The excellent four-course diner in the restaurant yesterday evening set me back by 11 Euros - and the fine, spacious hotel room cost 40 Euros, including 5 Euros for the parking of the bike in the hotel garage. Spain is certainly a journey destination with good value for money.
Needless to say that the sun is shining yet again out of a blue sky this morning - though I'm aware that the days of carefree weather are coming to an end soon.
I am off at 9.30 am. The temperature is about 11 degrees and I am wearing all my cold weather kit. It won't get much warmer today, as the route leads mostly through the Highland of Castile, always between 800 and 1200 metres above sea. The barren land is not made more attractive by the biting northerly wind blowing from the left with gale force, but the roads are fast for a change and I make good mileage. In fact, I am so good eating up the distance that I am practically "overtaking" the frontal system which is bringing snow and rain to the Pyrenees. I have quite a few "warm-up" breaks to fight the cold wind. Here is a picture I shot during one of them:
The sunlight is deceptive, it is bitterly cold and only my warm clothing prevents me from turning into an icicle. At Tudela I have finally caught up with the bad weather; I even get some drops of rain on my visor - a sure sign that I went far enough for today, so I call it a day a few miles on at Ejea de los Caballeros.
With the hotel being in the middle of the town I had a look last night for the available restaurants - none of the Spanish owned places managed to convince any of the usual online critics, so I ended up at the local Chinese place "Rio Ming" which is very good.
It is also one of the few places already open at 8 pm - and of course it is deserted as the Spanish on weekends rarely get out before 10 pm. This is also the reason why the hotel starts serving breakfast this morning at 9 am - these Spaniards go on half the night and then never get out of bed in the morning.
I have no such problems and by 7 am I am brooding over how to get back over the mountains into France. The cold northern wind is still blowing and causes a massive "cloud-jam" on the north side of the mountains. Heading for the central Pyrenees is out of the question, it is snowing up there. I opt for a pass on the western side of the mountains from Lumbier to Chéraute.
Here is a picture I shot on the Spanish side. You can see the mountains in the background:
What you can't see in the image is how bad the conditions are. I can see the clouds spilling over from the French side and even on my way up the mountains on the Spanish side I am in the clouds from 800 metres upwards. Then it starts raining. Then the rain turns to snow. The pass is less than 1600 metres high, but on top it's about freezing and the visibility is practically zero in the dense clouds with the snow falling. I am creeping downhill blindly through the weather on the slippery slope - this is certainly nothing for a newbie biker. The road is totally deserted - the locals are obviously far too smart than to drive over the pass in these conditions.
The rain doesn't stop on the French side - the "cloud jam" lasts for another 50 km before I am out of it and the rain stops. I ride on north-eastwards through Aquitaine and slowly the temperature improves.
The bike wasn't too clean before I tackled the mountains, but now it seriously is dirt covered. My panniers are in no fit state to take them into any respectable hotel, and the only advantage the rain had was that it has washed off all those dead bugs from my biker outfit. But the bike needs a wash, so I stop at a "station lavage" in Condom at about 5 pm. Once I have most of the grime washed off I head on for another hour until I finish the day at Valence d'Agen on the Garonne river in a small hotel. The place caters mainly for truckers, but as it is weekend there is just one truck there and of the 24 rooms only one other room is occupied aside from mine on this Saturday evening.
It is overcast this morning and it looks as if it is going to rain any moment. The temperature is about 15 degrees. But it stays dry. After a fuel stop at Cahors the road leads me north, always keeping in the low lying land to the west of the Massif Central. This keeps the rain away and the temperature all day between 15 and 20 degrees. After noon the sun is coming out and the ride turns out extremely pleasant - France is showing itself from its best side. The sun also brings out loads of French bikers. I am so delighted with the fine way this day has turned out that I even do some sightseeing. You don't believe that? Here is the proof, a picture I shot while strolling around in La Souterraine, a very nice looking village in the Limousin region.
I end the day with another fine French meal at the "Lion d'Argent" restaurant in La Châtre.
The meteorologists throughout Europe are all watching that high pressure ridge sitting out over the Atlantic Ocean like the proverbial rabbit is watching the snake. For a week now that ridge is sitting there, unable to make up its mind whether it should move in on mainland Europe or not. The weather models reflect that indecision of the Weather Gods; some expect it to stay, some to move.
