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Stroming The World - Barcelona To Ulaanbaatar 2013
Hi everyone!!
This summer I will try to get to Mongolia by bike, on my own. I started planning this trip months ago and I created a blog about the project. I have been waiting to have some content published (I did not want to launch an empty blog) and for the trip to be more or less definitive (there was a lot of preparation to do) before telling everybody. So far, everything is going quite well and the departure date still stands: the 25th of June. I am writing to you to tell you a couple of things: Firstly, I have created the blog to share this project with you all, and I would be very pleased if you followed it and it could be of help/inspiration to other travellers. On the lower right corner of the blog there is a tab marked “follow”, you can type your email address there and you will receive updates. Secondly, I would like to ask you a very big favour. This will be a long and I imagine complicated trip, so any help I can get, however small, will be welcome. At the bottom of this message there is a list of all the countries and cities that I will go through. Most are definite destinations, but some others will depend on time, setbacks, etc. If you know anyone in any of those places (city or country), please let them know that I will be passing their way. A telephone number I can call in case of trouble, someone who speaks the local language, a garden where I can set up my tent, a couch to sleep on for a night, a garage where I can work on the bike... all this is priceless once I’m on the road. Forward this message and the links to your friends and anyone you think would be interested in this story. I will try to keep the blog as up to date as possible. I hope you enjoy it! Many, many thanks to all of you! You can find the blog on this address: Stroming The World | 2013 – Barcelona to Ulaanbaatar and back (English) Stroming The World | 2013 – De Barcelona a Ulaanbaatar y de vuelta (Spanish) __________________________________ FRANCE: Narbonne, Montpellier, Grenoble, Strasbourg ITALY: Torino, Milano, Brescia, Padova SLOVENIA Ljubljana, Maribor HUNGARY Budapest, Nyíregyháza UKRAINE Lviv, Kiev, Kharkiv, Luhansk RUSSIA Volgograd, Astrakhan, Barnaul, Irkutsk, Moscow KAZAKHSTAN Atyrau, Aktobe, Aral, Kyzlorda, Shymkent, Almaty, Taldykorgan, Ayagoz, Semey MONGOLIA Tashanta, Olgii, Khvod, Altai, Bayankhongor, Ulaanbaatar, Suhbaatar LATVIA Rezekne LITHUANIA Vilnius POLAND Gdansk, Poznan GERMANY Berlin, Dresden, Nuremberg, Stuttgart |
I am a follower to your site and here to the HUBB....Wish you the best!!
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strom
Great news , congratulation on your decision of travel and bike. take a lot of pictures for the rest of us. 45000 miles on my DL and love the bike reliabilty and fun factor.:scooter:
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Almost a month to go and preparations are going well!
I went for a weekend trip to test all the gear, here's the trip report: :mchappy: It was eight o’clock on Saturday morning, it was pouring with rain and my plan to leave early and spend the day riding was already delayed because I had forgotten the bike’s documents at my parent’s home. Oh, and I did not have a driving license… I live in a flat in the very center of the city and my motorbike sleeps in the street – that is one of the reasons I bought a second hand one and not a brand new top of the range GS – so the logistics of the trip are not easy. I cannot work on the bike there nor, for that matter, walk up and down the stairs of my apartment with all the equipment I need and strap it to the bike one or two things at a time – it might get stolen while I go back up to get the rest. So when I need to service it or install things, as I have been doing these past few months, I use my parent’s place. They live in a nice big house 30 minutes away from my place and have a front yard I can roll the bike into and work in it, so on Friday morning I attached the panniers (which can be locked) at home and then took the tank bag and rack bag down the street and off I went. At my parent’s I removed the top case, which I am not taking on the trip, installed the tire rack I had made the week before, strapped the tires in place, put the bike cover and the food bag inside the tires, strapped the rack bag on top of the tires and attached the jerrycan, chain cleaner, oil and water bottles to the panniers. I ran into the first obstacle right outside my parent’s gate. A new school is being built right across the street, and construction work is almost done, so the enormous crane they were using had to be dismantled, and can guess which day they had picked to do so? That’s right. Friday. When I arrived there was this rather big telescopic crane truck parked in front of the gate, but as they had not started work yet, I was able to ride onto the sidewalk and into the yard. Now, however, they seemed to have finished lunch and got down to it, and the crane had rotated to start lowering the sections of the other crane and its huge counterweights were barely half a meter from the gate. I started work in half an hour, so I had to find a way out of there or I risked a bunch of unhappy students, and they’re not kids but workers from a pharmaceutical company. Fortunately, the counterweights were quite high and there was just enough space under them for me to back the bike out, turn and ride on the sidewalk between the truck and the houses while they were moving. The reason I was going to work with a fully loaded bike was, again, logistics. I work on the outskirts and finish at 10 pm, and on top of that I was spending the night at my girlfriend’s, who also lives away from Barcelona, and hitting the road early on Saturday morning. As I did not want to have to get up at 5 am or set off rather late. This meant taking everything with me on Friday. Well, that would be the first test – leaving the bike out in front of my work and see if anything got stolen. Fortunately, nothing did, not at work and not during the night, and at eight o’clock on Saturday morning I was ready to leave despite the rain… when it dawned on me that the bike’s documents were in the top case in my parent’s garage. Damn. An hour later I was on the motorway, happily leaving the city behind. I had the documents and the rain had stopped, it even looked as if the sun might come out. I had not solved the driving license issue, mind you, but that was something I already knew – I had had the bike for two years, ever since I got my license, but as it was my first license, it was an A2 type, meaning I could only ride bikes up to a certain power. Mine was limited and I wanted to have it derestricted for the trip this summer, so I had taken the course a week before. At the end of the course they took my license and was told I would have the new one in a week… but I didn’t. It looked as if I was going to have to take