The Disappearing World
The lead story of the Daily Telegraph's Business section first thing on a Monday morning is rarely a ray of sunshine and the one of 15 May 2017 proved no exception. According to a recent paper by Stanford University economist Tony Seba, the internal combustion engine will be no more by 2030. Unlike previous, breathless predictions of a post-oil future, this time the numbers add up and economics always win out in the end. It transpires 'EV's' (Electric Vehicles) have developed at a much faster pace than previously predicted and the ‘tipping point’ will occur in the next two to three years when the relative advantages in range and efficiency of petrol vehicles have vanished.
I read this with a degree of weariness having heard many similar pronouncements over the last forty years. But one throwaway observation unnerved me: a by-product of the relentless progress of EV's is the digital infrastructure to support them. This will ultimately 'prove' that the self-driving vehicles inextricably linked to the EV movement are statistically much safer than those piloted by anything with a pulse. And so, bit by bit, public policy makers will conclude that, we should not be allowed to drive (or ride…) ourselves anymore. Given that motorcycles are orders of magnitude more dangerous than cars in the first place, could this be the point to legislate them out of existence? The concept of a self-riding, electric motorcycle sounds indescribably dull. Even if technically feasible, the sales volume would likely be so low, the development costs would not be justifiable and again, the economics would win out.
I thought back to a week ago and the howl of my six-cylinder BMW K1600 bouncing off the canyons on either side of a deserted road in the Picos Mountains. After ten days of riding, eating and drinking in North West Spain, I really can’t contemplate that I may have only ten to fifteen such trips left…
I'm a late-convert to overnight ferries having laboured under the misconception that not riding every yard of a motorcycle holiday is somehow emasculating. Having flogged my way through the Aquitaine a few times, it holds no surprises so now it's the excellent Brittany Ferries who do the hard yards from Portsmouth to Santander for this trip.
Motorhomes of every shape and size were waiting to board the Portsmouth to Santander ferry. I don't have too many irrational, ingrained prejudices left but try as I might, I can't shake this one. There were so many, I had a dread of tailing one of these monstrosities around for the next ten days. Thankfully, I could not have been more wrong as they seemed to evaporate (if only...) as soon as we got off the ferry. Where they go, I neither know nor care but I saw precisely two over the next ten days. These were both Spanish registered, so no stop/start irritation for which the 'NL' or 'B' insignia on the licence plate acts as a reliable early-warning sign.
After a good dinner (the one back on ‘Cap Finistere' wasn't just good, it was superb) I sit sipping Kronenbourg 1664 while a superior karaoke singer powers her way through a medley of Meatloaf's back catalogue featuring operatic female vocal parts. It's a surprisingly extensive canon and her enthusiasm is understandable given she did actually sing on ‘I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)’. I checked it out and it's all true: Lorraine Crosby is her name (she also performs under the nom de guerre of Mrs. Loud) and by the end of her set at her encouragement she was surrounded by half a dozen wailing, drunk Welsh women.
The motorhome folk were nowhere to be seen having probably bought their own provisions (I sense Thermos flasks feature prominently...) and had presumably retired early for a night of wild, sexual abandon. Now that my partner has diligently researched the background to the song that formed the apotheosis of Ms. Crosby's career, I like to imagine that they were all getting up to the 'That' alluded to in Jim Steinman’s lyric. A fate richly deserved...
A day on deck in pale spring sunshine before getting to Santander late afternoon serves as a useful decompression period between finishing work and going on holiday. After the forty-mile coastal route to San Vicente de la Barquera, a small fishing town on the Cantabrian coast, a simple but excellent meal of various seafoody bits and pieces and a huge and surprisingly tender lobster is shared between the two of us. The warmth of the welcome here was to be reprised over the next ten days. Despite having a frankly embarrassing half-a-dozen Spanish words between us and English not being widely spoken in Spain, gestures and appreciation were enough to have us well looked after. More than we deserve possibly, to paraphrase more of Meatloaf's oeuvre...
Plotting your way through the Picos is easy as only a few roads lead anywhere. The central area that includes the major attractions of the Lakes of Cavodonga (a bit of a letdown); the cable car to Funte De and the moonscape at the top; the Cares Gorge and the Bulnes Furnicular are all within a loop of quite superb roads that mix fast, cranked over hang-on-to-yer-hat-missus race-track surfaces with technically demanding tricksy stuff that never frightens but exposes even minor lapses in concentration.
We are headed towards Riano, a town perched in the centre of three spectacular lakes having first veered off at Potes to go up the cable car at Funte De. We were heading for León only as I'm familiar with the hipsterish casual dining chain of the same name in the UK. I had assumed it would be a city reflecting the same laid-back Iberian cool. Not so; it's like Walsall. Grimly and unapologetically light-industrial but unlike Walsall, it hosts the single Michelin-starred 'Cocinandos'. This is a no-nonsense restaurant in every respect. Minimalist, neutral decor with a zero-choice five course menu for €42. With generous measures of paired wines for each course, the meter goes up to about €60 a head. Brilliant and worth a visit in itself but León is not.
