Spain - Day 10 (and 11)

We woke up today slightly hungover, that last beer we had back at the hotel must have been bad or something. Today, we just had to drop the car back and get on the ferry, easy right? Read on.

We had to wear our leathers in the car as it's not possible to carry them otherwise as we already had bags and helmets. So we looked a pair of power rangers in the smallest car in the world.

It was raining, and the motorway was busy which made for tricky driving conditions. The motorway wound around and threw the mountains do it was very twisty and we kept to the speed limits. There was no rush, we had enough time as the boat didn't leave until 10:30 and it was now about 8:00.

Suddenly, just in front of us, a car skidded and hit the barrier flipping it onto its roof. This brought the traffic to a standstill and we nervously kept an eye on the clock. Luckily the police were quickly on the scene and we could get on our way again, we should be ok, we were only a few mins late.

We'd opted to drop our car off at the airport as it's on the way to the port, however, it seems that the people who designed the airport have no idea what signs are as we spent ages trying to find where we could drop the car off. Tension was high, we were late now, it was still possible, but it would be close.

We eventually found the place and threw the keys at the Avis guy, said our goodbyes to Puablo and ran to get a taxi. The driver spoke good English and was confused why we had leathers on but still agreed to take us to the port.

He drove quite quickly and we were going to be fine, so we made the mistake of relaxing a little bit. Things went wrong again when we were driving into the port and the driver said "where is your boat?". He had a point, there was no ferry, but that was ok, maybe it was just late, but if so, where were the other cars and passengers? The place was empty.

Maybe we'd got the time wrong, had we missed it, was it UK time? Was it the wrong day? Steve called the ferry company and they explained that we were at the wrong port, the port that we should be at was the other side of Bilbau, about 25 mins away.

Warp speed Mr Sulu! The taxi driver got on it, and pinned it at 150 on the motorway to get us there. We pulled into the port and there was the ferry. Phew.

We got out and there was a greeting party waiting for us, telling us the effing hurry. We threw our bags through security who were not even there, and were then asked for our passports, which were in the bags we didn't have. Mark set off all the alarms going to retrieve the passports, but no one cared.

We grabbed our tickets and went through security again, setting off the alarms for a second time. They cared a little bit this time but not enough to stop us. The other side there was a van waiting for us, we jumped into the back and were driven onto the boat. Hurrah, we'd made it.

Partly due to the hangover, partly due to the stress, but mostly due to the taxi drivers driving, we both felt a little sick so we retired to our suite and had some sleep.

Later we opted to stay off the alcohol and relaxed in front of the entertainment. Spoiler warning, it was shit. We went whale and dolphin watching, and saw dozen of dolphins jumping out of the water. Tommo took about 25 photos these magnificent creatures, here's his best one, he's now awaiting a call from Attenborough:

The ferry got us there on time and we continued our journey. I'll skip ahead now to current time, as we're sat on a train to Plymouth on our way to get our bikes back dressed like a pair of Stigs going to a funeral. The journey goes like this:

Car > airport > taxi > van > ferry > taxi > train > another train > uber > motorbikes > home.

Obviously rain is due for the entire ride home which won't be fun, but we'll both to be glad to get the bikes back. I'm sure nothing else will go wrong...

I hope you've enjoyed reading this trips blog, thanks for reading, we'll be back soon :)

Spain - Day 9

Today is our last full day, and the first day that Tommo has managed to have a full cup of coffee rather than a thimble with a handle on it so small that only a newborn can use.

We tried again to pay our parking fine, but apparently we have to wait until we receive an invoice from the police, this sounds like something that is going to go on forever and we're never going to be allowed back into Spain again.

On the road, Mark made this really funny joke and Steve said to remember it for when we write the blog later. Neither of us can remember it, so you'll just have to take our word for it that it was very funny.

Along the long journey we passed many speed cameras and have probably wracked up more fines, Mark blamed the Fiat 500s powerful untameable engine.

We arrived in our destination, Zarautz, a seaside town in the north that is known for its awesome food. We walked along the coast for about an hour to the neighbouring town that begins with a G. It's was a very pretty town that had many cafes with great sea views, well recommended.

We stopped for a drink, Mark ordered a Coke which would probably have been cheaper if it was the type of Coke you order by the gram and not by the glass!

