Pau to Logrono

So we kicked off our voyage in to Spain after a good breakfast at last night’s hotel before kicking off this morning to a misty and cold start. Today we were heavily reliant on technology due to the tricky nature of staying off motorways and the silly amount of random roads to cross over to main roads.

So I took the lead aided by google and we made good progress to Saint Jean Pied de Port just on the French/Spanish border thankfully the mist had cleared by then. We stopped for a coffee.

Apparently tho we were not a train and we shouldn’t park in the landtrain station so was soon asked to move the bikes by a local policeman.

We soon got down to business tho heading over the Pyraneese Mountains. Absolutely great riding roads with lots of switch backs. However in a few corners Danny’s bike was not behaving quite right so we stopped to check but everything seemed OK. We continued on to the top near Roncesvalles.

Crazy great views and lots of memories for me from my previous camino exploits. We briefly stopped in Roncesvalles so I could have a picture with the famous sign.

We Continued Down the road to a police checkpoint were 3 out of 4 of us were categorically told our motorcycles were unacceptable to Spain and it would not be possible to continue only to let us go and let us know it’s a 100 euro fine. We assume there was another checkpoint further up where we would have been fleeced if we stayed on the main road but were following the sat nav which took us off to a cracking pass with tunnels and lovely roads. You will have to wait for the video on that one.

The plan was to skirt Pamplona and follow a different road down however we experienced the downside to googlemaps we went the wrong way due to some unclear signage and instead of just telling us to turn around it tried to loop us so we followed down some very small lanes with turned to some gravel followed by boulder ditches and proper off road stuff, not ideal for two sports bikes and two cx’s. But we managed assuming this was just the short bit we needed to do to getto the road we need to go to but nope it took us back to where we started.

Lesson learned on that off road escapade we realised fuel was low the cx’s can only do 120 miles per tank. We now had the option of running out of fuel or biting the bullet and heading into Pamplona. We decide fuel was king so headed in and got filled up and decided to roll the dice again and trust the sat nav however now we were in proper fast paced city centre traffic and took a lot of brain power to navigate through. So we stopped for lunch when we got through the other side. Then the road from Pamplona to Logrona is mainly motorways hence why we were trying to miss it so let the google’s take over and we had to zip zag our way but all nice roads to be fair tho we did spot these caves.

We are assuming troglodytes caves but we’re guessing.

We got into Logrono and Danny was now advising there is some clunking noises coming from his bike, suspected front sprocket issues. We checked into to the hotel and Danny got on phone a d luckily found a Yamaha Dealer in Logrono just 750m away. With opening hours until 8pm he rode round to see if they could sort it. They did indeed the nut and split pin were absent so very lucky there was not more damage or problems. They fixed it but Danny still thinks there is something not quite right so is hoping to get it on a bench when we get to Santandar tomorrow so the plot thickens.