I had a week of… always good. I had no plan at all, I just needed to relax, do nothing at all, read some books, think of nothing, sit on a terras and watch the world rush before my eyes, while ordering another capuccino. Actually that sounds like a plan already…
Rushing out on friday after work couldn’t be done, so Saturdaymorning I got up pretty early, packed my motorbike and head off. Seeing the weatherforcast it would be cloudy and rainy in Spain, ofcourse, it hardly rains over here and just when I toke a week of, it’s getting messy. Of the whole Iberian peninsula, only the South-West corner was sunny, so I toke the A5 direction Badajoz in order to get out of Madrid pretty fast and to move on a little bit before taking some alternative roads. That highway isn’t too bad after all, it’s kind of twisty but you can keep up a decent speed and eat some distance before it’s getting too hot after all. So cruising at 150/160km/h (I don’t have a Spanish drivers licence so I don’t risk loosing points anyway) I found myself at noon in Merida and decided to continue over the N630, better known as ‘la ruta de la plata’ or the silver route. This is a twisty-high speed road from Sevilla in the South, all the way up to Oviedo in the North, on the Catabrican sea. It was an old tack used by the explorers to bring in the treasures from foreign countries, long ago. Anyway, the road is what makes bikers have flies between their teeth… I thought a lot about Chris, one of my best mates in Belgium, how he would enjoy rushing of at some points to wait for the others on some panoramic view over one of the valleys over there. The N630 is pretty simple… you can’t mistake there, it goes for kilometers without anything that makes you wonder which way to go… straight forward. The curves are smooth and invites to ride the VFR very lazy… put yourself in 5th gear and you don’t have to shift up or down for hours… You can stay between 90 and 140km/h the whole way and the VFR has a powerrange that allows you to do all that in only one gear. Being so relax, only stopped a couple of times for a quick coffee and some fuel, I moved on so smooth that I decided to do the whole track in one go instead of a lazy 2 days… at the end I was already 5 hours on the road and only 200km away from the beach ! I checked in the smallest room ever around 16h30 on saturday in Punta Umbria. I was there last year when doing the trip around Spain with Ana on the back and the place was relaxed and just what I needed. Halfway the day I was already doubthing why I left alone instead of taking Ana with me, but it was too late now, I was already 680km away and going back to pick her up was a bit over the top. I tried to avoid the idea for the upcoming days.
I booked that little room for 2 nigths, it would allow me to have a night out and sleep out and one lazy evening to get moving in the morning. It was hot, around 35 degrees, and I spend the whole day in my black leathers, so I lost way to much liquid to be safe. So instead of a shower, I jumped in some shorts and rushed off to the nearest terras for a couple of cold ones. The first bar as an Irish pub… terrified by the idea that they might server Heineken, I asked the girl behind the bar what kind of beer they had on tap. This must be the only Irish bar in the world without a fucking tap !!! A Guinness was too much food to start off with, so I ordered a Paulander, some Weissbeer from Germany. I necked it in one go, paid and ran out in seconds when I noticed the ‘alcoholfrei’ label on the bottle… it must have been the lack of concentration that made me do this. Up to the next terras, where I had a big Cruzcampo, not my favorite but better then nothing. A good shower and a nice siesta, made me ready for the night. I found myself watching a parade of people walking by the main street of Punta Umbria, finishing my meal and ordering some beer and a coffee to complete. This was great live, nothing to do but watching and enjoying. I found some kind of open air disco where the served Mahou, so there I was to stay untill my eyes dropped down and I went to bed, exhausted from 7 intense hours on the bike.
Next morning I got a nice toast and some coffees on a terras, I had a small rucksack with me containing whatever I needed for the day, a towel, a book, a bottle of water, sunscreen, some sigarettes, my swimming shorts and my iPod on which I put the complete bootlegseries of Bob Dylan on the day before I left. Nothing could go wrong. Punta Umbria is the last town on a landtong, with on the South-West the Gulf of Cadiz (and furtheron the Altlantic) and on the North-East the river to Huelva, water everywhere. Before it was getting too hot, I relaxed a while on the beach, went for a swim every 20 minutes and let myself dry up in the sun, etc… untill I was tired of that and went for a walk, it was around luchtime and I jumped into a local bar for some fresh fish, Merluza, while watching the Formula 1 on TV. A coffee on a terras on the harbor watching the yachts, and some swimming on the riverbanks. Back to the hotel having a shower and a nap, I went out for some dinner and mixed up with some Havana 7 Years while watching Valencia win against Atletico Madrid. I was the only one in this Irish bar again, but it was perfect, I didn’t feel like talking anyway although the girl behind the bar was more than worth a chat !