the risk and go away for the weekend without one. I wanted to test the camping and cooking gear, and the GPS, into which I had programmed the route using BaseCamp, but most importantly, I wanted to see how far I could ride on bad roads before I got tired and whether I would be rested enough to ride back the following day, so I soon left the motorway and headed for smaller roads; just past Igualada I took a smaller road heading for Santa Coloma de Queralt and Poblet. I knew this bit of road, and I knew which way I wanted to go – there are a lot of backroads – so I had programmed several waypoints into the GPS. I was surprised then to find that it did not seem to know exactly where it was going... I have never really liked these devices, and have never owned one until now. I considered I needed one to make the best use of the excellent waypoints Walter Colebatch from HUBB has complied for Northern Asia, but I have always preferred to rely on a good old paper map. I had to stop several times to correct it, selecting the next waypoint manually instead of letting if follow the whole route. I changed some settings and preferences and eventually got it to work. I admit that it was probably my lack of experience with the device that was to blame, but I did not find it intuitive to use at all. On one of the stops I made I put the thermal lining back on the jacket as it was quite cold even if it was not raining. I had stuffed it under the lid of the left side pannier, together with a the pants lining and pair of winter gloves for easy access. They will stay there for the trip. Past Poblet the road began to climb and wind its way to Prades and I was starting to have fun. The bike handled really well despite all the extra bulk, and it did not feel underpowered on the way up. I rode south-east along the Serra del Montsant, enjoying the wonderful views and the empty roads, and on the way down to Falset I spotted a big extension of empty clear land to the left of the road. Thinking it would be a good place to start practising my off-road riding skills, I pulled by and rode into it. The ground was a combination of gravel from the road construction, mud and some small bushes. I rode into it and the front of the bike slid a bit, but unlike the last time I had tried to ride on conditions like this, I relaxed me arm and let it do its thing, opening the throttle slightly to keep it straight. Even fully loaded and on road tires, it behaved well, inspiring confidence. Obviously, I was not going to charge down dirt tracks at 100 km/h as if I was taking part in the Dakar rally, but I felt confident I could travel on dirt roads for longer distances, the plan was to take the trip easy, anyway. http://imageshack.us/a/img248/2595/img5930rp.jpg By midday I rode out onto a main A-road and followed the Ebro river up to Flix and Ascó. The weather had held and by now it was even a bit sunny, so I decided to stop for lunch and see if the old second hand Coleman stove I had bought on-line worked. I found a nice picnic area by the road, sat down on a wooden table, took out the food and the cooking gear and got the stove ready. I poured some fuel in it and following the instructions, I pumped it 20 times, opened the valve and put a match to the burner. Nothing. I pumped a bit more, making sure the I had previously turned the pump handle to the right position, but it still refused to light up. Then I noticed I had some fuel on my hand and quickly put out the match, images of my hand lighting up in flames flashing through my mind. It seemed that fuel was spilling out of the base of the burner assembly, where it attaches to the fuel canister. No warm meal then… I cleaned the spilt fuel, emptied the canister, put everything back on the bike and set off again in search of a place to have lunch, with my mood darkened. To make things worse, just a few kilometres down the road it started to rain. I wanted to find a roadside bar or café where I could eat and keep an eye on the bike, but there did not seem to be any nearby. After about 20 minutes riding I started to be quite hungry and my mood worsened, as it usually does when I have not eaten for a while. With the skies as dark as if it was night, I spotted a camp site by the river and pulled into it. Bingo! They had a small restaurant and sure enough, I could park the bike right in front of it. I got off and went for a meal without bothering to even remove the GPS from its cradle. With my stomach satisfyingly full, rode away and when I was climbing the TV-7411 road past Riba-Roja the sun came out and I enjoyed the beautiful view from the hills overlooking the Ebro river. When I reached the top I saw a dirt road to the right of the road and a sign that read “Civil war fort and trenches”. This area was where one of the worst battles of that time took place – the battle of Ebro – so I decided to visit that and get some more off-road practice. The track was about 2 km long, dry and rock this time, and I was more confident. I rode faster, standing on the pegs, and soon I had got to the end. There was a small car park, although I think a regular saloon might have had some difficulty getting there, and a small marked path leading around a ridge where the trenches and the remains of the fort were. http://imageshack.us/a/img541/6062/img5937y.jpg The trenches were still easy to make out, but there was not much left of the fort, just a couple of concrete walls. http://imageshack.us/a/img708/5941/img5936p.jpg From this position, the troops must have had a great view over the surrounding area and an advantageous position in battle. I found out from the explanation displays that a whole system of trenches and forts had been secretly built in that area to stop the national troops advance, but a lack of coordination and worse, of knowledge of the existence of the system, combined with a very rapid advance from the national troops meant that they were not put to good use. One can only wonder whether things would have been different if they had. When I got back on the bike I decided to test how it felt to ride with music on. I know this is illegal, at least in my country, but I very much doubt anyone cares in the middle of nowhere in Kazakhstan or Mongolia, and it is a good way to ward off boredom in long distances. It was a good moment to test it too, this part of the trip was taking me through some largely unpopulated areas, so the chances of being stopped by the police were minimal. I put the headphones on, turned the music up and rode the track back to the road. The moment was perfect: good music, great views… I got a bit carried away and rode the track faster than on the way there, and it was alright – both me and the bike managed it without any problems. A while later I got to a bigger road and stopped to remove the headphones and sent a message from the SPOT tracker. I had been testing it since I set off from Barcelona, sending check in and personalised messages, as well as tracking the