" part of the model supposes that it is a more off-road oriented machine. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of spoked wheels; I like the way they look but I don't off-road a 260kg machine because I find it difficult. I'm simply not strong enough to do so if it topples over as it surely will at some point. Having gone over a pothole earlier this year, and seen first hand the damage caused by it (not serious, but annoying), I just don't see the point in having a cast wheel option on a machine that is armoured like a tank and is designed to go off-road but then has such a glaring weak spot in the one area that receives the most punishment in its intended environment.

Again, not having a go, or being clever, just curious.

Ride routes:

I gotta say, I'm not enamoured of them. I looked at the one which included Spain and in particular the ones around the Picos. We even tried a much hyped loop around Chaves (Bragança) one year and found it, at best, underwhelming. Had it not been for the excellent Forte De Sao Francisco hotel and the roads down to Chaves: Navia - Fonsagrada - Ourense - Chaves, I'd have been pretty pissed off to go all the way down there for that loop ride.

In Sept we crossed paths with several other groups including one led by a friend of one of our group. They'd mostly taken their lead from Ride. Now, I realise that I'm amking assumptions here, but judging by the type of bikes, their tyres and them, I'd say that they wasted a fair bit of their ride and missed quite a few good roads.

Everyone is different and every tour is different. Ride routes are widely generic in their nature. The journalists that ride thm are on the clock mostly and I think research is probably minimal. It's not possible to cater for everyone's tastes so when people come on here asking for good routes and places, it's disheartening to be told to get a map, look at Ride and stop bothering people on here. It isn't particularly helpful, either.

Having "tried" and failed miserably to come up with a system or a PDF/WORD document to extend to others my miniscule area of expertise, other than the technical difficulties of using URL links (which don't seem to work the same twice), I am painfully aware that everyone wants different things from their tours.

In my humble opinion if you like planning and researching your tour (not necessarily to the "nth" degree) then you need as much different information as possible. Sometimes that information might come about by a chance message, direct contact, a helpful person who knows the area or just something you hadn't thought of and, of course, ride reports as well. Then, and only then, can you sort the wheat from the chaff and come up with something tailored to your tour. Adaptability is key at times. There is no substitute for the groundwork, including using Google street-view to check out road surfaces and environs.

Always open, by the way, to people messaging me if they have a question or want recommendations. Wapping will say: "Publish it all here, then we can all read it". Doesn't always work that way; I repeat, everyone wants different stuff and has longer/shorter tours, more/less riders all too impractical to put on one document.

I use the Michelin maps where they highlight the scenic bits with a green band. They are spot on.

Just my $0.02, but stay one night at the Hotel Rebeco at Fuente De and then ride the N-621 South the next morning.

I did that in June this year on my way to Portugal and it was snowing heavily at the top of the Picos. Lots of fun!

MarkShelley said:

I use the Michelin maps where they highlight the scenic bits with a green band. They are spot on.

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That is fine but this will still only tell you what "Michelin" classify as scenic. It doesn't tell you about cool, quirky villages, ports, peg-down roads or even whether they're busy or not.

For example: The AS 114 between Panes and Cangas de Onis is a lovely road, as is the N625 and the N621 and they all have green lines. However, go on those roads at the wrong time of year or on the wrong weekend and they can be a nightmare. That first one, for instance, in the summer months especially, has a fleet of canoe vans driven by kids going up and down it from Arriondas as well as busses. If you've ever been on the road, you'll know that the busses barely fit and invade the opposite lanes constantly. The other two suffer tourist sunday drivers.

Then there are the villages and ports; Viavelez, Puerto de Vega, San Vicente De La Barquera, Lastres, Tapia, the lighthouses, Viveiro, Taramundi, Pola de Allande...... too many to list. For some, sightseeing is secondary but the great thing about the Picos/Asturias/Galicia is that you can join all these places with great roads.

But Michelin alone will not get you the best way.

Have to agree with those comments. We came back to Santander via the road from Cangas De Onis and it was no better than most A roads over here in the summer. Loads of traffic and not that twisty a road. Trouble is, most riders, at least first timers to the area, seem to congregate around Potes and think the best roads are within 30 miles of there.
I was guilty of this 4 years ago on my first visit. I'd organised a group of 8 and we all stayed in some weird guest house just outside Potes. We had some good rides over the week but had to ride the same roads several times to get to new places and I remember it being busy with big groups of bikes all week.
Subsequently me and the wife have gone further west and each time it's got better and much quieter. It's a very pretty area and for us it's more about empty, twisty roads and for that the Ride guide is pretty good. I tend to take 2 or 3 suggestions and link them up with roads selected from the Michelin map. If they go up and down elevation or through green wooded areas it's pretty much guaranteed to be twisty.
First time I did the Chaves to Braganca road I was amazed. Did it this year in reverse and it just didn't blow my mind as other, less well known, roads did.
My one bit of advice I suppose is to head further west or south of the Picos to enjoy quieter roads. If you want the "camaraderie" of hundreds of other bikers doing the same thing then stay in the Picos and you'll have loads of English speaking bikers to chat to.