We moved to a bar and Stevevordered a Vino Tinto, which is red wine. This begged the question why it's called tinto and not Rojo which was what we thought red was. We asked the barmaid who spoke good English but she didn't know. We pushed further asking what was the difference with pollo and gallina which both means chicken. She went off to ask and soon this was the discussion that everyone in the bar was having. 

By the time we left, everyone in the bar knew us and we felt like a character from Cheers, where everyone knew your name. We're pretty sure that they'll be putting our photos up behind the bar soon.

We walked back to our town and grabbed a couple of starters from a bar before heading to a burger place. It was a strange way of ordering your burger in that you had to fill out a form; what bread did you want, what size burger, what toppings, etc. It wasn't the greatest burger in the world but it was pretty good.

After a couple of beers we headed back to the hotel to get an early night. We opted for a nightcap in the hotel bar, which meant that the receptionist had to open up the bar. She poured us two huge drinks, but as they were free poured they were uneven, so we got her to add more to one of them, but then that had more, so then she had to top the other one up. We kept this going as long as we could of course.

Just as we were finishing our buckets, some Dutch guys came in who worked for KLM. We joked with them for a while and then they brought us beers on their corporate card which was nice, although one was a misogynistic, racist, homophobe. Anyway, 5 drinks later we were steaming and it was 1:30, so much for our early night!

Spain - Day 8

It seems that in Spain, you can't believe hotel receptionists. A few days ago they cost us a parking ticket, today we were up at 7 for breakfast so that we could get an early start. However it turns out that breakfast isn't until 8am. The new receptionist called us liars and there was no way we were told wrong yesterday.

We opted to skip breakfast then and got on the road to head for the circuit to watch the. MotoGP. Leaving the city, at 7am people were just staggering home from the night before...

On the way we stopped at the services and pointed at some massive awesome looking pan au chocolates. We ordered two but only one turned up. We asked for another and were told no. We asked again and were told they'd run out. So we pointed to the pile in the displayed right in front of us and were again told that they'd run out. Turns out they were yesterday's, so why not throw them out then??

Anyway two breakfasts, coffees, ok, and two packed lunches came to a tenner. At a service station! In the UK a packet of crisps would have cost that... 

As we neared the circuit the fog descended and was pretty bad, you didn't have annoying people leaving their fog lights on though, instead people drove without fog lights and did crazy overtakes to gain 3 seconds.

We arrived at the circuit and found a great seat, we were curious why no one else had it the we realised that we were sat on an ants nest and the ants were about a centimetre long! We moved.

We actually found better seats, although we didn't know it at the time because of the fog. As it lifted we saw we were at a great corner with views of several parts of the circuit and there was a giant screen in front of us. Result.

Mark had to dig deep into his willpower to not eat his lunch at 9:30, which was a good thing as eating at the circuit meant queuing for several days and taking out a second mortgage.

The racing was good, all three races went down to the last lap. All of the spaniards wanted Marquez to win whereas Steve wanted him to crash, Mark made him promise he wouldn't cheer if that happened. I won't write the result here as people may still want to watch a the race, but here's a picture of the winner:

The queue to leave the circuit was unbelievable, and in traditional style the Spanish were unorganised and impatient, so it was just like a giant mosh out that slowly moved forward for an hour. 

The roads weren't much better with a single line of traffic all moving along but random people doing crazy overtakes and cutting in without actually getting anywhere. We were both missing the bikes a lot at this point!

Along the road and in the next few town were lots of traffic cops. It seems their job is just to wave people forward. We were already going forward, a car length behind the car in front, with no other option to go forward, but still he blew his whistle and waved us forward. Good job he did that, for a moment I thought I had to drive into a shop.

We passed a place called restaurant Arse where there were loads of Harley riders outside for some reason. I'm guessing it was just sausage and chocolate milkshakes on the menu there.

Back at our base in Zaragoza we grabbed some food and ice cream (yum) whilst listening to the broken record buskers. They were actually quite good, and were a 3 piece orchestra, however they only knew 3 songs so on the twelve rendition of Viva La Vida we moved on.

We ended up sat outside a bar, next to a couple that were a little over the top with their public display of affection, so much so that it sounded like they were recreating the Hannibal Lecter scenes from Silence of the Lambs. We thought it best to call it a night. When we got back to the hotel, we did check what time breakfast was, we were told 7am. Grrrrr!