route. I had considered buying a cradle to have it on the handlebars, but it was 20€ and the instructions said it had to be at least 12 inches from another GPS device, and it would have been another thing to remove from the bike every time I stopped, so I simply strapped it to my arm. It is comfortable and it gets signal without problems, so it is staying there. http://imageshack.us/a/img690/7650/img5931x.jpg The road took me through Caspe, Alcañiz and to Calanda, where I turned off again, heading for the Sierra del Maestrazgo in search of smaller roads. This is an area of great natural beauty, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, riding up and down hills, on roads that had more potholes and patches than tarmac, seeing the sun break through the clouds. The GPS seemed to be working better and I switched from the Garmin European maps that came with it to the OSM ones I had downloaded. Both seemed to work fine, but there were roads that simply did not appear on either of them, so to the GPS I was riding off-road. http://imageshack.us/a/img21/8320/img5941vw.jpg After the last such road, I came out onto the N-420 and had to make a decision. There is this small town south of Teruel where I sometimes spend my holidays, and I knew there were a couple of great camping spots. I really wanted to get there, but it was still far, and it was getting late. Not only that, there were menacing clouds in the sky, so I could either press on and try to get there before dark in time to set up camp, or I could try to find a place to sleep where I was. I decided to ride on. The roads were good here, long corners and smooth tarmac that allowed me to make good progress. Once I got there, I had to ride up a dirt track to get to where I wanted to camp. It was not raining when I turned off the road and onto the track, but it seemed it had been raining all day and the ground was muddy. I had a couple of scary moments, when the front wheel found soft mud and skid, but I was able to keep it under control and I got to the top of the hill just as the sun was setting. http://imageshack.us/a/img850/7259/img5943s.jpg It was a fantastic spot, but the ground was rocky and muddy, and there was nowhere to put up the tent, so I rode back down the track – more carefully in the mud this time – and went to see if the second spot was better. It was, a nice field of grass next to a stream. I got there when it was almost dark, and started putting up the tent on the grass. Fortunately it was easy and was quickly done, and by the time it was dark I had already finished and had dinner. What I did not have time to do, though, was clean and grease the chain and write this entry for the blog, I just went straight to bed. http://imageshack.us/a/img818/3659/img5947n.jpg Sleeping well is important when you spend most of your day on the motorbike and have to do the same the following day and the next and the one after that, so I had tried to get a good sleeping system – I bought an ExpedSynMat 7 and a pillow pump. It was fast and easy to inflate, and much more comfortable than anything I had slept on in a tent before. The sleeping bag was a lightweight one from Decathlon – I had considered taking another one I already have that is warm at temperatures below zero, but I thought that I would only encounter those circumstances some night in Mongolia and most of the rest of time it would be rather hot, so I decided not to. However, I took a bivouac sack in case it got cold, and on this occasion, it proved to be useful. I slept in my thermal shirt and pants, and inside the sack, and managed to spend quite a good night, although my nose – I am endowed with quite a big one – stuck out and felt the cold so badly I woke up several times. http://imageshack.us/a/img259/1796/img5944r.jpg It did not rain that night, but in the morning the tent and the bike cover had a fine layer of frozen dew over them, so I had to hang them in the sun while I had breakfast to try and dry them a bit before packing. I got up at sunrise, so I had plenty of time to put everything back on the bike before hitting the road again. It feels great to get up knowing you have the whole day ahead of you, no work, no deadlines, no stress. http://imageshack.us/a/img12/6021/img5949ce.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img17/6483/img5950ks.jpg Knowing that it would be another long day and that my stove did not work, I stopped at the first town I found, walked into a bar and ordered a huge sandwich to get the energy I needed. Happily fed, I started the way back. It was a glorious day, and I headed for the roads that crossed the forests over the hills between the area where I was and Teruel. After about an hour riding through pine trees I arrived in Teruel and seeing that I was making good progress, I decided to take the small roads across the Maestrazgo region instead of taking the more direct way back. By the time I left the area and came down to Mequinenza it was 4 pm and I was starting to get tired of all the shaking and bumping on such bad roads, but I could not be happier. I had some bread and cheese for a late lunch and took the motorway for the last 200 km home. About a hundred kilometres from Barcelona I stopped at a service station and gave the bike a good pressure wash to get rid of all the mud it had accumulated over the weekend. Needless to say, five minutes later the skies opened and there was heavy rain all the way back home. I got to my parent’s at about 7 pm, it was still raining and I had to remove the panniers, the tires and the tire rack from the bike, put the top case back on to go to work on Monday morning and head home, all under the rain. When I finally got home I was exhausted, but happy to see that I was dry in spite of the rain, and more importantly, so was all my luggage. It was a long weekend – 670 km on the way there and 560 km on the way back, most of it on narrow, winding, potholed roads, some of it on dirt tracks and the last bit on the motorway, but it was perfectly doable and the stints I have planned for my trip are shorter than that. The motorbike has performed flawlessly and so has all the gear (except for the stove). I will relocate a couple of things for easier access and buy a few others (clothes line, another towel, a PacSafe net…) but overall the result of the weekend test is very positive. The bike and the equipment are ready, now it is time for me to get ready! I’ll need to work out this last month. |
Hi everybody!
I am now in Budapest, four days into my trip to Mongolia. I have discovered that I have very little time to write, so I prefer to write a proper entry and then paste it on my blog and forums. Here's how the first days went: |
And now, the time has come...
It’s ten minutes to eleven and I’m sitting in a garden in Tiana, 20 minutes away from my flat, which I have already emptied and left this morning, trying to relax and to get some much needed rest before setting off tomorrow morning at seven.