Dirty Ming said:

Have to agree with those comments. We came back to Santander via the road from Cangas De Onis and it was no better than most A roads over here in the summer. Loads of traffic and not that twisty a road. Trouble is, most riders, at least first timers to the area, seem to congregate around Potes and think the best roads are within 30 miles of there.
I was guilty of this 4 years ago on my first visit. I'd organised a group of 8 and we all stayed in some weird guest house just outside Potes. We had some good rides over the week but had to ride the same roads several times to get to new places and I remember it being busy with big groups of bikes all week.
Subsequently me and the wife have gone further west and each time it's got better and much quieter. It's a very pretty area and for us it's more about empty, twisty roads and for that the Ride guide is pretty good. I tend to take 2 or 3 suggestions and link them up with roads selected from the Michelin map. If they go up and down elevation or through green wooded areas it's pretty much guaranteed to be twisty.
First time I did the Chaves to Braganca road I was amazed. Did it this year in reverse and it just didn't blow my mind as other, less well known, roads did.
My one bit of advice I suppose is to head further west or south of the Picos to enjoy quieter roads. If you want the "camaraderie" of hundreds of other bikers doing the same thing then stay in the Picos and you'll have loads of English speaking bikers to chat to.

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I found the area south of Santander & Bilbao a delight, so go east of Picos as well - passes like this one https://goo.gl/maps/HAHdcnkUrxntJLLc7 Puerto de Las Estacas de Trueba - the gravel hairpins were interesting but once the resurfacing is complete it will be a delight. It was my last pass of my recent trip before getting to Santander and the views were memorable.

Here's another gem of a pass a local recomended to us.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@43.2...VmZZ_Mk6Ntgt1khRZvtw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

I quite like a little bit of those roads above. Except by "accident" I tend not plan to go on them for too many miles if I'm with my lot, though. I "suffer by proxy" if I have 7 - 8 guys behind me some of whom are on sportsbikes. As can be seen, there's plenty of cowshit and gravel about which takes the shine off the nice views after a few miles. I find that you end up concentrating more on the road than on the scenery. But as I say, I do like the odd jaunt into these largely unexplored and traffic free roads.

And this rather bears out my points; some of these roads might be green on a Michelin map and yet there will be plenty who dislike this sort of road.

I'm more for this type of road: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@43.4...m_ElHdYTlpfOvWniI7tg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

Or this, of course. This is a King amoung roads and it's pretty long, too.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.081...4!1smHQAtK7MpT9S_geQEnRbSA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Yeah, I know what you mean about having to plan a route that all riders in the group are okay with. I don't lead tours for a living so anyone riding with me, and this goes for domestic rides I post up locally, has to come knowing that some of the road surfaces may not be what they really want. I ride a small adventure bike so am not really concerned if the road gets bumpy or has grass down the middle but obviously I wouldn't plan those sort of roads, but short of doing a recce of every road you've planned you won't know for certain what you're going to get.

Somewhere in Asturias last month, a road that looked okay on the map suddenly and without warning became a gravel track, complete with potholes and ruts. It was a proper road but looked more like a green lane in Devon and doing that for about 2 miles with a pillion and full luggage was interesting, to say the least. The bike and wife coped very well but I'd have been inclined to stop and turn round if we'd been on a sports tourer type of bike. One of the reasons I'm quite happy riding for just us two - I'm not under pressure to come up with perfect roads. To be fair, you can't go far wrong in that part of Spain, but posting specific road numbers as you've done is an excellent way for someone to start planning a route, so I for one am happy for people to post suggestions.

Enginerelight said:

I quite like a little bit of those roads above. Except by "accident" I tend not plan to go on them for too many miles if I'm with my lot, though. I "suffer by proxy" if I have 7 - 8 guys behind me some of whom are on sportsbikes. As can be seen, there's plenty of cowshit and gravel about which takes the shine off the nice views after a few miles. I find that you end up concentrating more on the road than on the scenery. But as I say, I do like the odd jaunt into these largely unexplored and traffic free roads.

And this rather bears out my points; some of these roads might be green on a Michelin map and yet there will be plenty who dislike this sort of road.

I'm more for this type of road: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@43.4...m_ElHdYTlpfOvWniI7tg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

Or this, of course. This is a King amoung roads and it's pretty long, too.

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.081...4!1smHQAtK7MpT9S_geQEnRbSA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

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Just because there is a white line down the middle does not mean you won't encounter a herd of cows. Or sheep, or on one occasion last month, half a dozen pigs!