The Romanesque XV-I leads towards Lugo. Like so many interesting roads in Spain, a motorway now shadows it so it needs muscular programming of the Sat Nav to keep you on the twisty and wide but the effort is worthwhile. Apparently, it’s the route the Santiago pilgrims took (Wikipedia will reveal the theological significance of this if you're interested) and we see many latter-day pilgrims are on the footpath that hugs the road, complete with biblical looking staffs, Moses beards and furious expressions.
Lugo is a walled city and, in ignorance, I’ve booked a hotel within the city walls and therefore all but inaccessible for cars and bikes. Despite having to lug luggage a ten minute walk, it turns out it's a bit of a find. Nicely but not obsessively preserved with vibrant streets such as Rúa Cruz teeming with local bars, great beer, delicious tapas and efficient staff who keep bringing drinks and nibbles until we sup up and head to `Paprica' for dinner. Owned and run by the wildly inventive and pleasantly bonkers Álvaro Vilasante, apparently simple dishes are not quite what they seem… Galician pork was roasted to an even gold and looked as it might have come from M&S Food. Only having devoured crackling as delicate as filo pastry and the tender meat it yielded did we realise we had each eaten half of a pig’s jaw. It was the teeth that were the giveaway… As Álvaro explained, it's the best-tasting bit of the animal as well as being the cheapest. He's been going ten years now and seems in line for a well-deserved Michelin star.
Oviedo is due west and a combination of LU530 & AS routes 14 & 15 is the way to get there. You may argue that the 35-mile northern section of the B500 in the Schwarzwald is marginally better on a technical level than the 140 miles of this route but, as a single day on two-wheels, there is no contest. It starts wide, flat and fast and ends much the same way south of Tineo having taken in some dramatic altitude along the way. Better still, it's virtually deserted as it's too far away from the Picos for visitors and the locals clearly prefer the convenience and speed of the motorway that links the two cities.
Oviedo is a smart, confident city built on and surrounded by small hills that give it a passing resemblance to San Francisco and like the City by the Bay, there’s a palpable sense of civic pride. By 10:00 on a Sunday morning, the various squares of the old town have all been scrubbed by a fleet of immaculate mini pavement washing vehicles while a gardener puts the finishing touches to the manicured park in the city centre (possibly not by coincidence called Campo de San Francisco) by meticulously cutting out a number '7' from a piece of new turf. This is to replace the '6' representing the previous day of the 6th May and so ensure the horticultural calendar is kept up-to-date. Away from the old town, the roads are wide and tree-lined with some dramatic modern architecture, notably the 2011 Congress Palace Building and Conference & Exhibition Centre. The city is filled with public art with many sculptures including one of Woody Allen, deep in thought, dating from 2002 recognising his contribution to cinema. The city features in his 2009 film 'Vicky Christina Barcelona' and is presumably him returning the compliment.
A few weeks previously, I had asked the chef at ‘Eneko’, a Basque-inspired restaurant in London where he would go to eat in the area. He asked the kitchen brigade who responded with a muttering in unison of: “…’Casa Marcial’…si…si” So we head to Collia the next day and check into ‘Posada de Valle’, an upmarket and supremely comfortable guest house run with great charm by an English couple and their daughter, before taking a taxi up the hill for a late lunch. Casa Marcial has been established for over twenty-five years and the interior is a model of restrained contemporary cool.
What impresses the most is the sense that every dish is rooted in the surrounding area and can be traced to the farms and kitchens all around, just elevated to a level of perfection impossible in a domestic kitchen. The technical skill and professionalism are a given (it's got two Michelin stars) but unlike many other restaurants of equivalent status, there is no obvious reliance on whizz-bang technology or other trickery. Lunch looks and tastes like lunch, not various elements making up the Periodic Table or stuff found growing by the side of the road.
Going south on the testing N625 & CV80 towards Posada de Valdeón, I'm looking for the Cares Trail that runs between the villages of Cain at the southern end and Poncebos to the North. It dates from 1898 when some enterprising Spaniards established one of the world's first hydro-electric power generation schemes. The path was built in the early twentieth century to maintain the channels that funnel the Cares River down a drop of about one kilometre over eleven and is now walked by an estimated 300,000 visitors of the two million or so that come to the Picos every year.
On the advice of a friend, I started at the south as he told me this is where the gorge is at its most spectacular. He omitted to mention it's here where it's also at it's most terrifying. It's not a stroll for GS jockeys shod in Birkenstocks or anyone with even mild vertigo as it's only five feet wide in places with vertical drops (and we are talking vertical here) of 500 metres or so. Walking boots and water are a must as getting to the halfway point takes about an hour and a half and the local taxi drivers ply a lucrative trade amongst those who do the full three hours to Poncebos but can't face the return leg: it takes two and half hours by road and costs €150.
Breaking another arbitrary, self-imposed rule, I double-back on myself going north to the seaside town of Gijón. I step into the busiest looking pub where the barman appears to be pouring drink all over the floor. He holds the bottle above his head and the customer's glass level with his knee. It would be quite a trick if he managed to get most of it in the glass but he doesn't nor appears to be attempting to hone his skills. I peer over the bar and see he's standing on a slatted wooden platform that allows the spillage to drain away through a hole.