This is it, I realize. I have spent so much time these last weeks lost away in preparations that I had not realised how nervous I was, and it all has hit me today, as I was saying my goodbyes to my flatmate, my parents, my sister, her boyfriend, my grandmother… I am leaving and not coming back for two months. I’ll spend most of my time on the road. I feel sad leaving so many loved people behind, but at the same time I am really excited, looking forward to all the places I will see, people I will meet, problems I will have, experiences I will live. Before hitting the road tomorrow morning, I would like to thank all the people that has been near me this last year. Thank you all for your support, advice, interest, inspiration, help, for patiently listening to me rambling on and on about this trip and for following me on this blog. I will see you on the road. |
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
Day 1 – Tuesday 25th of June – Tiana to Vizille (718 km)
I do not really know whether the answer is there or not, but I have had plenty of time to listen to it (the wind, not the answer). I have set off at eight o’clock this morning, thinking how a few months back I was afraid of being slowly baked on the motorbike wearing the riding gear and how different it has turned out to be. The sky was overcast and it was even a bit chilly. Not enough to justify putting on the thermal lining on the jacket or even wearing anything else than a T-shirt underneath, but cool enough to require a scarf and having the hands a bit cold (I was wearing summer gloves). I had decided that if I was going to stick to my daily budget, I could not afford to pay tolls all the way to Grenoble, so I had planned to take A-roads and B-roads to Montpellier and then, depending on how much time I had left, get on the motorway for the last 300km to get to the campsite I had found before reception closed at 20:30. The motorway from Barcelona follows the coast, but I have not got near the sea until the border with France, and there is where the wind has started. http://imageshack.us/a/img405/4803/tgrw.jpg I know the Mediterranean coast along the north of Catalonia and the south of France is usually very windy, so I was expecting this. What I was not expecting was the wind to still be there once I turned inland, and I was definitely not expecting it to be so strong. I have been told that it gets quite bad on the open spaces of Kazakhstan and Mongolia, so I guess that today has been good training. I thought the only problem today was going to be boredom and fatigue, as it is the longest day of all (720km), but the wind has made it so much harder. It blew constantly and from all directions, creating turbulences all over the screen and the helmet that have almost driven me crazy. I am still wondering how I have not ended up with a splitting headache. Not only that, it was strong and unpredictable enough to throw me off course, and more than once today I have been close to flying off the side of the road, being blown into the path of oncoming vehicles or being blown against the cars to my left on the motorway. But the wind, despite having spent the whole day trying to kill me, has not been the worst part. Pulling out onto the street from the car park and looking back to say goodbye one last time to Nat has been the hardest thing to do. I have taken some long(ish) trips on the bike, some of them for more than a few days, but there was always someone to go back to at the end. At that moment I have finally realized that I’m going to be riding away from home for a long time before turning back. I teach languages, and that means that I spend most of the day talking and listening to people. Very often, just as someone who spends the whole day in front of a computer at work does not want to check his inbox to see that hilarious video you have sent them, when I get home, the last thing I want to do is talk, so I thought that spending some time on my own would be great. Well, it is, and I like it, when I know that at the end of the day I will have someone to tell how great it has been, so today, by lunchtime, I have found myself looking forward to my first couchsurf tomorrow, much more than I thought! I do not mean this as a negative comment about travelling on my own, quite the opposite. I am glad to have realized I feel this way, as I am quite a shy person and I was a bit worried about that getting in the way of the experience, but I see now that I am going to be even more open to meeting new people and sharing the experience. This morning, about an hour after setting off, an elderly man has approached me as I was fuelling the bike in a small town near Olot and made a comment about how much stuff was on the bike. That has quickly turned into an enjoyable conversation about the trip, and the guy working at the petrol station has also joined in. In the afternoon, already well into France, I have stopped to buy some fruit and the same kind of conversation has taken place again with the couple who were selling their stuff by the road. This is a great way of travelling, so different from jumping on a plain and suddenly being in another place. I knew what the French villages on the Pyrenees look like, I knew how the coast of Brittany looked like, I also knew how Paris looked like, but I had no idea what the country really looked like. I had only seen a few parts of it. There is no way we can say ‘yeah, I know Germany, I’ve been in Berlin a few times’ for example. I had driven all across France six times, but even that was on the motorway, 12 hours, non-stop. Today I have seen a completely different country for the first time, and if a country I thought I knew has been such a nice experience, I wonder how the rest is going to be like. http://imageshack.us/a/img69/8889/k97v.jpg I am now typing this on a laptop lying in my tent, in Vizille, near Grenoble. I seem to have found a lovely campsite – in the forest, with great facilities, really cheap, quiet… that is missing the two things I needed the most today: beer and the internet. I have got here relatively early, so I have decided to set up camp, go for a shower, have dinner and then go to the reception bar for a beer and write this post while I drank it seeing the sun set behind the mountains. Wrong timing. This is not a Spanish campsite on the coast. The bar was closed. And a quick expedition into town has been equally fruitless, so I have decided to call it an early night and take the chance to write a good long post about the first day. Good night. |
Technical glitch
I have realised I can simply copy and paste the pictures from the blog, and I don't have time to upload them to Image Shack, so if you want to see them, please visit the blog.
Thanks! |
My quest for a sticker
Day 2 – Wednesday 26th of June – Vizille to Brogliano (580km)
I want to get a sticker from each country I visit. You know, one of those with the initial of the country and/or the flag, to stick at the back of your car. It seems quite an easy thing to find, when you think of how many cars drive around with one or more stuck on their tailgates. Well, it is not, I even had difficulties trying to get my own country’s! I tried petrol stations, car accessories shops, stationer’s, souvenir’s shops… everybody knew exactly what I was talking about, nobody sold them. In the end I was given one bought at a bookshop. It was the same story in France. All across France. I am now in Italy and have left France without being able to get one. Well, at least I am riding through the country again on my way back, I will try again then. Stickers or no stickers aside, today has been a great day. I got up at about 7am, packed everything away and went for breakfast at the campsite’s café. I did not prepare my own breakfast (as is the plan when I camp) for two reasons – one, I still had money left from yesterday’s budget, so I thought I would have a complete breakfast; two – I had forgotten to fill the jerrycan at every single petrol station I had stopped, so I had nothing to cook with. Yes, really clever. With my stomach full and having stopped at a supermarket to get a few things I was missing (mints, bread and extra batteries) and see if I could find a sticker, I started to climb the road that led up to the Col du Lautaret. There was very little traffic aside from some cyclists (quite a lot of them, actually) but they were no problem to pass on the bike. The road wound its way up to the col along deep glacial valleys covered in thick forest and soon I was high enough to start catching some glimpses of snow covered peaks between corners. http://imageshack.us/a/img844/4761/uwwy.jpg As the road climbed higher, the views became more and more