Bilbao to Calais

We left Steve's house and within minutes were trundling down the A3 on our way to Portsmouth. It was May 1 and we thought we were going early in the season. As we waited to board we were chatting to a guy on a BMW F650 who was planning on getting through Spain in two days to ride Morocco for a week - and we thought we were being adventurous.

Upon riding onto the car deck there must've already been a hundred bikes already loaded, all taking advantage of the cheaper off season crossing fares and the good weather further south. The choice of a couple of days riding through France or two nights and one day on a ferry. The weather was good, the sea calm and the bar open. We already had a plan, to ride home and we had five days to do it. As we rode off the ferry in Bilbao on the Monday morning wearing our waterproofs we wondered if we'd gone too early in the season. We filled the bikes up and cleared town as quickly as possible, commercial ports and their surroundings are rarely decent places to soak up the ambiance. Lunch was planned for Pamplona and the traffic thinned quickly. That first day we rode about 450 miles. Our route through the Spanish Pyrenees took us from motorway, to fast A road, then on through a series of biking challenges; sunshine, short showers, sunshine, excellent road surfaces, fantastic views, fast bends, tight hairpins, stretches under-going maintenance with no surface or detours over temporary roads, tractors, cattle, cattle dung, children playing football in the street in the villages. It was an awesome days ride, just about the only thing missing was the child running out from behind an ice cream van. Exhausted we stopped at about 9pm just a few miles south of Andorra.

The next morning in heavy traffic we made our way through Andorra with pretty much everyone else who wanted to travel between Spain and France & stop and shop on the way. A succession of tax free bike shops lined the roads with very little advance warning. We didn't stop, but next time will come armed with a shopping list. We ignored the choice of a tunnel and 20 minutes later found our fingers numbed from the cold and our visors steamed up as we rode up to have skiers passing to one side of us. Coming back to an altitude with a more moderate climate and after a much needed hot coffee stop we left the main road at Ascou and followed the D613, one of my favourite roads of the trip. Initially climbing in fog through woodland with a series of tight bends, the road became a gradual descent down the side of a mountain with vision to enable faster speeds, by the time the time the road hit the plain it was scorching sunshine and tree lined fast straights. The traffic built for the rest of the day. An overnight stop in Castres where our cheap B&B should have had a minus star rating and the following day, the main road between Albi and Rodez was crowded with HGVs.

A short detour through the countryside near Aurillac thanks to our poor map reading skills, but the added hour was a pleasure on near empty country lanes before heading south towards Millau and the start of the Gorges du Tarn.

The Gorges du Tarn D907 was a fantastic combination of hairpins, narrow lanes, short tunnels and short straights. Speaking to some locals we had timed it right. During holidays and at weekends the roads in the area are filled with caravans and minibuses towing trailers loaded with rafts and canoes. The road doesn't provide many overtaking opportunities, so avoid peak times to get the most out of this experience. We had done and we did or more by luck than judgement!

Sticking to the A roads, we stayed the night in St Flour on the edge of the Parc des Volcanoes before acknowledging the end of the fun and heading home using more motorways than we'd have liked. The distance needed to be covered and we were pressed for time.

We covered about 2100 miles in six days, the first day being our longest.