Spain - Day 7

We had an early morning wake up again today, this time it was a group if 4 guys in the car park departing on their motorbikes. One of them was just sat in the car park revving his engine really loudly for no reason, guess everyone has a Tim in their group :)

Breakfast today was at a local cafe, which appears to be the noisiest place on the planet. Sharing the place with us were a bunch of Spanish climbers, for breakfast they had beer and chips, legends.

Soon we were on the motorway, whacked the cruise control on and spent the journey in a boring haze until we got to zaragoza.

We were staying in Hotel Sauce where we'd stayed before in 2014. We were in a different room though, which required a map and a guide to find the room. We're pretty sure that Indiana Jones wouldn't have found our room it's that hidden.

Out in the city we found an awesome food court which sold everything, although Mark still struggled to find something edible whereas Steve was like a powered up pac man.

We then stopped by bar street and had a quick beer and spoke to some Spanish guys who were here for a metal concert. We asked them what food they recommended and they told us to eat intestines. Anyway, we left our zombie friends as the bar was closing and went and found a nice square to squat in. Steve continued his argument with BMW as we still don't know how we're getting home, finally we're getting somewhere though.

We've noticed a trend in that every bar and cafe we go in seems to close shortly after we sit down. We're thinking that the free shower gel in the hotels isn't that effective!

After recharging the batteries in the room , we ventured out and got a table in the centre of town and people watched whilst eating tapas and sipping beer. We had competitions to see who could spot the biggest weirdo (there were lots) and also oddest couple. 

We saw some odd people, like the family that came out to have dinner under the scaffolding, what a night they must have had and the guys that came out and sat staring at a wall rather than the cathedral the other side.

We opted for an early night tonight as we had an early start tomorrow...race day beckons.

Spain - Day 6

Our hotel should be renamed 'Hotel Ok', as that just about sums it up, the place is ok, the room is ok and the breakfast was ok. In fact, the breakfast was going to be labelled as crap, but we found some strawberry yogurts that lifted the rating.

One fun thing was that the glasses didn't fit under the drinks machine properly, so you had to tilt your glass to get it under, then press the OJ button and it would automatically fill it to the top. The problem then was that when you tilted it to get the glass out, the ok spilled everywhere. Good design chaps.

We left Hotel Ok and took a few turns leaving Valencia as our turns were being shepparded by buses pushing us from one lane to another. Before long though we were on the motorway to our next destination.

Luckily there was good 4g connectivity along the way so that we didn't need to listen to Oasis again for the next 2 1/2 hours!

As we turned off the motorway, rain hit, which was a shame as the roads were ace. This was the one time we were glad to have been in a car.

We arrived in Albarracin at around midday, it's a very pretty town, often described as Spain's prettiest. We checked into our hotel and took the steep walk into town climbing hundreds of steps which would through the narrow streets.

At the top the were some castle ruins so we climbed further up to explore these. It's easy to see why the town has such a reputation, the pictures just don't do it justice.

After climbing down we walked around the bottom of the town which had a natural moat amongst some trees, again, very pretty and easy to see why no one successfully managed to invade this place. We were knackered and had enough trouble finding our way and the gates were open with no one shooting at us.

We decided to go back to town and find the police station so that we could pay the parking fine we got a few days ago. What's worth noting is that there is only one policeman in this town and he finishes work at 2pm. So after donning our helmets and visiting the bank we went to the bar to spend our loot.

We had another awesome meal, mainly made up of steak and pork, and we thought how none of our meals here ever contain vegetables. You know it's getting bad when you start to crave vegetables!

Because we hadn't done enough walking today we went back to the hotel and drove to a nearby waterfall so that we could walk around there. In true Spanish style, it was signposted from 40km away and then never mentioned again. Good ol' Google sorted us though and we were soon clambering to the base.

The Spanish had build a nice convenient viewing platform to view the waterfall from, but failed to notice that you can't actually see the waterfall from it! Around the corner they did the same, so we risked life and limb on the slippery rocks to get nice and close for some pics.

Afterwards on the way back to the hotel we saw lightning in the distance, so opted to go to the hotel and chill for an hour before finding food.

At the bar, we concocted a plan. Spanish bars and restaurants are either full or empty, no inbeteeen, and we figured that once the rain came, everyone out sight seeing and everyone outside would dash to the nearest bar. Therefore if we went into an empty place now, it would be full soon and we'd have both good seats and atmosphere.