In the good, old days before the climate change the ridge would with absolute certainty have moved into the continent, form a giant link with its counterpart over Russia and bring us weeks of great weather, with a stable easterly wind allowing glider pilots to guide their engine-less aircraft in a single day from Northern Poland to the Pyrenees.
Alas, those days are gone. I can't wait any longer, I must decide for myself here and now what I am going to do; stay out on the Atlantic coast where the ridge keeps the rain away, even without it moving eastwards. Or head into mainland Europe in the hope that it will eventually move, similar to what these ridges used to do.
Alea iacta est, as Caesar supposedly said, and my Rubicon will be the river Creuse - I have no better information than the national met services, my own estimates are based on simple probability; after two "summers" without a stable high pressure ridge over mainland Europe (what we non-meteorologists usually call a "crap summer") I'd say that the laws of probability dictate that at least once in a while the weather must give us a glimpse of how it used to be in the long forgotten past - I will head eastwards. Whether or not the ridge will move is, by the way, also a strong indicator whether we get something resembling a summer for the rest of the warm season or whether it will be another washout, so stay with me on this one...
I took my time making up my mind where to plot my GPS route to this morning. As a result it is well after 10 am when I set out from La Châtre. The Weather Gods are once again extremely forthcoming; all day the temperature is between 16 and 21 degrees and the sun is shining out of a deep blue sky - it's just perfect for motorbiking. Here is a picture from a break for going to the little boys. As I already had switched off the engine (which I rarely do on such occasions) I thought I might as well also take a picture of the local countryside.
But otherwise my motto is; go while the going is good. Burgundy disappears in my rear mirrors and so does the Champagne. Here is a video that shows you exactly what I did all day today:
The video is from 2012, but it is from exactly the same area (Burgundy) in exactly the same conditions I had all day today.
At 5 pm I start looking for some suitable digs as usual, but being now in the highly industrialised Lorraine region means that country hotels are scarce. Epinal has lot's of hotels, but I dislike staying in big cities.
40 km later I reach Raon-l'Étape which has a decent place, the "Lorraine-Alsace" - which is closed on Mondays, just like so many small French country hotels. The next suitable place is Schirmeck, which is another 40 minutes ride away, and it's already 7 pm. So I have a word with the guy who runs the Pizza place next door; as expected, he knows the owner and volunteers to ring him up. 10 minutes later the owner arrives - in these hard economic times he won't miss out on another 70 Euros easily earned, so I am given a room in spite of the hotels rest day.
I am too lazy after 530 km of French country roads to check online for the best eating place in town and then walk there - instead I have a Pizza at the place next door and call it a day.
It is raining this morning and the temperature is around 9 degrees. That is not what I expected. Sure, a cold front went through last night, but it is not supposed to be still raining at 9 am this morning. A look at the weather charts reveals that the cold front was much slower than anticipated and is still lingering around in the area. That can't be helped.
If you are a biker yourself, then you probably hate those days you start by getting into your full wetgear before having even driven a single mile. My mood however improves considerably when after just half an hours ride the rain stops and the sun comes out - the cold front is through and I am enjoying the crisp though rather cool air.
I am heading due north into the Sarre/Saar region, the area on the border between France and Germany. There is lots of industry here and the place is pretty crowded. But soon I am in the Palatinate, which is much more rural and great for biking. Near Mainz I reach the Rhine river and follow it on the western shore northwards towards the Lorelei. Well, OK, I'm not into that kind of stuff, but I did stop for 15 seconds (I didn't stop the engine for sure) to take the one obligatory picture, so here it is;
I ride on north-eastwards through the Westerwald and end the day without any further weather mishaps at one of my regular hangouts, the "Rüppel" guest house in Obervalme in the Sauerland region.
Just a few miles before reaching my destination after restarting the engine after a fuel stop the yellow "ECU error" light stays on and the speedo and fuel gauge won't work no more. I stop, shut off and restart the engine. All is back to normal, the speedo and fuel gauge are back on - only the yellow light stays on. I suppose after over 5000 km without any TLC or maintenance Tigger is telling me that he fancies a break, too.
