Tore 2 Pawchoogal

[smegballs]

Well I took the GN for a ride and I hit some diesel, fell off, and the truck that spilt the diesel was like "shit mate, have a ferry ticket to say sorry". So I went home, grabbed some euros and this is what happened......

https://i.imgur.com/7YUcHg4.jpg

Loaded up at Plymouth ferry port waiting to board.

So I landed in le France at 0800, and did the "whole drive all day stopping only for petrol" thing. Despite buying an XL helmet for the trip (my normal lid is M) my ears still hurt despite the stupidly oversize helmet. Funnily enough folding them forward helps to stop them going numb, altho it does feel weird! So by nightfall I drove 200m along a country road and found a place to set-up camp. Just slept out swag-stylee with one half of my polish tipi tent as a cam net over the bike so was damn near invisible to passing cars from the road. One of the problems of sleeping outdoors in such a manner presented itself in the morning: I felt something tickling my cheek, brushed in and a xbox huge spider, similar to in the pic, landed on my chest.
https://poitoucharentesinphotos.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/agriope37.jpg?w=489

Bricks were duly shat, and I jumped up and the bugger fell on the floor where he slowly loped off into the cover of a plant. At this point I took a picher of said camp:

https://i.imgur.com/Gsg6W5I.jpg

Well that was the first day done, I just had all of the second day done too and the writing was flowing well, but then the pc fucked up and I'm lucky to be able to save just this much. I'll write up some more tomorrow.

[_Iain_]

[chris-red]

[smegballs]

My normal M lid is perfectly comfy with no pain or pinching for about 2 hours. Am I meant to sit about in a bike shop, sweating up a helmet for hours to see at what point, if any my ears go numb?

I did think about attacking the inside with a soldering iron to, in a somewhat controlled manner, burn out the offending foam.

This new lid gave me a really itchy forehead too! Most of said itching was alleviated via a slice of paper inserted between my noggin and the helmet liner.

[smegballs]

Okie doke, lets write some moar!

So after packing up my camp and lubrimacating the chain, I set off for another long day of riding. I got to Bordeaux where there is apparently a big set of free motorway so rode that down to St Jean-de-Luz just before the spanish border. At this point I realised why people just pay up and use the autoroute, it's so much easier to make progress. Straight roads and constant velocity means even what you pay on the toll, you probably save on the petrol cost (when not driving a 70 mpg bike), without going into the time saving.

So I got to this cool clifftop and ate lunch, before riding a nice little coast road between Jean de Luz and Hendaye where I crossed over into spain.

https://i.imgur.com/xD5Iam4.jpg

Speaking only enough spanish to buy fuel, the plan for spain was to get it over with asap, having plotted out a route that was motorways all the way, free motorways I might add.

While northern spain is kinda like a warm sunny england, being all green and pleasant and what not, altho some of the urban motorway interchanges are reminiscent of Dr Shekelburgs wild ride, the rest of spain I find fucking weird. Massive industrial complexes in the middle of nowhere, giant sprawling towns in the desert with nothing around them for 100k. Gas stations with about 50 HGVs parked up, with a horrible concrete brothel building, lacking windows, with "CLUB" on the side written in garish letters. It sort of makes me feel like I'm in mexico or some shit, with endemic you-gonna-get-raped vibe.

Has some pichers along the way in spain....

https://i.imgur.com/roj2rEX.jpg
Classic bike/mountains pose

https://i.imgur.com/REQ2gm6.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/mFoKFSV.jpg

So as I battled on down the highway, forehead itching and ears lacking in circulation, night fell. A few big flashes in the sky, as well as a rather ominous looking cloud seemed to show a rather large storm was right in front of me (at this point heading down the Burgos-Valladolid-Salamanca corridor). A quick text to my old man at a service station confirmed that there was indeed a large storm ahead, so I decided to make camp and batten down the hatched. I pulled of the motorway at a place called Torquemada (I didn't find Andrew Eldritch's brother, of sorts or otherwise ) and made a half-assed camp in a field entrance. Here's what it looked like in the morning:

https://i.imgur.com/2lcZksi.jpg

Got up inna morning and beasted out the last bit of road to valladolid, salamanca and finally portugal. There was a really strong headwind here, which knocked my mpg down to 50, from its previous 70. That seemed to be a one off thankfully and then the bike was back to its normal fuel consumption.

Crossing the border into portugal was lovely as always, mainly because I can talk to people, albeit a good tourist-grade grasp of the language, plus everyone seems so much friendlier and everything looks so much nicer here.

Got to Guarda, resupplied my food at lidl, then headed south to the farm in the mountains I worked at last summer. It's about 20k from Fundao and on the way I saw the biggest slag I've ever seen.

https://i.imgur.com/ewg1FOH.jpg
This is the bottom layer of slag, from the other side of the valley.

https://i.imgur.com/dwUk5Vx.jpg
The flat area, is the top of the bottom layer in the previous pic, it only gets higher from here baby.

https://i.imgur.com/lMRF0k7.jpg
This is the mine at the top of the second layer, called Barroca Grande, they have been mining here for a few hundred years or so. Pulling out all kinds of minerals over the years, currently the main one is Tungsten I believe.

At this point I left my camera on, and the battery discharged so no more pics until much later when I could charge it. Over the weekend 5-6-7 I went to a psytrance festival and had a great time partying with loads of hippies. I then rode south to my friends house about 50k from lisbon:

https://i.imgur.com/Fog3uNo.jpg

Mains leccy, hot showers and internet! Just what I need after the ride. Gonna try and use here as a base whilst I look for work elsewhere in portugal hopefully on the coast so I can surf. While here on the farm I'm putting myself to use fixing things about the place.

Walking around on the farm here I found this last night:

https://i.imgur.com/OZK11dG.jpg

Now I just need my AK 74, gas-mask and some tinned meat and I'd be right at home.

GET OUT OF HERE STALKER!!

There's actually a shit load of abandoned buildings here in portugal, including some pretty massive factories, wine making places, grain silos etc. Gonna try and get some urbex in whilst here.

[smegballs]

Well I'm now sat on the ferry at roscoff waiting to depart.

The trusty GN did the ~3000mi trip without a hitch, altho it had an oil change and valve clearance check halfway through.

Pichers and shit to come when I have a proper internet connection.

I think now I might just have to take the GN to as many countries as possible.

[delsol]

Lucky you, enjoying the trip reports, keep it coming.

[pepperami]

Impressed Pepperami is VERY impressed
Top marks for doing the trip on a non super-whizzie bike.

I`ll bet your rear shocks are not happy about this trip

MOAR NOW!
____________________
I am the sum total of my own existence, what went before makes me who I am now!