This worked a treat, and worked instantly. We picked a place and the rain started after 5 mins and within another 5 it was full. Our food order was already placed, and we had a great seat at the bar. 

The thunder was pretty fierce and lasted for a couple of hours. We left for a change of scenery and got chatting to some Belgium guys. They were all smashed, one was asleep on the bar and the others were propping each other up. They were on a walking holiday and had just arrived and spent about an hour walking today to warm up. Tomorrow they had a 35km walk planned, good luck with that, with a hangover, in 28c heat, and with hills which don't exist in Belgium. Bet they get a taxi.

We made our way back to the hotel stopping for a nightcap at a place run by a German speaking Italian living in Spain who was moving the Central America; who told us his life story whilst necking grappa. Got to love Spain.

Spain - Day 5

We woke at 7:35 to the sound of fireworks, obviously a good time for it...

We went hunting for breakfast at a local cafe, everyone is hungover and recovering from yesterday's festival. The service was the slowest ever but it was good when it came.

We went to pick up the car from where we'd left it, only to find it had a parking ticket for 80 euros. So much for that woman yesterday telling us that it was free! Seems the only person who could get up this morning was the bloody traffic warden.

On the road to Valencia, Steve spent the journey arguing with BMW, but the good news is that the bike is fixed so we just need to get it to the right city now and we can ride home.

Along the way, stood on the road was a massive vulture just sat there, this thing was about 3 foot tall and looked proper evil.

Soon we were in Valencia and took a walk around town, starting off with going to the food market. It was huge and sold everything. We queued for a while to get a seat at a popular place inside, it would have been a 5 min queue but the Spanish take forever in doing anything. They ask for the bill, the bill comes, oh I'm going to need some money, let me rummage around in my bag for 15 mins while still talking, maybe smoke a cigarette, make a house of cards, a mini siesta, they, yea , pay the bill.

Steve has clearly worked out some tactics when ordering tapas, just get stuff with cheese or fish on it and Mark will stay away. After some cheesecake and squid beer we were full.

After lunch we went to the church where the Holy Grail was, we defeated the black night but couldn't get past the ticket guy who wanted 7 euros to look at it. Whatever happened to Christian charity where you need to pay to go in a church to look at something?

We did go up on the church tower though, the views over Valencia were great and really showed the stunning architecture of the place. There was a massive bell at the top and when it rang we nearly poo'd ourselves!

After a walk around town, we sat in a cafe to rest our legs, in the square were some people setting up for something by trying to lay down a huge piece of polythene in the wind and measure this and plug in that. However after an hour they hadn't done shit, so we still have no clue what was going on.

We opted to go back to the hotel for a rest and then eat out of town to avoid the tourist traps. We found this nice streetside place full of locals and ordered so much tapas that the owner even joked that we now looked pregnant. We were going to give it a five star review too!

Both bloated we rolled back to the hotel to call it a night.

Spain - Day 4

We woke up in the palace this morning and went down for breakfast, unfortunately it wasn't quite up to scratch as the mini croissants were served still in their packets, we wasn't sure whether to eat them or clean the toilet with them. We were the only ones there for a while, then half a dozen builders turned up but they wisely avoided the food and got straight on the beer at 9:30am.

As we were packing up, some bells in the church next door started ringing, we checked the time to find out that they were the daily 10:22 bells. Why ring bells at 10:22, were they signalling the milk man or something?

We got on our way and immediately missed the bikes, the roads were fantastic, twisting around the mountains. At least we had the stereo though, steve had about 40 albums on his phone for us to listen to. Unfortunately, half of these were Oasis, and the other half were Liam Gallagher. Mark now speaks in a Mancunian accent, Steve is wearing a Parker and we spent the last 30 minutes arguing over City vs United.

We were soon driving through a stunning national park, and ended up having a photo shoot for the car every 10 minutes. We stopped for lunch in the middle of a forest but the place only sold crisps, so we fed those to the birds and got back on the fun roads to finish off what was left of the clutch.

After a few hours we were in Cuenca, a city built around an old medieval town on a rock. We found a parking place and checked in. The receptionist explained that they had no parking except for the parking and that it was free until 5, then after 5 it was free. Made sense. She started telling us about the sights to see, but said that they'd all be closed. We asked why things were closed and she said about the festival, we enquired about this then she told us that we should probably go to that as the entire city is closed for it, there's bull running, and so on. We think she should probably have started with that info!

