Love the Spanish ferry, its the anticipation and the chance to relax after dealing with tour preperation whilst fending of clients that always want more of me before a trip. With modern Garmins (59x series and the XT) the associated app allows you to share and transfer a location from Google Maps on your phone to the device. Far easier than programming into the sat nav. Either that or use MyRouteApp.
Agree re Spanish ferry.Always great to get in the bar after 390 miles from North East knowing you have a late start the next day.
Quintana de Valdivielso. Rain all the way here so decided on a more direct route than planned. Now headed for Burgo de Osma. The Gs does make things easy. The laughing German is back on form.
It was you that said give the Picos a go in October and we’ve been back in October for the past four years apart from this ! So a big thanks for that . Cheap deals with Brittany made it great value ! hope to go in April / May next year instead
You have made good progress.Dont know what your plan is but you aren’t far from Segovia ,a stunning place and great night out .Plus the mountains north of Madrid and south of Segovia have some great roads.Apologies if you are already aware.
Well that’s just great, glad you’ve had a good time round there. I’ll be asking you what roads when I do a Picos tour again.
R Completely agree with you, headed for Segovia when I’ve had a coffee. Was going to try somewhere else but we’re only 2 1/2 hrs away now so can’t resist. Now in Hontoria del Pinar.
Sam, depends on the nav, the recent XT uses Garmin Drive but for the 59x series it's Smartphone Link as you've found. In Google maps choose the location then 'share', Smartphone Link should be one of the options as a send target. IIRC the location is saved into is a bit of a wierd place in the Find menu, possibly History. I can't quite recall, my 590 was sold a few months ago. Don't bother with the native Foursquare search within the app, it's useless in comparison to Google. Once you've got the hang of it it's a useful add on. The app also brings other features to the party, some require a one off payment to activate. I found the live (it does lag by upto 15-20 minutes) weather radar useful. On the way back from Austria once there was a huge storm coming across my path, something of a race to avoid it, you could see it on the screen getting closer and sure enough, as I got closer, looked off to the left and there was this bank of dark cloud with heavy rainfall. Just managed to get by. Back in blighty and not so lucky...
The rain in Spain doesn’t stay mainly on the Plain. A great days ride, Santander to Segovia. Although it didn’t look like it down at the hotel it started to rain within 5 mins of leaving so we stopped immediately in a gas station before getting wet, togged up and gassed up. Laughing boy even put his overshoes on, the ones that caused him to roll over. It rained for the first 2hrs as we went over the Picos. At one point it looked like we were heading for sunshine but our route took us in a U turn directly back into the rain. At the first major junction after the rain had stopped I pulled over for a coffee, decision time. We decided against following the route that had taken me a full 2 hrs to plot and head more directly south. It was a good decision as we would have tracked east through more rain. This eliminated a planned lunch stop where I’d been about four or five years ago. I wanted to go back to see the mumma and daughter who ran the bar where I’d had a hilarious but very tasty lunch. It’ll have to wait for another year, I didn’t even know if the place would be open on a Sunday anyway. Directly after the coffee stop near Quintana de Valdivielso we turned off the N-232 onto the CL-629 and there was a really good bendy section. It suddenly occurred to me this was the section of twisties that I’d done in the opposite direction in a van two years ago. I’d stopped to take a reference pic because I thought it was so good I should come back on a bike and here I was doing it unplanned, result. It took us up to a plateau, it was now sunny and the road was dry so I started to feed the horses and introduce the quickshifter. Strangely the plateau seemed to take a lot longer to cross in a van. Obviously that many riders can’t be wrong. The Gs is ever popular for a reason and it was doing things with ease. They’ve got a lot of basic things right that I have to admit Ducati haven’t. For a start the seat is pretty much level and you don’t spend the day sliding your jewellery into the gas tank. Or rolling your hips forwards so your jeans pull up behind and therefore crush your jewellery with the same uncomfortable result. I realised at the end of the ride that I hadn’t even thought about arse ache all day. I didn’t even cross my mind. How difficult is it to design a seat that’s flat-ish with foam that’s all day comfortable? It can’t really cost any more to manufacture? I then realised I’d forgotten to wear the padded cycling shorts I brought with me. No need! I’ll bet you now that the new V4 Multistrada will have just the same problem, why? I can almost see it rolling down the production line towards me now. ‘The new V4 it’s a pain in the arse and only +£20k.’ Not the greatest advertising claim. Back to the GS crossing the plain without pain. More comparisons/observations later. It’s always cold and windy in Burgos, every time I’ve ever been there. It’s high up on the plain, as a result I don’t like the place and would never consider stopping there. Plan ‘A’ was to avoid it but the weather and the Shatnav took us straight through the place instead of going around it. Sunday so it wasn’t too busy, it was the sunniest I’ve ever seen it but still cold and windy. I did have seven layers of clothing on to keep me warm. Yup 7. Three textile layers under a three layer jacket and a Richa two piece rain over suite. The heated grips on the GS only have two settings warm and burning. It’s difficult to get the right temperature. The Multistrada has three settings which is definitely better. One point all but the seat is a bigger issue. We stopped for lunch of Sin Alcohol beer and tapas in Hontoria Del Pinar and cruised on towards Segovia. We got there about 7pm so approximately 9hrs in the saddle less the lunch, coffee and refuelling stops. Almost the perfect day. visor cleaning Jorg the laughing German style
