By this Author: RickAdderley

We left home on 25th June and arrived back home on 25th July 2024, a total of 31 days. We travelled 2347 miles around Spain on our Harley Davidson CVO trike:

It cost us £0.15p per mile 😄.

The weather was mostly in the early to mid 30 degrees 🥵🔥 but on 2 occasions it reached 40 degrees. That was too hot to be out even in the shade.

On leaving Majaca on our way to the train museum we were stopped by the local police in a road traffic check. They were very polite and asked to see my driving licence. The Officer looked at it, a bit bewildered, and waved us on 😄.

Although the sea crossing was very calm, the constant drum of the engins did not sit well with our bodies. We were OK until we slept through the night. It was the next morning we felt out of sorts.

Highlights

1. Riding the trike
2. Beautiful hot weather
3. The main roads in Spain are far superior to those in the UK. Very few pot holes and rough road repairs
4. In general, the Spanish are very good drivers. Once they overtake, they pull back in, no lane hogging. They are very forgiving, if you make a mistake there is no loud horn honking.
5. When you come to a large roundabout, often there are no lane markings, you just indicate and "weave" through the traffic and everyone lets you through 🤞.
6. Tapas mmmmmmmmmmm
7. Food in general mmmmmmmm
8. The prices to eat and drink out in hotels, bars and restaurents is much cheaper than here in the UK
9. Very good Spanish wine mmmmmmmmmmm

Lowlights

1. 40 degrees of heat
2. On one ride through the mountains we were engulfed in blasts of heated winds that felt the same as when you open an oven door but they blasted for several minutes at a time. It seemed that these hot blasts were "bouncing" around and down the mountains
3. Ferry crossing both ways

These are some other rides in which you may be interested:

Route 66 - probably the best tour that we have ever done
https://rickadderley.travellerspoint.com

East Coast to West Coast USA
https://rickadderleyec2wc.travellerspoint.com

There have been on our Harley Davidson trike:

Touring Germany
https://TouringGermany.travellerspoint.com

Isle of Man
https://IsleOfMan.travellerspoint.com

We stayed in the Kynance House Hotel on Plymouth Hoe for 2 nights. The staff are really friendly but the place is a little "worn." On both mornings there was no hot water for showers, not acceptable 😫.

We had a day in Plymouth to visit the National Marine Aquarium, its the largest in the UK and you have a free visit pass for 12 months. It's great value, a great place to visit, we will be back 😆.

We travelled home yesterday and we knew we were back in the UK as it was pouring with rain 😜🤪. The A38 before Exeter was closed due to an accident but we got caught up in the traffic and it took us 58 minutes to cover 3 miles ugh ugh 🏍️😫😝😮. We arrived home in the dry and had our evening meal in our local pub to finish the holiday.

Forgot to mention, the ride from Tarragona to Zaragoza was very difficult due to the high winds and cross winds that buffeted us. They were so strong that they lifted the cover from our tote bag, we had to stop and pack it away.

Our ride from Bilbao to the Santandare ferry terminal was also horrendous. It took over an hour to ride 5 kilometres 🤬😡. We found out that this was due to a broken down lorry reducing the road to one lane. We had our jackets on as it was chilly when we left but in that slow moving traffic in full sun soon heated us up to almost cooking 🧑‍🍳 🍳 level 😃.

We arrived at the terminal in plenty of time and had a light lunch and a cold drink before boarding. We had the same type of cabin as our outbound cabin, so it was lovely. We booked a table for our evening meal buffet:

…this is the same type of buffet as we had before, I just forgot to take any photos. The choice was excellent and was complimented with a range of main cooked meals for an extra price.

Breakfast was in a similar vein, a full range of cooked items and a great buffet:

We can firmly confirm that boats 🛥️ are not for us🤪😥😫😤. The constant throbbing of the engines vibrate the your body which you can feel all of the time. Couple this with the slight side to side swaying made us feel quite unwell. Sand weathered it better than me. I must say, though, the crossing was very smooth.

We docked at 1530, were riding off the boat by 1535 and were at our hotel in Plymouth after filling with fuel by 1600. We couldn’t have asked for better. We went out for a walk and found a Weatherspoons for our evening meal:

Welcome back to England 😂😃👌.

Today we begin our journey home. It’s spread over a few days, the first leg, today, was Tarragona to Zaragoza, tomorrow we move onto Bilbao for the night and then onto Sanatader for the ferry to Plymouth.

Today’s ride started with a repair to Sand’s helmet, the hot temperatures had melted the heavy duty double sided tape that fixed her Comms unit to the helmet the same as happened to me a few days back:

We are now a matching pair again 👍😃.

We left Tarragona in 32° and by the time we reached Zaragoza at the hotel it was 39°. The weather app showed the severe weather warning here at zaragoza. It was oppressively hot. The ride itself was through some very striking landscapes and, as we were only travelling about 62 mph we were able to appreciate the views.

On arrival at our hotel…

…this is the reason we stayed inside and had our evening meal there. I had a dip in the pool but it was too hot to sit in the shade to dry off. Thank goodness for a cool bar 😰.

Hotel Palafox, Zaragoza is a great place to stay. It’s quite palacious and elegant, the staff are friendly and efficient. We ate in the restaurant as we couldn’t face walking out in the intense heat. We both ate the beef tenderloin:

…washed down with a nice Prosecco. It was the best meal of the holiday.

Today, Sunday, we ride to Bilbao, it’s 3 hours in the saddle which means a 4 to 4.5 hour journey time with stops. This is our 1st journey wearing motorcycle jackets since Sevelle 😜. It was quite cool for us when we left it was only 21° so we even wore our summer gloves, thankfully we did as, going through the mountains, it was very very chilly. When we left Zaragoza it was in the low 20 when we arrived in Bilbao it was in the same range of temperatures, not what we have been used to 🥶😱😰.

we duly arrived at our hotel but couldn’t check in. The IT outage, a few days ago, affected our booking and they had no confirmation that we had booked the room. Fortunately, we had all of Booking.com‘s information and was able to provide that to the receptionist and he traced our booking back through the Systems, which took an hour. We are in hotel Carlton, a posh hotel in Bilbao, we were shown to the bar and grill and had a complimentary glass of wine while they sorted out our booking problem, we have ended up with an upgraded room to say thank you for our patience and apologise for our inconvenience:

The hotel is lovely:

From reviews in the local press, it is the best hotel in Bilbao with the best restaurant, so we will have our evening meal here.

…well, it may have great reviews from the local press but the beef was not cooked as we like it. We both asked for it to be medium/well but it was rare. We ate what we could but only paid for 1 as I can eat the meat a bit rare.

We ride to the ferry terminal tomorrow.

This was our last ride out of our holiday so we went to Salou, it’s not too far around the coast and it only took us about 30 minutes. We parked up and had our usual walk along the beach paddling our feet. The sea was quite warm and it was a pleasant walk.

The sea was much cleaner than in Valencia and it was also very safe to bathe for children, it was very shallow for a long way out, but…:

…yet again, the reason we don’t do beach holidays 🤪😖. “Claiming” your little bit of beach 🏖️ for the day among the crowds is not for us.

We had a light lunch before riding the coast road back to our hotel and a dip in the pool.

Early evening we walked to Las Ramblas found a bar for an hour or so and then had our evening in the same restaurant as we had lunch yesterday. We were surprised at the size of the food:

I ordered tapas and Sand ordered a “small” pizza from the same menu. It was a full size pizza that we could have easily shared 😜🤪. We had an enjoyable meal before walking back to our hotel for the rest of the evening.

Tomorrow, we start our journey home with a ride to Zaragoza in the mountains.