breathtaking, and I was busy trying to take it all in and enjoying the road, which was one of the best I have ever ridden. No wonder there were so many other bikers! http://imageshack.us/a/img834/6094/hu58.jpg I stopped at the top of the col to see if they had stickers at the souvenir shops there, but no luck. Going back to the bike I spotted a trio of German bikers on naked Yamahas and went by to have a chat. They were from Frankfurt, and told me they came to the region regularly and had also been to Spain. I asked one of them to take a picture of me and told them about the trip, they were a bit jealous. http://imageshack.us/a/img856/461/y2ic.jpg On the way down I stopped to fill up, and this time I remembered to fill the jerrycan even though today I had a sandwich for lunch and I was spending the night at the house of a couple that I had met through couchsurfing. And I asked about the sticker. No luck again. I rode though Briançon, where they had no stickers either and then into Italy. I had spent all morning in the Alps, a lot longer than I was expecting to, but it was worth every moment; if I wanted to make it to Vicenza at a reasonable time now, I had to take the motorway. And believe me, that is a decision I regret… It was hours of sheer boredom. There was practically no landscape to talk about, only a vast expanse of concrete that took me on a tour of industrial Northern Italy, with hundreds of crazy Italian drivers to keep me entertained, automated toll booths that refused to give you a receipt even if you wanted one and did not display the price and a couple of traffic jams where I had the chance to compare French courtesy to motorbikes – they make room for you to filter through when there is a jam – to the Italian one – basically non-existent, they either can not be bothered to move out of your way or simply swerve onto your path to block you, because if they are not zooming down the motorway, neither should you, damn it. And to cap it all, petrol is a lot more expensive than in France. Well, at least they sold stickers at the first place I asked. By the time I turned off the motorway I only had 20km to go and had paid way more than I had expected, effectively destroying my budget for the day. I made it to Brogliano, where I was staying, in good time, but at a high price. I will have to stick to B-roads all the way to Ljubljana tomorrow and hope the tank lasts to the border. On the plus side, the landscape once I left the motorway was amazing, the sun shining low through the trees on the Northern Italian countryside that I had always imagined: undulating fields of green and gold between low hills, quaint villages and winding roads. And some more crazy drivers. I followed the GPS instructions into the small village of Brogliano, into streets that became narrower and steeper until I came to a point at the end of a steep ramp that looked as if the street split in three driveways and ended there. The GPS, however, insisted that I had to turn left and keep going for about 150m more. Not wanting to ride into anybody’s front garden, I started to maneuver the bike in the narrow space, thinking how ridiculous it would be if my first fall was on a backstreet in rural Italy. When I had managed a quarter of a turn, an old man, who had probably heard the engine revving and was used to finding lost strangers behind his house, waved at me from a window and pointed at the driveway on my left. It turned out it was a street that opened into a bigger one, where I found Mattia, my host, waiting for me. He helped me put the bike in their garage and then introduced me to his couple, Danilo, who was preparing a mouth-watering risotto for dinner. Taking the chance of having some space to work on, I greased the chain and topped the oil and then had a shower and sat down for dinner with them. They were great hosts, and Danilo is an excellent cook – the antipasti, the risotto and the cheese, as well as the home-made red pepper jam made by Mattia were delicious. They told me a bit about their trips and themselves and I showed them the route on an atlas. I borrowed their internet connection to update the blog and get in touch with my next host and went to bed, exhausted but happy. And with a new sticker on my bike. http://imageshack.us/a/img546/6390/sslz.jpg |
Ljubljana and Mikkeller
Day 3 – Thursday 27th of June – Brogliano to Smrjene (555km)
Unlike the first two days, in which I spent the morning on great B-roads and then had to take the motorway in the afternoon to make it on time, with all the boredom and fatigue that means, today has been the other way round. I got up after a great night’s sleep and had breakfast with Danilo (Mattia had already left for work), trying to have a meaningful conversation in my very poor Italian. He gave me some directions to get the most scenic route to Slovenia, I loaded the bike and went off. The first part of the route took me through even more industrial parks and thick, slow moving traffic, but I was able to make good progress thanks to Italian drivers. I must now withdraw my previous comments on Italian drivers, as today they were absolutely wonderful – the moment they saw me coming on their mirrors they moved to the right, making way for me to overtake them without having to move over to the other lane, which meant that I could pass cars anywhere. There’s some road manners Spaniards could learn! Shortly after the road became one of the most beautiful I have ever ridden. All the way no just to Slovenia, but to the very capital, Ljubljana, it was a narrow, winding road with smooth tarmac and beautiful views. I had set off with three (out of five) bars left on the fuel gauge and after seeing how expensive petrol was in Italy I was hoping I could make it to the border and fill up in Slovenia. If I had to, I was even going to use the fuel in the jerrycan. I got near the border at about lunchtime and stopped at a village called Gradisca D’Isonzo for lunch. I found a nice park with a memorial to those who had died in WWI and WWII and sat down to prepare a sandwich. As I was eating there, with those names carved in stone in front of me, it occurred to me what a simplistic view we often get of such conflicts. We tend to think of the war as something with clearly defined sides, the good and the evil, the ‘you are with us or you are against us’ kind of thing some Americans love so much. However, those names belonged to young people from a small village who probably knew nothing about the people they were sent to fight against or the reasons the whole thing had started, they were just told to go there and die for their country. A country. What is that? Riding from one to another, crossing borders the concept becomes blurred, artificial. It is just a random line on a map and it becomes clear that we are all exactly the same, with the same hopes and fears, pastimes, worries, and all those little things that make up moments of happiness in our lives. I shared the last cherries from the box I had bought in France with a homeless guy at the park and headed for the border, the fuel light flashing. I stopped at the first petrol station on the other side and was pleased to see that fuel was much cheaper and they had stickers. I filled up and rode into biker’s paradise. Slovenia is a hilly country and it seems that practically all roads are interesting. http://imageshack.us/a/img202/1927/d84u.jpg When I was planning the trip I sat down at the computer and tried to plan the most scenic routes possible on the software that came with the GPS, BaseCamp. I quickly remembered why I prefer to use good old paper maps. As is often the case with case when there are computers involved, the bloody thing had no logic at all and even though I marked waypoints along the route I wanted to follow, it went back and forth, doubling back and sending me round and round to places I did not want to go. In the end I decide to just get the coordinates for the places I want to finish the day at, set it to avoid toll roads and let it guide me. And boy it works! Yesterday’s route could not have been better if I had plotted it myself on a map – the roads were amazing all the way to Ljubljana. I got there a bit later than I expected and ran into the afternoon rush hour traffic. I had to cross the whole city, as my host’s house was on a hill on the outskirts on the other side. I discovered that it is not a good idea to get into heavy traffic in an unknown city tired after a long day’s ride. Fortunately I made it to the other side without problems and were greeted by my hosts, Metka and Franci, fellow bikers who were delighted to see me and the motorbike. http://imageshack.us/a/img822/4020/fbm6.jpg We started talking