We took a walk up to the old town, what a place, amazing views, especially across the old bridge into town. We explored for a bit then waited in the town square for it all to start. 

The mayor led a parade to a podium where everyone waited for him to make an inspiring speech, only for him to do the Spanish equivalent of "oggie oggie oggie" and walk off.

The bull run started bang on time for Spain, 50 minutes late, which saw a poor bull chase some Mo Farrah wannabes down the street. It was no Pamplona, and being veterans of that we sat at the bar in the street instead as the bulls ran past. Steve did find his doppelgänger though:

Afterwards we walked through the town as the parties kicked off, there were hundreds of bars and we were given some free drinks as we walked around. People would just help themselves to barrels of sangria and pretty much the whole town was smashed.

Being old, we found a nice bar to settle in, and Steve was at home as they had bits of Vespas stuck on the walls. It was a social place and people kept coming over to hear our story being as we were the only non-Spanish people in the town.

Spain - Day 3

We woke to realise why our nice hotel room was so cheap, if you don't close the curtains properly, everyone riding the glass elevator opposite gets a great view into your room.

We can't actually get up for the loo without being put on some kind of register!

We managed to sneak out and tried to find somewhere to grab some breakfast. Before that though, we needed a cashpoint. Unfortunately none of them work in this town, the first was out of order, the second wanted you to pay for a code and then you could collect money (sounds legit), finally the 3rd would let you get cash out.

We stopped at a bakery for breakfast, Mark had a loaf of bread to eat whereas Steve ordered some Fartons just because he liked the name. It turns out that fartons are really nice and come with a warm pot of chocolate sauce, or "follow through juice" as it's known.

We left Burgos and started our long four hour drive southeast. We'd picked a nice scenic route rather than motorways the whole way but Google kept insisting on telling us to go other ways. 

Steve has now named the car "Puablo", he's getting a bit too familiar with it for Marks liking!!!

We stopped at a visitors spot to stretch our legs, it was well signposted and had its own 2km long road leading to it with special cycle lanes and everything. They must have spent a fortune on the place. Closed.

Ok, so, we'll move on then, our vacation was starting to feel a little like the Griswolds trip to Wally World.

After another hour or so we were both needing the loo and Public was running low on fuel, so we left the main roads looking for a gas station and maybe somewhere to get a snack.

What we found was the worlds oldest village, with a castle, walls and so on. Just outside the walls was a nice restaurant with roman patio furniture made out of stone. We also found Steve an upgrade for his BMW 

After lunch we went for a walk around this town, it turns out that there are no people here (really, we walked for 30mins and saw no one), however, we did see lots of cats which led us to believe that the town has been taken over by felines, probably sometime in the Middle Ages.

We got back on the road before they had chance to enslave us and found some a petrol station and got back on track and soon we were at our destination Molina de Aragon.

Our hotel was some palace or something and looked very old, after checking in we went to the visitor info place in the town and they told us a few things that we needed to see. One of these was the palace we were staying in!

After mooching around town for a while we decided to grab a beer so found a nice looking bar which had a large Ambar sign outside, a brand of beer that we liked. We sat down and ordered 2 pints of Ambar only to be told they didn't serve that. Eh? There's a massive sign above our heads?! Anyway we had a couple here until our stomachs started grumbling and we needed to find food.

All of the restaurants that Google and trip advisor know about are closed for some reason, so we went to a busy bar where they served tapas. We ordered a couple of beers and instead of getting the normal dish of complementary nuts or crisps, we were given a plate of food. Worried that they'd put this on the wrong table we went to give it back but they insisted. Im not talking about a small tapas dish here, it was a decent meal. Anyway, we got the menu, didn't understand anything so ordered a plate of ham, then pointed at someone else's meal and asked for one of those 'no'. Huh? Why can't we have what they're having? Any way , we couldn't understand each other, but we saw someone eating chicken wings, so we pointed at that and again got 'no'. The waiter pointed at the menu, insisting that we could only have stuff on there and not what they were actually serving to everyone else. We gave up and just stuck with the ham and ordered some more beers.