Today is a rest day - so there is time to fix & clean things. My biggest challenge today is a lost button on one of my insulated cold weather shirts. I have a small needle & thread kit with me, but I never before had to use that. It takes me about 20 minutes to work out how to use the little wire loop to get the thread through the eye of the needle. After 45 minutes the spare button is sewed on - and I am mighty proud of myself having performed this highly complex task. Luckily the next bit of work is a piece of cake; just read out the error code from the ECU of the bike using my laptop. The code is "P1690 malfunction of CAN-bus communication". That is a really nasty fault code. Some moron in the Triumph ECU software development department thought it a good idea to have the ECU probe for the presence of the instrument cluster when the ignition is switched on. Failure to detect the instruments will lead to this error code - and the ECU will not power up the fuel pump or the starter circuit, i. e. the bike won't start if this error is detected.
Well, the instrument cluster is certainly present on my bike, so the ECU telling me otherwise is just making me think back to my youth, when the most complex electronic item on a bike was the ignition coil and being unable to start the bike usually meant that you had sprained your ankle and couldn't operate the kick starter properly.
That the error appeared only once and then not again is not really comforting, but there is nothing else I can do for now, so I just erase the error code (to kill that annoying yellow light on the dash) and hope for the best.
Afterwards I take Tigger for a wash at a filling station and then take him for a spin to ensure that all is working well.
On Monday I was contemplating what the high pressure ridge out over the Atlantic is going to do. Well, I can answer that for the time being; not much. It will certainly not build a bridge to the ridge over Russia, and more than a few feeble attempts to reach e. g. Poland is all we can expect. This is, as already mentioned, also a strong indicator that this summer on the European Continent is going to be rather rubbish - again.
What that high pressure ridge however is doing quite admirably is to shove copious amounts of cold air from the arctic my way. This morning it is seven degrees when I set out at 9.30 am. As the old proverb goes, if the mountain won't come to the prophet... I have decided to go westwards again, towards that elusive high pressure. It's about the only direction to go and expect some decent weather. Have a look at today's precipitation chart for Europe:
Once I reach the Rhine valley north of Cologne at about noon the temperature increases to 15 degrees and the sun comes out. Soon I reach the Dutch border. That country is so overpopulated that it is practically completely urbanised. My average speed per hour drops to 30 km. Luckily I soon reach Belgium. The place is just as overcrowded as the Netherlands, but the pragmatic Belgians simply built broad, straight roads through their towns and set the speed limit to 70 kph.
In spite of that, all I have to show for more than 8 hours of solid biking is 380 kilometres. I am a few miles south of Brussels, and this is Chti country. So what does one do here? Of course, enjoy a proper Chti "frituur". I ask the chippie if he speaks English. "Oh yes," he replies, "and German, Spanish, French, Dutch and Italian." I am rather impressed.
"If the chip shop employees speak five or more languages," I ask, "what level of language skills can I expect from the chairmen of Belgian big business?"
"Well," is his answer, "I was chairman of a bank until recently, but that was too much stress. This is a much more sedate pace of life." Here is a picture of this entertaining chippie:
Fortified with that not overly healthy Belgian food I start looking for some place to stay for tonight. The castle at Dworp is just what a tired biker needs to wind down after a day on the road:
I suppose the castle is a good place to end my chase of the Weather Gods; for at least a week the weather will be nice where I am heading tomorrow.
After yesterdays rather overcrowded part of Belgium, today I am in for the best part of it; the Ardennes. But before that I am traversing the battlefield of Waterloo, which is only about 5 km away from my hotel. What used to be an open countryside during Napoleons time is now a busy suburb of Brussels, but of course some landmarks from the battle have been preserved.
The Ardennes are also full of museums and memorials, which are however linked to a more recent event; the Battle of the Bulge. For me the winding roads are of course more important than the historic sights. I have the impression that Belgian bikers are not used to winding roads, or does any of my readers knows why the Belgian bikers get "striesed" here?
After the Ardennes the German countryside also has a few treats ready for Tigger and me; first the Eifel region, quickly followed by the Hunsrück hills.
The day ends after 420 km at a nice hotel above the city of Kirchheimbolanden.
For the final part of this section of the voyage I have plotted some fine biking routes into my GPS; from Kirchheimbolanden I head south through the Palatinate Forest, then over the Rhine into the Black Forest. By 4 pm I am back in Switzerland, where I will do some bike servicing and careful watching of the on-goings on the weather side. 6500 km so far in two weeks is not a bad journey result, given that I had to dodge a lot of bad weather during the second week.
Below is the usual map with my GPS tracklog.