I packed my bags early in the morning and pointed my VFR direction West, following the coast, crossing the border with Portugal. I studied the little citymap of Faro, and decided to skip it and check out the next one, Albufeira. It was kind of a mess getting into the old centre, with all the small streets, no indications, and nowhere to even park the bike, so I ended up on top of a clif, seeing the citycentre below me on the right, at a bar where a big sign posted : English Breakfast ! I wasn’t wearing a watch, but my mobile told me it was 11o’clock, for all Portuguese it was 10, I forgot about the hour difference.
The lady from Essex who’s bar it was for 15 years, told me : “You young boy shouldn’t stay in the old center, you must go left here, and find yourself a nice place to stay around , ‘The Strip’, that’s where the young people go, it full of bars, and restaurants and clubs”. She handed me a tourisic map with an impressive list of all those places. Who am I to put in question such a knowledge ? So an hour later I had a nice room with a terras, watching the sea and just below my window the swimming pool. A big bed and a kitchenette where I could prepare some food if I felt like. Needless to say I only used the fridge. A shower later I checked out ‘The Strip’. In fact it’s a long road, full of bars, restaurants and clubs, all English, except for a Dutch ‘feestcafee’ which location I memorised as a NOT GO, just in case I was getting pissed and would start making mistakes. Other confusing fact was that English don’t dislike Heineken, so I had to watch out for that as well… I did had a pretty good time over there, spend some hours flat on the beach, having a horrible peppersteak, which my body refused to digest so it came out the same way it entered, but the beer was good, and the Balantines/Coke as expected. I couldn’t really remember how I got home, but I woke up extremely hungry so the idea of English Breakfast was very interesting. But I had to pick up some cash, to recover the damage in my wallet from last night. That’s when it got worse… There was no way I could remember my secret code…. damn.. so after 2 false tries, I didn’t decide to try another time to avoid blocking my card. I didn’t need a code to take some fuel, so I didn’t want to lose that possibility, I still had another bankcard from an account in Belgium, but that gave me an error :’ this card is invalid for the multibanco system’… shit. I had all the time, I had enought money on my account, a Visa (no code though…), an American Express, and 2 bankcards, and no way to get cash. That was bad. I had 65euro’s left, but I wanted to put at least 30euro’s aside just in case I had to pay for fuell in cash and to be able to get back into spain. Dinner could be paid with Visa, but no beers in a bar. So I had a rather quite night and filled my tank in the morning (visa) and decided to go North, never leaving the border of Spain more than 100km.
I went for Beja, toke the IP2 towards Evora, decided to stay in Portugal until Portalegre and head for Caceres from there on. The indications in Portugal are bad and the extremely twisty roads towards Beja made me move on very very slowly. My frontwheel was shaking a lot when doing mountain roads at +/- 60km/h and it made me wonder if my tires were worn or maybe I put too much weight in my Givi on the back ? Anyway it toke me more than 6 hours to go to Caceres, a quick lunch and instead of taking the highway to Madrid which would cost me 3 hours to get home, no, respect ! Motherfucker, I take the mountains again ! I entered the Sierra de Gredos around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, I was already tired and ofcourse toke a wrong road, which costs me about an hour on a very very bad mountainroad to get back to the road I wanted. The C501, which goes from Placencia to Madrid. The little mountainroad was only 30km long, but it was a road only used by sheep I guess… deep putholes, grind everywhere and no protection on the outside of the mountain, made me do an average of 30km an hour, it could have started to rain as well, and I realised that if I ran out of fuell over here, it would take months before a farmer would pass, seen the condition of my frontwheel a flat tire crossed my mind as well, but I kept in mind a divers’s lesson : you consume a lot more energy and air when you are worried. There was no lack of air there 
but after all those hours driving I had to save on energy.
Placing my frontwheel back on the C501 was like entering a ballroom. Clean and smooth road, just what I needed because it was getting later, big dark clouds where coming together and I was about to enter the mountains to cross them the long way. I still had about 230km to go, but every 20km there was a village, big enough for a fuelstation and a hotel so that was good. I ended up in Madrid around 11 at night, I had left Abufeira in Portugal at 8 o’clock local time (9 o’clock Madrid) and I only stopped about 6 times to get fuell, a quick coffee with a toast or to check my map.
It was a great day ! And an excellent journey ! I really, really should start planning a ride to Ulaanbaatar, but not with a VFR I’m afraid. I need something rougher… a proper Bayerische Motoren Werke 1150 or 1200 Gelände/Strasse better known as BMW 1150/1200 GS.