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Lat's European Adventure


Lateralus
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1 day in, and so far so good.


Made friends with 2 bikers before boarding the ferry, and had had 2 pints with them before even leaving port. They'd just got married, and for their honeymoon are doing a 3 week 3,000 mile tour of Europe.

 

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Portsmouth

 

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Riding into a boat is cool.

 

My £32 upgrade to a shared cabin netted me a room to myself for the night, since there was no-one to share with, and the food on board was impressively nice. Genuinely the best roast leg of lamb I think I've ever had - lovely and pink all the way through, and served as a slice an inch thick.


The Bay of Biscay was mill-pond flat the whole way over, and saw loads of whales and dolphins (whales and dolphins, yeah).

 

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Ooooooh, arty

 

Finally left the port in Santander at around 7pm, and arrived at my accommodation in Viscarret-Guerendiain at about 11.30. Really friendly couple hosting, and they even put my bike in their double garage. Perfect.


The 285km slog here on the motorways was fine, helped significantly by the scenery being amazing, and the roads often being much twistier than our higher speed roads at home. Don't get me wrong, there's no chance of getting a knee down, but at 120kph+ it's much nicer than the long straights we usually have.


That all changed in the last 25km of the journey when I finally made it on to the single carriageway N135. These few km of road are probably the most fun tarmac I've ever ridden, and I was taking it easy at the end of a long ride, in the dark. There were no views left to distract you at this time of night, but I can instantly see the appeal of those fancy cornering lights KTM now do.

 

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Such twisty. Very wow.

 

If that section of road is at all representative of what tomorrow has in store, I'm in for a treat.

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"Made friends with 2 bikers before boarding the ferry, and had had 2 pints with them before even leaving port. They'd just got married, and for their honeymoon are doing a 3 week 3,000 mile tour of Europe."


I'm getting married next year and this type of honeymoon is our intention!!

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I fully suspect this bit would have terrified me at night!


Untitled.jpg

 

I would have thought the same, if I'd thought about it at all beforehand, but just took it all very steadily. Doing the same in today's full sunshine! Literally constant twisties so far today! :D

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Good stuff lat, keep it coming! That road looks epic [mention]Arwen[/mention] I'd love to give that a go :D, but defo not in the dark! Just have a quick run through the bend on street view - that first heir-pin looks like it could really catch you out as you don't see it until you're on-top of it, it starts by looking like a fairly quick left hand bend.


https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@42.9459584,-1.4784372,3a,75y,142.67h,66.87t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sMYWg8unQ07rZ0JYEoMHsmA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

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Day 2.


My favourite bit was right from when I set off: the bit where I rode my motorbike for 200 miles through the Pyrenees.


It's been fooking awesome.


Would have been a lot quicker if I didn't keep stopping to take photos, but really, what choice did I have?


I'll do more of a write-up later, but right now I need a beer.

 

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So then. I've now had beer, eaten, and had beer. In that order.


Throughout the day I've had all sorts of thoughts and observations I was sure I was going to remember for my write up, but I'm fairly sure I've now forgotten almost all of them.


First one is that once you're near the mountains, you'd have to be really unlucky to not be on an awesome biking road. I've mostly followed routes from a motorbiking-specific map very kindly provided by [mention]Gerontious[/mention], but even where I deviated slightly from its suggestions the roads were great.

 

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Look at it, all shiny and red.

 


I was on twisties straight from the front door this morning, but the NA-140 in particular was brilliant. I'm mean, just look at it. And this bit of it. Then there's the NA-176. And the A-1205.


To be honest, I was just going to post a screenshot of my Google timeline from the day as being a great route, but it seems to have taken exception to where I stopped for fuel and coffee this morning and gone into a sulk for the remainder of the day.

 

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Petulant Google

 


This is the actual route I followed.


The one bit not highlighted for motorbikes on the map I had was this bit of the NA-176 from the NA-137 to Anso, I think because the surface was pretty poor in the second half of it. However, it was here that I found myself following behind a very low black kite for a good while, which was awesome, and as you can see it's still a very nice place to be.

 

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Don't you listen to that nasty map, you're pretty to me

 


Other wildlife highlights from the day included eagles, cyclists and a vulture. The vulture was still flying, but I presume on the lookout for cyclists who haven't upskilled sufficiently for the descents and had taken the direct route to the bottom.


At lunchtime I found myself in Bailo, which was lovely, but almost entirely shut. The only bar wasn't doing food, and the only bakery made only one product, which was a massive loaf of excellent-looking bread. It's just the kind of place some smug food hero meeja-type hipster would make a TV programme about. However, it wasn't what I needed right then, so I ended up having beef jerky and a bag of crisps in the town square, followed by an underwhelming ice cream from the bar. I was perfectly happy.