about it right on the front door, and Franci commented that I should use a CrampBuster, a plastic thingy that allows you to hold the throttle open without having to grip the handle all the time, so you can rest on long motorway trips. I tried to find one in Barcelona just before leaving, but nobody sold them and it was too late to get one online. He then made a quick phone call to a friend to see if it was possible to get one in the city that day and then gave me his own as a present! http://imageshack.us/a/img7/186/chk6.jpg They took some pictures and showed me my room, which would make a five-star hotel room pale in comparison. Franci works as a translator, but he studied electrical engineering and he really is into domotics. He and Metka bought their house half finished and then he designed a fully intelligent and environmentally friendly house (and wrote the software that controls it himself). It would take pages to describe what the house can do, suffice to say it is mind-blowing. I had a shower, got changed and jumped into the car with Metka, who had already called a friend of hers who spoke some Spanish and was glad to have a chance to practice a bit. On the way to the centre we discovered that we are both beer fans and while we were waiting for her friend Maja to come she took me to a small beer shop that had an amazing selection of beers for connoisseurs. We bought a few for dinner (which she refused to let me pay) and then went for a drink with Maja at one of the terraces by the river. Back at the house, Franci, who had finished work, prepared some traditional pasta and then we had some beers with a couple of their friends, also bikers, who dropped by to say hi. It was such an enjoyable evening, telling travel stories and anecdotes that I totally forgot to write. Oh, and Ljubljana is a beautiful city, by the way. http://imageshack.us/a/img34/8991/c72j.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img59/7052/tyzr.jpg |
Three countries in one day
Day 4 – Friday 28th of June – Smrjene to Budapest (516km)
What a day! One of the things you hear about trips like this is that it is when you start having problems that the real adventure begins. Well, it must sound like some kind of twisted logic, but it is true – I had my first fall today, and despite this, it has been another wonderful day. The fall was not serious, but it was quite embarrassing… I had just left Smrjene and went back into the city to cross it and get on the road to the border following the instructions on the GPS. The traffic was quite heavy again, it was the morning rush hour and I was stopped at a red light behind a panel van that blocked most of my view forward. The light changed and traffic started moving when suddenly the van slammed the brakes and so did I to avoid running into its back. I was just starting to move, so the bike was leaning slightly to one side, not having gained enough speed to stand upright by itself, so when I braked it leaned to far to one side and past that angle, the fall was inevitable. It crashed onto its side in the middle of a fully crowded main street in the city center. I got up, made sure I was OK (I was) and quickly tried to lift the bike to get out of the way, but soon discovered it was too heavy fully loaded to be able to lift it myself. Fortunately, a young guy ran across the street and through the traffic and helped me pick it up. I started it and moved to a bus stop to check for damage. It had landed on the BarkBusters, which did their job very well and protected the clutch handle and on the left pannier, which had a very small scratch. The outer bottle holder had broken free from its lower bolt, but that seemed to be all the damage. I restarted the bike and went on. I have been told that on such long trips, you need some time to get into the rhythm of the whole thing, and I started to find that to be true today. I had a long way to go again, but this time I was not worried about wasting time if I stopped to take a picture of something I liked or took a rest more often. I knew I had all day to get there, and I had to enjoy the road. With this new mindset, I stopped for the first time shortly after leaving the city, and discovered that the left pannier was not closed properly. On closer inspection, I saw that the fall had pushed it into the frame, bending it enough for the shape of the opening to be deformed, so it did not line with the lid any more. http://imageshack.us/a/img62/9435/fujs.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img19/391/do1n.jpg It was quite cloudy and Franci had checked the weather forecast in the morning and told me there was a possibility of rain in Hungary, so I was worried about water getting into my luggage, especially as that pannier contained my camping and sleeping gear. I decided to try to find a repair shop and see if they could bend it back into shape. I got back on the road keeping an eye open and soon spotted what looked like a garage. I rode up to it and when I got off the bike and into it I saw it was a kind of MoT station. As I was already there, I decided to ask where I could find a place to get it fixed, so I approached a man who has coming out with his car documents on his hands. He listened to me and had a looked at the pannier and immediately took his mobile phone out and called a friend who had a body repair shop. Unfortunately, he was not able to reach him, so he took me next door, where there was a car wash. http://imageshack.us/a/img202/5865/zsrc.jpg The guy at the car wash called his colleage, who had a small workshop behind the building, and he came and gestured me to remove the pannier from the bike and give it to him. I did, and ten minutes later he came back with it, straight enough for the lid to fit and close properly. I thanked them profusely and went on. A couple of hours later I found an old workshop by the road that had these photogenic relics outside and I stopped to take some pictures. http://imageshack.us/a/img19/3562/r39g.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img10/2292/tzta.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img708/1826/xbth.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img17/3082/hvyj.jpg The roads were great again, and I was wondering whether petrol would be cheaper in Hungary or in Slovenia when suddenly, coming out of a corner and going up a very steep hill, I came upon a sign that took me by surprise. You can unexpectedly run into people, into trouble, into a lamppost if you are not paying attention, but this was the first time in my life I had run into a country. I had, apparently, come across Austria. http://imageshack.us/a/img30/1892/cr5.JPG When I checked on the map, there seemed to be a fairly straight line from Ljubljana to Budapest, but my GPS had apparently decided that I would like the scenic route better, and I did. It had taken me north, to Graz, and then east over the Orségi Nemzeti natural park and into Hungary. I really enjoyed spending some kilometers in Austria and I took the chance to get yet another sticker and fill the bike up, as petrol was cheaper than even Spain. So much for the biking holiday I someday wanted to take in Italy… at those prices I would much rather tour central Europe! The landscape is better, too. Once I crossed the border everything changed. http://imageshack.us/a/img853/7399/btea.jpg The road was still narrow, but in quite bad condition, and everything had an air less taken care of. I stopped at a petrol station right after the border to change some money for the first time and get yet another sticker. http://imageshack.us/a/img28/9067/kpsu.jpg It had been slightly overcast all day, perfect conditions for riding, no rain, not too hot… but in the afternoon the weather deteriorated and it seemed as if it was going to rain. I kept thinking I should stop and put the waterproof layers on the jacket, but that meant unstrapping the rack pack and my optimistic me kept seeing that the sky was clearer ahead. I had to change from summer to winter gloves, though, because it was getting colder. In the end I made it to Budapest dry and found the place I am going to be staying at for the next couple of nights without problems. If you come to Budapest by motorbike or bicycle, this is the place to stay! I set up camp, borrowed a set of three precision tools (also known as hammers) and spent the afternoon banging the pannier back into shape. But more on that tomorrow, it has been a long ride today, about ten hours, and it is getting very late. http://imageshack.us/a/img401/441/xpfy.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img21/3065/tdi1.jpg |
How can I stop the drinking smiley appearing every time I type the word "beer"?
