Vitoria-Gasteiz

07 May

There’s an almost autumnal chill in the air as I make my way out of Siguanza down polished, cobbled streets to the A15. It’s as good as a motorway can ever get but I sense this banquet of superb roads is coming to an end.

But there’s just time for a couple of additional courses… As the A15 turns towards Madrid, I’m directed off onto N111 and the fun starts all over again. Miles and miles of soaring, gentle curves leading up to the peak of the Sierra de Cebollera, where there’s a long tunnel and the province of Navarra turns into Rioja. Down the other side is the smoothest, stickiest blacktop you’ll find away from a circuit. The best truly has been saved for last.

At Logrono, it’s a quick blast to Vitorio-Gasteiz, capital of the Basque. This region has been semi-autonomous since 2017 when separatist group ETA finally threw in the towel after 52 years of bloodshed that resulted in 829 deaths and 22,000 injured.

It’s difficult to reconcile this peaceful, orderly place - so much so it feels more German than Spanish - with this appalling recent history. It now resembles the perfect, anodyne town that Jim Carrey can’t escape from in ‘The Truman Show’. Bathed in a warm, gentle early-evening light, the bars around the Playa Espana are all busy and I join with the locals sipping Txakoli, a local white wine and nibbling on Pinxtos (Basque tapas) while contemplating dinner.

In my case, this is at Kea Basque Fine Food and very fine it is too. Asparagus with truffle, Metzula (Hake) Tempura, an expertly-seared bit of Bambi rounded off by three local, unpronounceable cheeses takes the honours as the best meal of the last couple of weeks.

It’s a close-run thing though, the difference between restaurants boasting a Michelin star and those just listed (like this one) becoming ever narrower. For me, the only obvious differentiator is usually the bill, which tends to be a good 40% higher in the stellared establishments.

So a final Maher Duplo, the mentalist, high-octane version of the regular beer, beckons and with it an inevitable reflection of the past ten days..

Sometimes, expectations of the annual European Tour, the highlight of the motorcycling year for many of us, cause it to collapse under the weight of expectations. Last year’s ‘Grand Tour of Switzerland’ was a case in point and revealed Switzerland to be pretty much on a par with the rest of Europe as a whole and not the paradise suggested by the Swiss Tourist Board’s glossy website. Visits to the South of France and Italy have been marred by crowded roads, inconsistent food and expensive accommodation. Meanwhile, the best bits of Germany are increasingly verboten: the imposition of 50 Kmh speed limits on great swathes of the B500 and moves to ban motorcycles at the weekend from the wonderful Harz Mountains are but two examples.

But I don’t care as I’ve got no intention of returning to any of these places in the foreseeable future. The last two weeks seem to suggest Spain has everything you could possibly want as a destination with none of the irritations mentioned above. In the past, I’d only travelled through the Picos, the Pyrenees and other northern regions but was so impressed, wanted to give the south a whirl. I’m so glad I did but now I feel I’m very late to the party and need to catch up.

Somehow, I’d been conditioned to think large swathes of the country was brown, barren and flat. This could not have been wider of the mark. Much of it is lush and forested, despite the water shortages evidenced by numerous dried-up lakes and river beds. Critically, there is modest gradient pretty much everywhere and gradient means bends. Combine this with evident investment in the road infrastructure and you’ve got the foundations for a memorable trip.

The food - at all price points - is exceptional and along with reasonable hotel charges, puts it comfortably ahead of any other European country in terms of value. Total cost of this 17-day exercise was £3,200 or £190 per day. This includes a Premium cabin and Commodore Club lounge access both ways for the long crossing, all fuel & tolls, mainly three and four-star single-occupancy accommodation and some pretty fancy dinners. Excluded is the outrageous sum I paid for the Springsteen ticket that I don’t begrudge a cent of.

By comparison, the rest of Europe normally works out for me around £210 per day and Switzerland was a laughable £230, although these last two examples are skewed low as they have involved two of us bad-temperedly sharing a room.

Without subscribing to the practice of crass, national stereotyping, the Spanish people are generally welcoming with many simply delightful, helpful and charming. They also largely tolerate an idiot monoglot mangling their lyrical language with his phone app. People of France: please take note.

But in the end, it’s the roads that I’ll keep coming back for. Despite my misgivings over taking a sports bike, only for 20 miles or so over 2000 was I cursing the choice. The rest of it was heavenly and I have precisely zero aches and pains after the ordeal. But perhaps the main reason for returning is to satisfy my curiosity. I didn’t actually plan much of this route at all, Garmin’s algorithm largely worked it all out for me based on destinations and a few random waypoints. So short of divine intervention, I just got lucky. All this begs the question: what other delights does Spain hold next time with more planning? Or maybe just ride tandem with the random and let the surprise be part of the magic.