European Motorcycle Diaries on Tour 1

Looking for Europe’s best biking roads

With at least one devil between us, we must be like the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  Only with panniers.  Dastardly is already drawing the crowds.  There must be 50 or 60 bikes about to load on our ferry from Portsmouth to Santander in Northern Spain. There’s all the usual surreptitious glances at the other guys tackle that blokes are so good at, but there’s no doubt which bike has the bragging rights here – Dastardly.

“Oh look there’s a ferry full of poor people following us”. The Queen Mary II turns left out of the Solent – I assume to head for the Baltic, while we turn right for ‘where the sun shines brightly. . .’

So the plan is to take the 24hr ferry which will drop us into Northern Spain and head for our first over-night just over the French border in Biarritz.  As the ferry does’nt arrive until 7.00 pm, we will have to despatch the 200 miles pretty deftly if we are to have a dinner as planned at our favourite Bistro.  Still, nothing like an incentive.

Tomorrow involves a part Autoroute, part D-Route blat across the French side of the Pyrenees to Collioure on the Med..  After that it’s head south towards Barcelona, and there the plan runs out.  Other than we will take our pick of keeping to the coast or exploring the mountains.  We vaguely have Tossa del Mar in mind as a target because of a fabled best biking road that runs along the coast to the resort.  Any suggestions please let me know via comments!