Santander ferry - stern

I clocked the ferrs using a GPS. It does about 42km/h on the crossing.

Burning down the uk motorways on the second day

Pat taking a nap. Burning down the uk motorways is hard work.

Our last dinner in UK

Dinner in Cardiff with Mark, Paula, Paul and Caroline. Nothing like the company of good friend to lift the spirit.

Day two in Spain

We set out this morning on our same approach to avoid motorways and make our way via more scenic and winding secondary roads to make some progress towards yesterdays objectives.

We drove along the river through some really spectacular scenery but make very little progress distance wise. We stopped to mount the helmet cam to capture some of the scenery on the route and discovered that it was missing. It remains a mystery where it has gone. So far we only covered around 224km as the crow flies from Santander where we started.

After spending eight hours on the road we set up camp in Cudillero campsite and turned in early to make an early start tomorrow before the heat kicks in and try to reach Santiago de Compastello.

The villiage of Cudillero is pretts amazing, I'm sure it would feature on Google, check it out, it's surreal.

Day one in Spain

Day one in Spain started with us waiting for the ferry to clear all top deck before the ramp could be lifted to let us of. There was a bit of a delay and some guys scratching their head for a while before we got off. About 90 minutes after docking we were off the ferry and through customs. As usual, I was the only one in line who had to get my passport stamped.

We followed the main stream of traffic out of the city until we could get to a quiet place to pull off and get the GPS's set up and determining our route. We ended up on another motorway and pulled of again to get the GPS's set up to avoid motorways. This had the desired effect and routed us along secondary roads through small rural coastal villages.

We found the first petrol station, refueled and headed further west towards Gijón on the north coast. By this time we seem to've lost all the other bikers that came with on the ferry.

We stopped at a very Spanish restaurant where the menu was in Spanish only and tried to translate the menu using google translator until the phone battery was drained. Pat eventually picked a platter off the list and they came back a while later with a huge dish of spices barbecued sausages, chops and bacon and some chips on the side.

By this time with the extra hour lost in time difference it was approaching six and we started looking for a camp site.

We pitched our tents, and rushed to get out of the bike gear. In spite of being overcast it was hot and humid. We had a nice cup of Irish tea and a couple of cold Spanish beers, relaxed as the sun went down and turned in when it went dark.

Tomorrow is another day.

PS: we took a photo of the platter, but the laptop battery failed before the transfer, will upload tomorrow.

Catching the sun rise

We decided to get up early to catch the sunrise on camera. We ended with some nasty coffee in the bow caffeteria with Pat complaining about me waking him to the non event of sunrise.

The Santander ferry crossing

Saturday night was concluded with a lovely dinner in a cosy carvery in Cardiff in Wales. We had a great time with Mark and Paula, previously from our Ireland church family who now live in Wales. As an added bonus we were joined by Paul and Caroline visiting them from Dublin. What a lovely way to close out our first day on the road.

We turned in around 22:00 and slept like logs as soon as our heads hit the pillows. We woke around 08:00 well before the alarms went off, had a warm shower and went for a hearty English breakfast, packed the bikes again and burned down the last for hours down to Plymouth port to the overnight ferry crossing to Santander in Spain.

We arrived in time as they started boarding, driving down the ramps into the huge belly of the ferry where the bikes are strapped down for the 18 hour journey. We were met by a stewardess handing us our boarding cards with cabin numbers and keycards and instructions how to get to the right deck. In typical sailor fashion the compartment covered the bare essentials with bunk beds and a claustrophobic ensuite shower unit, but served it's purpose. We could position ourselves horizontally and recharge for the next day.

We explored all 8 decks and my concept of ferries was altered dramatically. Growing up in South Africa when I read about a ferry, I always visualised this chap pulling a platform on a couple of forty four gallon drums on a rope across a river. This ferry is more like a luxury cruiser, with shops, dining room and luxury lounges, a cinema, swimming pools and bars and even a lounge with a piano player.

We had a steak dinner and turned in early to get up for 05:30 to catch the sunrise over the ocean.

At 06:00 we jumped out of bed, grabbed the cameras and ran out to deck to be greeted by a cloudcovered gray morning to our disappointment. We were looking forward to some sunny Spanish weather after the last two miserably drizzly gray days on the windy motorways. The outside deck was surprisingly warm thou in spite of the cloud cover.

We settled for a lousy bitter cup of vending machine coffee waiting for the restaurant to open for breakfast.

It's now ninety minutes before docking. Time for a shower, packing the overnight bags and getting ready to put our feet down on Spanish soil, find a campsite and figure our what's we'll do with the day ahead.