I feel the need, the need for speed. Oil filter replaced and filter cover back on, torqued up to 13nm, thread locked just in case. Check. Sump plug and new washer installed, torqued up, to 13nm, with a light dab of Loctite, just to be sure. Check. 3.5ltrs of Shell 15-50 Ultra-treacle poured in, lovely. Check. Fresh Motul 660 Olive oil in the brake and clutch lines. Bled the old fashioned way. Check. Fresh Metzeler M9RR rubber all round. Check. Permanent TomTom feed and connector installed straight to the battery. Check. Fairing panels back on, torx screws all back in and we’re good to go. Test ride, no chance. Uncle Bazzer is due and I’ve just got time for a cup of tea. Half way through the cup of tea the clock struck 4 and no Baz. So I call him; ‘ Not like you to be late Baz’. ‘I’m ready, aren’t you coming here’? ‘No you’re coming here, I’m on the way’. ‘No I’m on the way’. ‘What the’! Scramble! ‘Give me 10 minutes to load the bags and I’ll meet you in a lay-by en route’. I couldn’t gas up before because the bike was in bits, another delay. So the test ride was on the way with my fingers crossed. Good job I’d check, check, checherdy checked everything. Marginally before I reached the agreed meeting point a bike is heading the other way, so I give him a wave and ‘Lo’ it’s Uncle Bazzer complete with a new lid. Isn’t he going the wrong way? I pull over into a side road, stop and let all the cars I’d just wafted by, pass me. Dang! I killed the engine and even with my ear plugs in I can hear Uncle Bazzer before I can see him. An 1199s with a full Akrapovic system sounds like music and I fire up and wave him on. We’re off. A little later than planned but we’re off and there’s still plenty of time in hand. I dropped it into the left hander at a roundabout and the new Metzelers made it feel like it was on rails. Don’t even think about asking what it weighs with me and luggage but it still feels really light. Pure joy. The thing about the new lids is; I upgraded to a new Shoie GT air complete with new Sena integrated coms system. ‘Luksury, bloody luksury’. Well it would be but when we stopped off at gas station number one neither of us knew how to turn them on. I don’t mean pair them, I mean power them up! I bought mine at the NEC show in November, tested communications with the Shat Nav turned it off, boxed it back up again and forgoddabout it and how to use it. I don’t know what Bazzer’s excuse is. Presumably he did the man thing and didn’t read the instructions. Whatever I pressed didn’t turn it on. So we agreed we didn’t really need it and we’d sort it on the boat. All that money and we still couldn’t talk to one another. You’ve got to laugh. All went well, we arrived ahead of time at 8pm and given that we were getting cold we decided to get a sandwich so we could eat while wasting time on the quayside. Basil spotted an Aldi. Now, you can get into Aldi but you can’t get out, especially if you’re in a hurry. They are the rules. This woman had the temerity to be doing a full food shop at 8.15 on a Friday night. What a nerve! So by the time we got back to the ferry check in, the only queue was for cars and vans. No queuing for us, or standing on the quayside munching sandwiches. The men that just wave waved us straight on, it was a result. Apart from the customs guys with nothing to do. So we had to get off the bikes and open our bags. Now if I was going to smuggle something it wouldn’t be out of the country it would be into the country and I wouldn’t choose a motorbike to do it with because there wouldn’t be much of it. Call me old fashioned. Cursory check, ‘you packed the bags’ etc. etc. Then Bazzer grassed me up saying I had a blow up doll concealed in my baggage. I countered saying I needed something to warm me up. Ice broken. One of the guys says: ‘Cor, now these really are proper Superbikes. How fast will they go’? Yada yada, yada. Eventually they let us go and we we boarded. Cut to the next day and there we are sat in the cabin with our helmets on and Baz says to me over the intercom ‘if somebody walks in now, they’ll think we’re a right pair of perverts’. My reply was; ‘Could be worse, we could have been polishing our helmets’.
Perversely I think I actually understand what you are saying Have a blast. Looking forward to my next "escape" From Brexit Britain to Alcarras on 12th May. My new passport already looks like it has developed a rash!
So far we haven’t taken a single pic, otherwise I would have posted. As usual before departure it was all such a rush. I can guarantee that you don’t want pictures of two blokes and their helmets in a ships cabin… or anything worse! We dock tomorrow morning, I’m sure suitable pics will follow.
