Spain Motorcycle Tour - Day 2 - Bilbao to Valladolid
From: Bilbao Via: Villadiego To: Valladolid Distance: 181 miles
Thursday the 27th August
We woke up on the ferry after sleeping for almost 12 hours despite the boat moving around a lot in fairly rough seas during the night. It was calm as we neared Bilbao so we got some fresh air on the deck. We set ourselves up for the day with a final full English Breakfast, knowing that it's all ham and cheese from now on in.
It's sunny above deck and as the boat pulls in we head down to the lower decks to untie the bikes. Its sweltering hot down there and we hope that we have two weeks of good weather riding in front of us.
Once we get off the ferry we pull over to check routes and to sort out my Sat Nav which started playing up on the road to Portsmouth. My fourth TomTom cradle is starting to fail from corrosion, but we manage to Jerry-rig it for now.
It's almost 1 p.m. so although the aim is to stay off the motorway for the most part, we set the sat nav for the fastest route for the first 10 miles so that we can get away from the port and make some early progress.
Although today is just about getting form A to B we find that after 20 minutes riding we hit our first twisty road, much to my delight, I wind up the bike for a while and then pull over in the early afternoon sunshine to let Alisa catch up.
A 140 miles of back road riding is a lovely way to break in the holiday. We didn't expect such nice roads to start with, thinking day one would be just about getting a few miles under the belt in the afternoon to get us going.
Soon the roads started to rise up to higher ground with views over the valleys. As we hit the top of the plateau we crossed many wind-farms, the breeze was pushing the bikes around, especially Alisa's slab sided triumph Sprint GT.
We drop down again into a valley and onto flat lands. As the evening is drawing in we push on to Valladolid for the last 30 miles via the motorway.
We are booked into a cheap, clean functional Ibis. Valladolid appears to be a modern rather nondescript commercial town so we almost decide to grab a bite at the hotel. But as we are on holiday we make an effort, check google maps and find somewhere where there are a few restaurants.
We go two up on the bike and a couple of streets away from where we park, we discover a very nice old town full of interesting squares and buildings.
For dinner, we went to a place we found on Google, the Parilla de San Lorenzo is a mock medieval style bar and restaurant that sits below a 16th century convent.
The decor is old world and kitsch at the same time and it was a fun place to tuck into our first cerveza and Jamon. After a couple of beers we sat down to dinner. All the food is cooked in a wood fired oven and was both unexpected and excellent. The portions were huge and the food was really tasty.
We headed home full and glad we had made the effort to explore, a lesson learned that we should make the effort to explore the places we visit. If we don't, who knows what we will miss.