Spain here we come...

On leaving Andorra La Vella

Quite steep climbs through the hills, possibly 15 degrees some of them.

We met a young biking couple on one of our stops, they were on a holiday from England.  Whilst sitting talking to these guys, we were amazed at the amount of bikes riding through the hills.  Steve reckons there were at least 100 – 150 bikers, we watched them ride by as the billy boiled!  Thank God we were off the road at that time, as it would be ugly them overtaking us on the corners.

Before we departed Andorra, we took advantage of the close proximity of a very old (1000 + year old) early Christian Church.  It had been constructed using ancient or even older Roman Temple ruins…early recycling at its best.

29^th September 2011

Talk about WIND blown, we were nearly blown off the hill at a camping park in Bilao…Not much sleep was had that night, Steve was up & down like a yo-yo.  The tent was flapping like a flag in the wind.  He was out there in the middle of the night hammering in extra pegs into the ground with my boot!  After that we had a more peaceful sleep.  At this camp site whilst I was in the shower (trying to turn the hot water on).  Just as Steve started to get into his shower, a Spanish lady saw him and she showed him where the newer showers were which had hot water.  So here I was, just about frost bitten, with towel wrapped around me heading off down stairs to the other bathroom.  OMG what a sight!!

With there getting to be limited time with our journey & such a long way to travel instead of touring the coast of Spain, we changed course and headed inland to Madrid. We over nighted at a motel just about 140 km’s out of Madrid.  The room was clean enough, but we didn’t want to be eating pre-packaged food.  Another plus was that we were also able to wash our clothes in the bath tub and get them dried with a good old ‘Ashley’ clothes line strung from shower rose across to the entrance of the room.  That night we had already decided we wouldn’t eat there and found a very nice restaurant down the road.  We had a delicious piece of steak and we shared a shoulder blade of lamb, mmmm.



Meeting Kara and Jesus there old sons soccer game, an 'Away game'.

Lovely green soccer field.

The next day we left at around 11:00 am and headed to Madrid, we had been very lucky as our friends Ray and Beth were able to do some Facebooking with Beth’s sister Kara, who lives in Madrid with her husband and two boys.  We were able to stay at their home for 3 nights.  What a relief to be off the bike!  Kara & Jesus have been excellent hosts.  They even took us on two guided tours of Madrid City.  We saw some of the night life in action!  In the town there are many ‘uninvited guests’ who try to earn a living by selling bags, belts and other things on the street corner.  They have all their wares laid out on a sheet with each corner tied with a piece of string, ready to pull up fast if they catch the eye of the Policia.  We saw these guys in action, one minute they were selling stuff, next minute we see them with a sheet over their shoulder and running frantically down the street with Policia in tow!  Something like a bat out of hell!

4/10/11

We left Madrid by 10:00 am this morning…What a sight we would have looked.  Check out the photo..too hard to describe.  We had many looks from the Policia, but they didn’t bother pulling us over, I guess they must be use to bikers carrying spare tyres around on their bikes!! & of course their other luggage.



The XRV extra wide vesion

Only have to carry these about 400-500kms, and I plan to fit them before we get to Gibraltar.

Cordoba, Mezquita Catedral de Cordoba.

The shade was welcome in Cordoba as the temp .s 37'c in the sun.

This evening after many tries of looking for a camp site we finally arrived about 50 kms out of Malaga.  It was a long tiring day & time to stop.  We booked the room, then Steve got to work and started swapping the new tyres onto the bike.  Amazing what you can do with a bit of liquid soap and a lot of elbow grease.

Swapping the tyres was now a priority for us, as we plan to stay in Gibraltar and doing the tyre swap on that Rock I figure would/could be a bit more difficult. And we use up the last bit of the old tyres on the motorway, where carrying them was not too hard to do.



Well short one this time, We hope to be in Gibraltar tomorrow night. Then the day after into Morocco.

Cheers,
Stephen and Deb.