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Biker Camp
Day 5 – Saturday 29th of June – Budapest (0km)
Biker Camp is, as the name says, a campsite for bikers and cyclists in the center of Budapest. http://imageshack.us/a/img713/2146/2e0e.jpg It was founded by Zsolt Vertessy, a biker himself, who sadly died in an accident in 2004. The place has been run by his widow ever since, and offers a space to camp, toilets and showers, a washing machine, cooking facilities, wifi, tools, a self-service bar and the chance to meet fellow bikers. It is six underground stops from the city centre and is a great place to spend a few days. http://imageshack.us/a/img10/3089/mbo8.jpg I got here at about half past six in the evening and was shown into the camping space by the owner. There is room for about ten or twelve tents plus the bikes, but there was only another tent, which belonged to a Norwegian family who are on a cycling holiday. http://imageshack.us/a/img14/5586/5ssi.jpg I chatted with them over breakfast today and they told me they flew all their gear to Venice and are cycling back home from there, doing from 50 to 60 kilometers a day… with two kids! The youngest is only seven years old. When I think that most people back in Spain say that you can practically do nothing once you have had children… After breakfast I took the underground, which is a couple of streets from the camp and went to explore Budapest. http://imageshack.us/a/img34/6900/cfqz.JPG The city is as beautiful as I expected from the tales of all the people I know who have been here before me, and today the weather was wonderful, which meant that I was a bit too hot at times! http://imageshack.us/a/img33/3128/ejzk.JPG http://imageshack.us/a/img853/4962/bvu1.jpg I spent the whole morning walking around the city, exploring the most popular places and taking lots of pictures, and by lunchtime I went a bit off the tourist trail in search of a good place to eat. I found a small pub where I had a full traditional Hungarian meal for only 11€ - A very spicy paprika sauce to spread on bread, goulash soup, paprika chicken with cream, salad, coffee, traditional Hungarian bread, an enormous apple pie, and a pint of local beer. Delicous! The climb to the citadel was quite hard after that… http://imageshack.us/a/img819/6406/c6oj.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img543/7743/84l1.jpg I was thinking that there were very few tourists in the city, until I reached the top of the hill and ran into an army of Japanese sun-allergic tourists hiding under their umbrellas and huddling together near their respective guides, seemingly afraid of getting very lost if they wandered too far on their own. http://imageshack.us/a/img202/5224/dwo9.jpg After spending some time there and taking some more pictures, I went back down into the center and decided to explore the non touristic neighbourhoods between the centre and the place where I was staying. Not far from where most tourists were, the streets changed quickly and I was in an area of run down buildings with a very high proportion of drunkards, homeless people and very dodgy looking characters. http://imageshack.us/a/img819/6086/pp9l.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img32/8864/odb.JPG I put the camera back into its bad, as it was the only thing giving me away as a tourist, as my clothes are quite simple (I can’t really carry much) and the cropped hair and growing beard seemed to blend in quite well. I stopped at a small fruit shop to get some oranges and apples and then got the underground for the last three stops, because my feet were killing me. I was glad to have spent the day walking for a change, but I would not know what is more tiring… http://imageshack.us/a/img163/485/8zi2.jpg This has been a shorter post than the previous ones, I will let the pictures do the talking here. By the way, since I use a blog, and not a photo album, I will be posting extra pictures on the Facebook page, so if you are interested, you can see them there. http://imageshack.us/a/img34/8611/6nt.JPG http://imageshack.us/a/img31/8559/6vwb.JPG http://imageshack.us/a/img69/9821/7pi9.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img856/343/qowc.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img19/8217/nx4t.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img849/616/clop.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img809/456/vplv.jpg |
Romanian potholes and abandoned petrol stations
Day 6 – Sunday 30th of June – Budapest to Ighiu (536km)
I woke up earlier than I expected today, Hungary is the easternmost country I am travelling through that is still on the same time zone as Spain, and at ten past five in the morning the sun was already shinning. I managed to get some more sleep before getting up and putting everything back on the bike, as I expected today to be quite a hard day – I remembered Romanian roads from a trip there three years ago and they are hard. http://imageshack.us/a/img27/6978/ubgd.jpg I had a coffee while I wrote a quick entry into the camp’s guest book, and then spent some time flicking through its pages and reading a few of the stories there. After a few minutes I was surprised to feel a tear forming in my eyes. There are hundreds of people travelling around the world by all possible means and I had read about some of them on internet forums, but this was different – I was touching the very same pages those people had touched before moving on to their following destinations. http://imageshack.us/a/img21/3332/k6c7.jpg The previous night I had tried to put the coordinates for my next destination on the GPS, only to find that whatever settings, it refused to give me a route. I tried choosing a destination in Hungary, near the border, but the result was still the same. In the end, it only agreed to give me a route to a town near the border and on the motorway, so after leaving Budapest I stopped at the first petrol station I found to pay for a matrika, the vignette that allows you to travel on motorways. I had managed to get through Slovenia, Austria and part of Hungary without paying for one, so I was a bit bummed. It turned out to be quite cheap (I do not know exactly how cheap, I still have not had time to calculate today’s expenses) and in an hour and a half I was at the border, which meant that I had all the afternoon ahead of me to enjoy the Romanian roads. On the trip to Romania three year ago, my friends and I stayed at a place called Terra Mythica, near Alba Iulia. We were not quite sure what kind of place it was, but it was the only thing we could find in the region, so we made a booking. We got there at about 1 am to find it was a sort of summer camp full of children. Against all odds, we had a wonderful time – Dalina, the owner, and some of the stuff joined us after dinner once all the kids were