The first day must have been the longest ride at around 380 miles to Portsmouth for the Ferry. Unfortunately most of this was in pouring rain and although it was sunny in Portsmouth as we pulled up next to all the clean shiny Southern bikes ours certainly looked scruffy and hard ridden. Once on board we changed and left the gear hanging to dry and went for a well needed beer. Then it was a 24 hour trip to Santander, luckily the sea was calm and we enjoyed a pleasant trip even attending a whale watching lecture to pass the time. Then leaving the Ferry at 7:00 pm we road about 45 miles up into the mountains to the tiny village of Mentera. There we found our Internet hotel booking was a converted farmhouse in a fantastic location run by 3 Basques who had set the business up and done excellent job.

Up early the next morning I scrounged a bucket of water and rags from the kitchen and restored my bike to its normal shiny self. Then after breakfast with a BMW rider who was meeting his wife on the south coast, we set off to work our way east along the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. Avoiding the main roads where possible we discovered a different Spain to the normal Mediterranean holiday most of us are used to. No rocks and scrub but a green Spain full of forests and fields with things growing everywhere, making for great views and scenery. The highlight of the day was when the main road did a large U around a mountain region but the A-1604 took the short cut across the mountains. This is not for the faint hearted, 34 miles of mountain road with a tiny village of a few houses in the middle. If you break down here it's a long way back to civilisation. I called it the road of bends as I don't remember a straight section. The second half got a little scary where the road repairs consisted of filling the holes with gravel producing a few hairy moments of coming round a bend and finding gravel instead of road, only one bad slip but I managed to recover. We even overtook 3 riders on expensive BMW off road monsters. The road finishes at Boltana where we stopped for the night, meeting up with 2 other riders who had taken the same route.

The next day took us out of the mountains and a stop at Carcassonne with its medieval walled city. Impressive but expensive although the car park attendants did wave us on to a free parking area for Bikes. Then on to the Millau Bridge in the clouds. We arrived in the Gorge de Tarn late afternoon so found a place to stay and dumped our gear. Then we rode along the Gorge by the river until we arrived at the bridge and carried on up to the visitor centre. The bridge certainly was impressive and a video of its construction can be seen in the centre. Then back to the hotel for an evening meal with the local wine, sat in a sunny square overlooking the gorge.

Next morning we detoured out of the gorge to cross the bridge via the motorway then back down to continue along the scenic route of the Gorge de Tarn. What was supposed to be a quick detour ended up as 38 miles by the time we got off the motorway and back down into the Gorge and passed through Millau. The further East we rode the better it became with views as seen in the photo right. Then leaving the Gorge we headed towards the Alps and started climbing again into the mountains. We rode through some closed ski resorts as the road twisted itself up and over more passes. At one point it looked like in the winter you would actually be skiing down the road. After passing through another Gorge with the road tunneling through the side of the rock we stopped in Villard-de-Lans for the night.

Chamonix was a beautiful spot; also Neal had been climbing here before and knew of a Canadian brewery/bar/restaurant in the town. So a very pleasant evening was spent there. However in conversation with the manager of our hotel for the night we were warned that bad thunderstorms were forecast for the next few days, so the Alps were not the place to be on a motorbike. Out came the maps and where should we go was the question, it turned out we both fancied a look at the Normandy D Day beach landings (almost the other side of France) so off we rode. We missed the thunderstorms but the rain certainly caught up with us and it was a miserable day riding through the centre of France.

Earlier we had been on the road of bends, now we hit the straights. Roads as straight and as far as you could see, the last time I was on roads like this was the Canadian Prairies. It wasn't as much fun but it certainly ate up the miles. Passing through a town with a supermarket we stopped and bought a picnic lunch then pulled over in a sunny lay by to eat. Compared to the day before this was what touring is all about. We rode on until reaching Fler we found a small hotel in the corner of the town square. This was run by a couple of Turks who offered pints of beer and the first UK TV since leaving Portsmouth. Only trouble was I noticed an unusual amount of ladies to men in the restaurant plus there was a lot of to and fro in the corridors during the night and the next morning a whole different group of women were around for breakfast. I was left with a feeling there was more to the hotel than we thought but I could be totally wrong and they did make us welcome.

Working our way up to the Ferry we stopped off at Vimy and the Canadian monument for the 1st World war trench battles. There we toured the refurbished trenches and were escorted round the tunnel system that had been restored. Times had been hard and conditions terrible for the men involved. We rode to Ypres and entered another walled city but the one way system deposited us back at the same gate so it was out to the ring road and on up to Zeebrugge and the Ferry. Another calm sea crossing depositing us in Hull about 9:30 in the morning. There we split with Neal heading home West along the M62 and me cutting across the Yorkshire wolds and home via Malton and Helmsley.