Motorcycles banned from the Pyrenees
 

it was with great sadness that I've read this news :
https://www.femamotorcycling.eu/moto...from-pyrenees/

I am ( was ) planning to go cross the Pyrenees , but now I'm worried if I should go or not. I'm going (or was ) with a road bike ( Versys 1000 ), no off road at all ; I've tried to find what roads are closed, but so far no luck. Can anyone shed some light into this ?

Thank you / Tito

Looks like it's just this one part of the Pyrenees immediately west of Andorra, and you're still allowed on main roads.

Honestly? I can kinda appreciate where they might be coming from. If you are living in a local village and there are tourists going BRRRRRAP all day along the valley? Could get old very quickly. I've seen similar signs in Eiffel National Park in Germany - not so official, but a very clear "please slow down and stay in a high gear close to the village".

I know how they feel. I live in the countryside, and it’s really noisy. There are tractors, chain saws, combine harvesters, and all kinds of agricultural machinery. Often it’s operated in the evenings and weekends, with no thought for residents trying to have a peaceful day in the garden. There really should be some kind of restrictions, especially since none of them are electric.

Unbelievably, there’s a small airfield nearby, been there for donkeys years, but the planes can be quite noisy and I know some of the people in the new houses in the village are upset by that. Should be banned. And think of the CO2!

And cars! Parked all over the place. Alright, the local pub and village shop say they rely on visitors to stay in business but really it’s just selfish.

Then there’s the cows - pretty noisy, and also fart methane. Dogs- they bark, should be banned.

Haven’t really noticed any noise from motorcycles, but then with all that other racket I wouldn’t, would I.


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It's not my fight, not my neighborhood, and I don't know the specifics....but it seems to me this should not come as a major surprise. People like myself who're opposed to straight pipes and "tuned" exhaust racket (on cars as well as bikes, but here in the US bikes are by far the most prevalent and blatant) have been predicting for years that excess noise will come back to bite us all. What's being described sounds more like a gentle gumming than a real bite, but then again I'm still 8000 miles away.

The fact that some of us may have more issues with (choose any three of the following) leaf blowers, chain saws, farm equipment, roosters, or heavy transport trucks--not to mention lumbering RV campers, oversubscribed parking areas, barking dogs, and farting cows--doesn't alter the plain fact that a good many people resent motorcyclists for the noise and other disturbances caused by a select few, and that this does and will affect us all. Many of those effects, of course, will not be "fair" (as it's known), and some will be ridiculously draconian and/or misdirected. That's life.

I'd be interested in hearing more from anyone who knows what's actually going on--where this came from, where it's likely headed, and how large or small the affected area is.

Mark

I agree - every time I hear an overly loud bike I think to myself that it's another nail in the coffin.

Looks like the whole EU went bonkers. Ash conformity experiment at large (look it up)

A story very similar to this appeared on advrider about 18 months ago suggesting trail riding bans in the Alt Pirineo Natural Park. I subsequently went to the area and found no restrictions in place other than temporary seasonal restrictions on some trails liable to surface damage, and the author of the report would not respond to questions regarding the origins of his information.

As far as I can make out, the "noise" ban is a proposal in a similar fashion. There is nothing I can make out relating to any moto-restrictions on the Alt Pirineo park website.
I suspect the report is drawing attention to a proposal in order to build up some opposition, or at least discussion.

I would go ride and enjoy the beauty of the area. Abide by official signs if there are any, and stick to the stunning main roads that run through the park if you have any doubts. This natural park is only a small area in the mountain range, and there are not that many tar roads running through it anyway, so unless you are going round in circles a lot, any ban will not have a great effect on your journey.

In this area, as in all off-tar riding, I think noisy 2 stroke enduro bikes (which Spain is plagued with) are more of an issue, although loud sportsbikes and the Harley cruiser crowd on the main roads are equally obnoxious.

This would be aimed at the twerps who, when they get to a village, insist on revving the crap out of their enduro bikes that have aftermarket silencers on them. They annoy me, and I love bikes!

Some villages have restrictions on motorbike use overnight (think 10pm to 6am), but that ban doesn't affect local residents with road legal exhausts, and nobody cares about considerate bikers. The restrictions are only ever exercised for idiots.

This is a non-story, Spain has a long history of restrictions and the law doesn't work here like it does in the UK or US.