Will do. Glad you enjoy the trip. Quite honestly I can’t believe you lot like reading my nonsense…but if you do, who am I to stop your enjoyment. Interestingly Baz and I like to look back at years gone by and relive it. More people should tell us about their trips or just post photos. As I’ve said before, it’s a free ride out.
Thanks Andy, you were too quick and of course entirely right. It was a funny one and I blame it entirely on auto-incorrection. Couldn’t believe it when I saw it. Hilarious but already sorted. It’s the little things like that, you can never plan or ever anticipate, that make things interesting and amusing. What a dock.
Rain, rain,bloody rain. It looked like rain when we disembarked. So we stopped immediately and put the wet gear on after we went through passport control, which last year took ages but they’ve really got sorted out now, we were through in less than five minutes. From that point on it rained on and off all day. Bro 6 had spent last week touring in the Picos Mountains and it had been sunshine the whole time, b’stardo! We headed up towards Riano dodging humongous piles of wet cow and horse shite in the road. It was a small twisty which would have been great in the dry, it was ok but it could have been great. I was dry inside but Baz said he could feel it coming through. Yuk. Maybe it was time for him to replace that twenty year old set of wets he’s got. We’d been turfed off the ferry at 8am prompt. No time even for a cuppa so by mid morning I was in need of a coffee. We stopped off at a cafe in a little village, three guys were standing outside at the door, the rain had momentarily stopped. They looked at us and we looked at them. They turned out to be English too. “You’re brave on those things’ “Brave or bloody stupid” says Baz. They turned out to be three very nice guys from Hexam doing a car tour of the Picos. The youngest one had just bought a very nice V4s Panigale and whom I took to be his dad also showed us pics of a really nice looking Delahay 2 seater he’d rebuilt himself, I think it was 1930’s. Fine job. After a good old chat about Newcastle United and car ‘n bike stuff, off they went, not in one car but one car each! That took me by surprise but of course why would three guys tour the Picos in one car? I can’t imagine Baz coming on the pillion, even when he’s older. They had a couple of Porsch’s and I’m not sure what the other two seater was but it all made sense now. We went to pay for our coffees and the bar owner explained that the other guys had already paid. They didn’t say anything but we wondered if they’d realised or not. If they did it was a very nice gesture. If they didn’t, either way its our turn next time. They must have chuckled at us as they turned their wipers on, who could blame them. I wonder if they had intercoms between the cars because the bike intercoms were an absolute revaluation. Once we’d learned how to turn them on they worked much better but for some weird reason the Shat Nav was no longer taking to the helmet. As much as we tried to sort it, it wasn’t having any of it. On the ferry we’d half watched an American ‘crash, bang, whallop’ film and I noticed a guy flying a helicopter with one hand while saving the world with his other hand, say into his headset; ‘Copy that’. As an affirmative. ‘Ooh Baz, I like that. We’ll have to use that’. Much laughter. So all day it was: ‘Copy that’! As opposed to ‘Roger that’. Which we decided we wouldn’t do as we swept by one particular gruesome looking local. I know you’re not supposed to say things like that any more but political correctness is so dull, I can’t stand it. Political incorrectness is far more fun and I certainly wasn’t expecting to see a Moose roaming freely around the Picos. Copy that? No wonder the young generation aren’t happy, everything but everything offends them. I’ve digressed, back to the rain in Riano. We had lunch, it rained. We had a coffee, it rained. Two Dutch guys turned up on the inevitable GS’s and when Baz appeared they were amazed at him and said they thought he’d be a 30 year old riding that thing. He wasn’t offended and it rained some more. We headed off in the direction of Portugal noticing that ahead was very, very, grey and to the south it was much brighter. We decided to head south but it was too late, it chucked it down so badly we couldn’t see. Well and truly soaked we pulled into a gas station for shelter which was just as well because we must have been pretty much out of gas. 10 minutes later the road was bone dry as we headed for Leon. The difference a bit of sunshine makes but the elements had one last twist for us, more rain south west of Leon. In the evening Baz said, ‘go south young man. The weather will be better’ He’s right. He also said he wasn’t 72 after all, he’s 76! “You’re 76! You old bastard, what the fk are you doing on that thing!”
You have to go to Louis Portugal’s restaurant up in the castle area. Hell of a climb unless you go around the outside but awesome food. Andy