The ham came out, followed by another free plate of food with our drinks, this one had wings on it, prawns, cheese sticks, etc. Then we figured it out, people don't order food here, you just buy drinks and get a free random meal of whatever the chefs are making at that time.

We quickly ordered a couple more drinks and before long we were stuffed. No wonder all of the restaurants were closed, everyone comes here and has free food! At the end of the night when we were stuffed, we asked for the bill, now consider that the ham we ordered cost €8 and Marks last drink cost €5 as he had an expensive vodka, we were astonished to find that the bill for 8 drinks, the ham and all that food only came to €25! When Steve saw this he pulled a face at Mark which the bar man saw who rushed over and was worried because he thought that we thought that it was too much! 

We gave him €30 and went back to the palace for a nightcap. At the reception we asked for our key and was told by the guy working there who spoke no English that they were full. We tried to explain we already had a room but he wasn't having it until we pointed to our names on the register, he then thought this was the funniest thing ever.

At the bar Steve had a bucket of wine and Mark had a large Baileys. Now hotel bars are expensive, right, and this was a palace. The bill for the Baileys was one Euro. We like this place!

Spain - Day 2

After several beers last night to get over the disappointment of being on a motorbike holiday without motorbikes we had a bit of a lie in. However, as soon as we'd remembered the buffet breakfast we were there quicker than the French running backwards.

We opted to eat at the captains table rather than the canteen, hut the queue was huge, that was until we realised that the queue to get out and pay was longer than the one to get in.

No longer having to consider our power to weight ratio on the bikes, we ate our own body weight in sausage, bacon, bread, mushrooms, eggs, you name it. Steve even managed to get some yogurts in.

It wasn't long then until we were due to dock, we hadn't booked a hire car yet as we were still in talks with BMW about what they could do and the wifi didn't support Apple devices, cause who has those, right?

When it came time to disembark, we realised that we couldn't carry all of our bags, helmets, leathers etc, so we had to wear them again. So we stood in a queue in full leathers and boots with the old dears waiting to get on their coach, Mark even had his helmet on! The old dears found this hilarious and mocked us constantly.

Luckily it was overcast so we wouldn't boil whilst walking the 1km walk to the hire car hire shops. The first place didn't have a car until tomorrow, another wanted us to practically buy their car, but luckily the third had one left.

Yes, it was a Fiat 500, can you believe it. Mark's bike actually has a larger cc engine than the car and just as much luggage space. Still, it was a car and we needed to get going, we had hotels booked still.

We left Santander and the sun came out, so we had a nice drive to Burgos, we even overtook a bunch of bikers, haha we'll show them. We were both getting to like our car, nice trim and seats, linked our phones to the sound system and so on. 24 hours ago, we were bikers in black leathers, dark visors and loud exhausts. Now we were coasting along at the speed limit in a blue Fiat 500, singing along to the radio.

We arrived in Burgos, and When Mark asked Steve why he'd picked this place, he said that it was because it's where the Spanish are famous for their awesome burgers. Really it was because Steve had read about a cathedral here that he wanted to visit.

We found the hotel and dumped the car, the receptionist laughed at our car and our story and then we went to the room. Awesome place, how is this hotel so cheap? Right in the middle of town, modern decor with massive rooms. Probably a discotheque next door or something.

We took a walk around and found the cathedral, Steve took so many pictures that he can probably 3D print a scale model if it when he gets home. 

We then walked up to the castle which was closed, so sat and had a drink admiring the view. Steve had a wine, Mark had ice cream.

Afterwards we walked around the town, and sat and had some booze. A beer and a glass of wine cost 3.80 euros, bargain, we like this place. We watched the world go by for a couple of drinks and realised that we were really in Lilliput, as everyone was tiny! 

Some rain fell which caused panic in the streets, the locals were all in trousers, coats, scarves etc. Whereas we were in tshirts and shorts like good tourists. It was due to be chilly tonight, and Mark hadn't packed any jeans or anything with sleeves apart from one shirt, looks like he may be wearing his leathers again tonight.

Back at the hotel, we showered and got changed before rolling out for food. We found an area that we dubbed tapas street where there was loads of amazing food that cost next to nothing. We did stop short of ordering the lambs testicles however.

After a few bars we noticed that we were being stalked by orientals, so we went into one place and snuck out of the toilet window. We then ended up in a dead end, this guy was closing his bar, stacking the chairs and pulling the shutters down but still tried to get us inside to have a meal. We high tailed it out of there and found a nice cideria to have a night cap in.

