As we get ready for another South America run I’m briefly catching up on some of our adventures from last summer. We were in Spain for a month, rode 125s on rail-trails in Canada and camped in WA, OR, CA. ~Donn

So why not? Last year we were riding in Mexico with the motley GPSKevin crew when Roberto let us know they were planning a trip to Spain in 2023, do we want to go? After about 30 seconds we let Roberto know we were in! Kevin was planning a smaller group for his first trip into Europe. We checked out the list of other people going and knew about half of them so we knew it would be a great trip.

I’ll keep it all to one post here, so here are a few of the highlights.

We flew into Madrid in mid September and found out one of our neighbors was landing the same day with a girlfriend. As another coincidence their hotel was only blocks from ours so we kicked off our time zone acclimation with them at our hotel rooftop bar overlooking the center of the city. Fun times with Grace and Llamara.

Soon it was off to pickup the rental motorcycles and meetup with the rest of the crew. No motorcycle blog post is complete without the required picture of a bunch of old guys sitting around a table, so here is mine.

Deby, Juanjo, Chris, Lese, Kevin, Steven, Todd, Roberto

The days were filled with fantastic backroad riding. As usual Kevin had dirt road options but most of us stayed on the tiny twisty country roads. Most had tight switchbacks while climbing up and down the Pyrenees. Here is a picture  of the city Alcala del Jucar on the left. The road you see took us to an amazing lookout and restaurant for lunch.

As anyone who has travelled much in Europe knows, there are old castles everywhere. Most of them are open to tour and are in various states of repair. Here is one we rode to that was abandoned but open to anyone who wanted to walk around.

Of course all the food was amazing even though sometimes you didn’t get what you thought you ordered. Here, Roberto was amazed at the size of his meal… and he’s one of the native Spanish speakers of the group.

Of course, occasionally we arrived somewhere where all the restaurants were closed and we had to fend for ourselves. This happened to Deby and I so while Deby waited at the hotel I jumped on the bike in search of a tienda to buy some dinner. Left to me, here is what I came back with.

The bananas were for breakfast. It pays to have a flexible diet.

Along the way I was checking our favorite guide website Atlas Obscura and saw a listing for “Grutas de Cristal”. It wasn’t far from our route, I translated for Deby and the words “Crystal Cave” immediately got her attention. We were going. https://www.grutasdecristal.com/home.php?idioma=es

We rode up this nearly impossible steep road to the top of a mountain and then took a train into the caves, it was well worth the trip.

Dang, the pictures don’t really do it justice but I highly recommend

There were a number of places where we were riding along reservoirs. Similar to parts of the US, Spain has going through a period of drought. In many places the water was so low that old structures were sticking out.

Here is a nice picture of Deby with her rented Honda 500X. A perfect motorcycle for this trip. It was nice having a van carry our luggage so we could travel light and zip around on the mountain roads.

I was on a bigger BMW F750GS that I really liked. Again, perfect for the small roads we were on. This is the same type of motorcycle that Deby rides at home.

Plenty of awesome roads and riding. Steep mountains and narrow roads.

I like that Kevin tends to book out of the way hotels in smaller villages. Deby and I were out for an evening hike and I took this picture of our lonely hotel. The evening sun was just catching the mountains.

Hotel Casa Peix, Serraduy, Spain.

This is a typical road through some of the small villages, Ok on a motorcycle but nearly impossible in a campervan is what we learned.

A bit of art depicting a scene in the Rioja wine region.

We loved riding through the mountains but the small villages were spectacular.

After two weeks of fantastic roads, interesting hotels and lots of fun with our travel companions it was time to return to Madrid and return the well worn motorcycles. Here is a map of our motorcycle trip:

I’m going to stop here and save the Campervan trip for the next post.

Here is a short 4:36 minute YouTube video with some of the highlights:

Finally, if you really want to see way to many more pictures click HERE.

Thanks for following and the comments. More to come.

Donn and Deby