It's a local Asturian cider, wonderfully named Altoinfanzón and apparently needs to be oxygenated in the manner shown to release its subtle flavours before being downed in a single gulp in a manner cider drinkers in your local park can probably demonstrate. I order a bottle and drink half of half of it, the remainder going down the drain or necks of the two locals who regard me with thinly-disguised amusement. After enjoying the freshest seafood dinner imaginable at 'Auga', a fabulous local white wine called Pricum and by then slightly drunk, I end up buying the table decoration, a bronze statuette by local abstract artist Cesar Castaño of a barman performing the cider-pouring ritual.
En route to San Sebastian (or Donastia, in Basque parlance) the day after, I go in search of the jewel in the crown of the Picos de Europa, a granite monolith known as Picu Urrilellu. You get a brief, tasteful glimpse of it from AS114 just outside Poo (no sniggering, please) but it takes the Bulnes Funicular and a thirty-minute walk to an observation point to get a partially obscured view, albeit still stunning, through binoculars. For a full-frontal, it's another one and a half hours in hiking gear to Pozo de la Oración so this needs to wait for another visit. The village of Bulnes itself is Europe's last remaining village inaccessible by road and it's only since the railway was opened in 2002 has it received more than a smattering of visitors. Before this, it was a seven-hour return trip on foot to see Pico Urrilellu in all its glory.
It's not often that you struggle to ride at the speed limit of a motorway because of the bends and worth seeking out as a result. The computer-game racetrack that is the A8 towards San Sebastian is one such example and easily worth the €10 toll. San Sebastian might be 300 kilometres out of my way but I've never been and having developed a love of Spanish food, I wanted to try ‘Arzak’, the venerated grand pere of high-end Basque cooking.
It's not in the most picturesque setting by a long way, situated on a dual carriageway pounding its way out of the city. I'm led to a first-floor dining room that looks a little dated in a 1980s sort of way. The food is very good (it should be as it’s got three Michelin stars and was just shy of €300 for one...) but the menu seems to stem from a time when classically-trained chefs were stung by accusations that they were too insular. Rather than the correct response to most forms of constructive criticism proffered by those who can’t actually do the job themselves (which is to tell the critic to get stuffed), some were a bit too keen to show how open-minded they were. At Arzak, this is by including a few Japanese and Asian touches that seem incongruous and unnecessary given the heritage of the area.
What did it for me though was the other diners...All were from the USA but not the open-minded, bluff, hearty souls you tend to encounter when visiting but a bunch of bucket-list-ticking, semi-engaged philistines. This meant the full spectrum of "Ken uh juss ged uh stake?" (complete with rising cadence) to the purring, patronisingly apologetic "Arm sawry, bud uh juss canned ead thaat". What do these people expect in a restaurant with this reputation? While I'm at it, they were mostly appallingly dressed as well. I'm no fan of tarting myself up to go out for dinner and don't usually give a stuff how anyone else chooses to dress but there are limits and this lot had transgressed the unwritten law big time. Jeans, running shoes and hoodies have no place here and ruin the ambience as did the screaming baby one couple had thoughtfully bought with them. The chef/owner is charm personified and deserves better customers than this rabble. On my way out, the downstairs was by now full of elegant-looking locals, amidst a convivial fug of fine wine and mellifluous conversation. It’s abundantly obvious they shove the tourists upstairs keeping downstairs for those who appreciate their art. I’ve never been a victim of this form of culinary apartheid before and it came as something of a shock; insist on sitting downstairs if you go.
I take the coast road back the Bilbao the following morning. It's a nice route but slow and busy with traffic I have managed to avoid for the last week. This, and the previous night at Arzak, mean I'm ending on a slightly duff note but nothing can take the shine off this trip.
Motorcycling holidays are about motorcycling and the roads in this region are consistently the best I have found in fifteen years so if you haven't been already (and I sense I'm a bit late to this particular party), you should go.
Go: for the sense of peace and tranquillity that most of the rest of Europe has lost or is losing. Last year, a trip over the Vosges Mountains in October was a nightmare, clogged as it was with motorhomes and lorries. The coast road from San Raphael to Cannes was a Sunday morning delight in 2006 and is now like the M25 on a Monday morning every day of the week. I could go on with other examples and it would be hypocritical for me to do so as I am somebody else's traffic.
But there will come a time when this particular paradise is lost also… Only Norway feels another world away as this area does, but this is now only for the truly committed biker as the closure of the Harwich-Esjberg Ferry means it's three or four days to just get to Oslo. Norway also costs the earth and has food and drink somewhere between lousy and barely adequate.
Go: even if you're not that fussed about eating out well, have a three-hour Sunday lunch at Casa Marcial, then stroll back down to Posada de Valle and siesta to the sound of the tinkling of cowbells in the meadows below with that stupefying view of the Picos in the far distance out of your window.
More than anything, go while it’s still an option to do so under your own steam. Just don't go in a motorhome…