in bed and we had one of the hardest drinking sessions I remember. To cut a long story short, we became good friends and she visited in Barcelona a couple of times, so when I was planning the trip I decided to take a little detour and come back to Ighiu, and I was really looking forward to it. At the Romanian border I was stopped by the police for the first time in my trip, but they only checked my passport and waved me on. I stopped just past the gate at a small shack that changed money and sold road tax, which is compulsory in Romania, whether you take the highway or not (in fact, there is only one highway, between the capital and the coast). I got some leu and discovered that it was not necessary to pay tax for the motorbike, so I rode on happily. http://imageshack.us/a/img199/4437/ltpc.JPG The roads were better than I remembered from the last time I was here, or maybe riding all the way from Spain meant that the transition had been more gradual than getting off a plane and into a van. In any case, I made quick progress and soon realized that it was already well past 2 pm and I still had not had lunch. I started looking for a nice place, but roadside picnic areas or public parks are notoriously difficult to find in rural Romania, and the kilometers went by without a proper place turning up. The clouds were turning a nasty shade of black, and this time there were no clear skies ahead, so it was becoming more and more pressing to stop not just for lunch, but to put the waterproof lining on the suit. Then, as the rain began, I spotted a petrol station. I had not seen one since the border, and even though I still had fuel left, I was starting to worry, so I was glad to find one. As I got closer, however, I saw that it was abandoned. http://imageshack.us/a/img18/7585/edwz.jpg Well, at least it had a rood under which I could get changed and eat something. I performed a little strip-tease to the delight of the lorry drivers passing by and then sat down to eat a kind of Hungarian sausage I had bought earlier and some bread and fruit. http://imageshack.us/a/img11/5338/re2i.jpg The first time we came to Romania, people warned us about stray dogs, apparently there are many of them and they can be dangerous. I was enjoying my sandwich when this fearsome beast appeared: http://imageshack.us/a/img153/3619/m9eg.jpg I swear if I had been doing this trip on a car instead of a motorbike, I would have taken her home. The poor thing was clearly afraid of people, God knows what bad experiences she might have had in the past. I threw her some meat and she ate it from a distance. She stayed there all the time I was at the petrol station, but did not allow me to get closer than a couple of meters, she kept her distance. After saying goodbye, I got on the bike and set off again, happy to see that the rain had stopped. I was soon regretting having put the waterproof lining on, as it was getting hotter, and I was quite sweaty when I stopped for fuel at a petrol station that was quite far removed from the ones I had been using so far. I had to check twice to make sure this one was not abandoned. http://imageshack.us/a/img59/1918/juvy.jpg By mid afternoon, the landscape changed from the flat corn fields I had been seeing from Hungary into hills and valleys covered with forest, and I was soon reunited with that old friend from three years ago – the Romanian pothole. The Romanian pothole is not the kind of broken asphalt or depression on the road we might be used to encountering in Western Europe. This indigenous beast that populates the country roads in large numbers is generally round or ovoid in shape, with sharp, cliff-like edges, and deep enough to swallow the front wheel of the bike. It normally dwells on mountain and forest roads, where the harsher weather has deteriorated the road more, and to make matters worse, they were filled with water, making them more difficult to spot. Needless to say, hitting one would mean, at the very least, a badly damaged front rim and suspension, not to mention risking a very nasty accident. It was cold again, but the weather got better in the afternoon, and as I rode the country roads, avoiding the potholes, I remembered what a great country this was. I got to Ighiu at half past eight, and was delighted to see Dalina again. Things were hectic at the camp, with 70 children to be taken care of, and still fully dressed in riding gear and before I could unload anything from the bike I was sat down at a table for dinner with Dalina and the rest of the staff who, came from places as far apart as California and India. I had a great time, and after dinner, I had a shower, got changed and sat down to write and have a chat with Rushil, who also has a motorbike back in India, and showed me pictures of Khardung la pass, the highest one in the world. If I ever go to India, I will definitely hire a motorbike and ride it! |
The best road… in the woooorld
Day 7 – Monday 1st of July – Transfagarasan Road
There were two reasons I had taken a 1000km-detour on my route – to visit Dalina and to ride this road, one of the most famous in the world. Build by Chauchescu to be able to move troops quickly across the region, it is simply breathtaking. Dalina did not wake me up this morning, but my body is still an hour behind, so at 8:30 I was already up and having breakfast, chatting to her father, who remembered how drunk we got last time and told me, half in English, half in Romanian “tonight, we drink!” I am not going to try and describe the road here, as words would not even come close to what it is. Those of you who watch Top Gear will be familiar with it. I will just post some pictures and, for those petrolheads with enough patience, a video of the whole ride from north to south once I have a connection that is fast enough to upload it. http://imageshack.us/a/img843/2557/fkiu.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img9/8680/voem.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img21/6383/ntsw.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img9/5999/ld0r.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img542/3732/3uiw.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img845/359/1e0t.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img163/1153/dql4.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img833/8133/qlsr.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img543/282/n9xi.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img801/864/nzn9.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img9/512/zqjc.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img7/4548/vd9x.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img22/5540/i3uj.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img834/4143/g6xq.jpg http://imageshack.us/a/img850/7982/zc8z.jpg |
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