The next item of note was the first part of the A-1205. It has recently been resurfaced, and is like a bloody race track. I mean, the tarmac is perfect, and it had white lines at the edge but no centre line. You can see for a good while through the bends, and I passed one car and one cyclist in about 10 miles. Those miles passed rather swiftly, and I neglected completely to stop and take a photo. :angel12:


Between Jaca and Sabiñánigo there's a shiny new dual carriageway, or the option I took which is the old N-330 which runs parallel. On this straight road I discovered that there's nothing quite so nice as getting a breeze to go behind the knee pads in your jeans, which at this point were rather warm. I think it was in the mid-high 30s by now. This breeze was achieved by putting my boots up on the engine bars, and angling the bottom of my jeans just so. Bliss.


From here I head north, towards France and the first properly high passes.

 

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See them mountains? That's where we're headed.

 


Along with altitude also came some lakes.

 

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You've seen this lake before

 


There was also more traffic on the A-136, and a higher than normal proportion of motorbikes. Of these motorbikes, it's safe to say that BMW in general and the GS in particular are close to having a monopoly. However, almost without exception they all waved, which here is a casual, almost insouciant, lifting or pointing out of the left hand. The biking equivalent of a gallic shrug.


I immediately adopted this approach over the usual nods, but appreciate that pointing to the outside of the road would somewhat diminish the effect if I tried to import it back to the UK, and there's a reason we don't regularly go lifting our right hands.


Onwards, upwards, towards the Col du Portalet and into France.

 

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The view north at the border

 


Lots of traffic, relatively speaking, until I made it to the bottom of the Col d'Aubisque. This is one of the big ones which features regularly in the grand cycling tours. As well as being a great route, the cycling means that the authorities see to it that the road surface is impeccable, to the benefit of all.

 

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Man, that looks tough!

 


As you'd expect from such a big climb, it was tiring, so I had to stop on the way up for a coffee and a sandwich. That jerky and ice cream was never going to see me through. The view from the bar may have helped too.

 

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Let me know if you're getting bored of these.

 


The view from the top wasn't bad either.

 

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I mean, there's rather a lot of them.

 


It was almost all downhill from here, but luckily for me that's literally downhill rather than figuratively. And some of that descent was rather impressive.

 

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And you might be getting scenic-picture-fatigue by now.

 


And the views keep coming.

 

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I've heard that's a thing.

 


And so, finally, to Argeles-Gazost and my hotel room. I was definitely in need of a shower, and have (only figuratively, I promise) joined [mention]Stu[/mention] in his appreciation of the benefits of a hotel room over a campsite.


However, having stepped out onto the balcony (dressed by this time, I should point out), it turns out the day had one view left in it. With a sigh, I turned around to grab my phone once again.

 

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In fact, I think I might have it.

 


As well as being all pretty and shit, that pass in the background is the route to the Col de Tourmalet, which is another major cycling Col and first up on the agenda for tomorrow.


It turns out there's now some kind of concert going on in the square right outside my room, on the stage shown in the foreground of that picture. At the moment, it's fine, but if it carries on a moment past the point at which I decide I want to go to sleep, someone's going to be in trouble. And by someone, I mean me, what with it being their town and all.


Best have another beer then.

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How is the bike doing? Scotoiler still working?

 

Scottoiler still working, mystery oil leak still coming from somewhere. :?


Couldn't bring myself to remove the front sprocket cover this evening, but will look under there again tomorrow. It's a very slow leak, and the oil level was ok, but might top it up a bit in the morning. Any idea how much one might normally put in when topping up? Think it was in the bottom half of the acceptable range on the dipstick.


That said, with the mileage I'm doing, it's great to not have to worry about the chain. Turned the Scottoiler rate down to compensate for the heat, but fairly sure the leak isn't just fling from the chain, especially as it was present on Sunday before there was even any oil being put on the chain.

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I'm jealous. might have to ban @Lateralus so I stop turning as green as my bike :mrgreen:

 

Pyrenees for next year's really? :mrgreen:


Good job I'm traveling on my own really - I'd never do the write ups as I went otherwise, and if I did them later it would probably be “Yeah I went away, here's the photos. It was good.”

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Good job I'm traveling on my own really - I'd never do the write ups as I went otherwise, and if I did them later it would probably be “Yeah I went away, here's the photos. It was good.”

 

That's pretty much what I would have done :lol:

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