The guy who ran the place was really nice and gave us free samples of anything we pointed at, food, beers, olives... so Mark pointed at the cash till and a steve asked about his Audi outside. All this with two rounds of drinks came to 4.80 euros, we like this place.

Spain - Day 1

This years biking trip for Mark and Steve would take us to sunny Spain to see the MotoGP at Aragon before carrying on to Valencia and then heading home.

We had the same reliable bikes as the last few years, Steve on his trusty bevarian beast, the BMW S1000RR, and Mark on his angry KTM RC8.

We left Worcester with plenty of time, dressed like power rangers, at about 10:30 to catch the 3:45 ferry to Santander from Plymouth. The journey is about 2.5 hours to the boat, but Steve being a project manager had build in lots of contingency time. We made (very) good time down a very quiet M5, getting to Bristol in under 45 mins before pushing on to our first fuel stop at Bridgwater.

For those that haven't been to Bridgwater services, they are the worst on the planet, a tiny pokey place with plentiful queues and a crappy one way system. 

This is where things went wrong, on getting off the bike, Steves beemer started to smoke and on inspection we saw oil all down the side, lots of oil. We checked and couldn't see anything obvious, so as we were ahead of time, called in the breakdown cover. 

After 20 mins, the SOS van arrived and he quickly came to the conclusion that it was game over. What appears to have happened, is that when Steve had had it serviced just before the trip at BMW Rednal, Birmingham, they hadn't put the rocker cover back on properly. We were lucky really, the engine could have seized, the oil could have hit his back wheel or Marks front wheel and we could have been lay on the M5 somewhere.

We considered all options, called BMW, the ferry company (time was getting tight to make it there), the breakdown people etc. And we opted for getting the recovery truck to take us to Plymouth with Mark following and Steve could make more calls on the way.

We had to swap recovery trucks at one point as we headed south and at that point we decided to ditch both bikes in Plymouth at a BMW dealer and get on the ferry on foot. We could hire a car in Spain and at least save the holiday, so long as we didn't get a Fiat 500 or a mini or something!

Time was very tight now, and fair play to the recovery driver who bloody nailed it to Plymouth, we got to BMW and threw both sets of keys at them and the recovery driver then took us to the port. BMW had an event on so were busy, whatever you do, don't break down on a sales day. I can't give the recovery driver enough thanks, though, top bloke!

At the ferry we dashed to the office to check in and they were very confused as to where our bikes were. We explained and they told us that we needed to be converted to foot passengers but the ferry was full. Now bear in mind that we had a cabin already reserved, the ferry was due to leave in 5 mins and still somehow we both managed to stay calm and not scream "you stupid cow, we're actually taking less, we already have tickets , I don't give a flying rats arse what your computer tells you, let us on the bleedin boat". 

A few minutes later she had sorted by not changing her tickets and just letting us on. This led us to security. Now remember that we're wearin full leathers, carrying helmets and bags. They take one look at us and with a straight face ask "where are your motorbikes lads?", we explained and they turned and looked at their metal detector and say that they have no idea how this is going to work. We were amazed to walk through without the alarm going off as the leathers are covered in Kevlar armour, titanium strips, etc. We give a puzzled look to the guy operating it and he said that he'd turned it off :)

We dashed to the ferry and just it in time. We were on our way to Spain! After nine months maticulous planning, ages working on the bikes, we were going on our biking holiday on foot!

After a quick rubbery plastic meal which cost the same as a private jet we headed to he surprisingly cheap bar for a much needed stress relieving beer. We appear to be the youngest people on the boat, we think it may be the Cocoon ferry or something!

Not long after, the "entertainment" started. Firstly was the worlds easiest quiz, shortly followed by a guy who wanted people to come on stage for circus training. No one volunteered and after standing around for 15 mins, he gave up and left. Then there was a guy who pretended to play the guitar who could actually sing before everything reverted to the usual shit standard of entertainment with the magician.

I'll cut a long story short, but his main act involved his balancing a golf club on his nose which was fascinating as you can imagine. To finish up, some girls came on who sang some Motown, they were dubbed as sisters which was a bit of a stretch as they were about as similar looking as Elvis and Bruce Lee. 

It was all too much, so we called it a night.