| A WINTER RIDE IN SPAIN |
(cont.) I got a room for £6 in a cheap pension that was run by a mad Englishwoman. She was like a female version of Basil Fawlty. After three days of hard riding, I decided to rest-up for a while. It was such a nice place and my bike would be safe there. The pension was in a block of residential flats that had a private car park. I could also give my bike a much-needed wash. This part of Spain is very dry and dusty and it leaves your bike filthy.
Calpe is a good base from which to take rides into the neighbouring
mountains. I visited Guadalest, a town high up in the mountains. The ride there
was a series of twists and turns and drops. It was almost like being on a
rollercoaster. The riding was much easier without the weight of my luggage
though. Over the week I visited other places such as: Moraira, a charming small
coastal town, Altea, and the infamous Benidorm. Even in winter, it was crawling
with tourists. A few miles up the road from Calpe is a village called Jalon.
It's famed for its wine, and let me tell you, it's good, cheap and very strong,
as the mad Englishwoman running the pension found out. She said she was going to
visit a friend who ran a small wine bar there, and invited me along. So I went,
as she was driving and I could drink.
It took about fifteen minutes to get there. The bar was named Casa Aleluya, and the owner would shout: ‘Aleluya, aleluya!’ to anyone who entered. Kay claimed to know the bloke very well, but I got the impression that he didn’t know her at all – I think it was something to do with the blank expression he would give her when she would say: ‘Hello, you remember me?’
He was a short, rotund man called Juan, who seemed to have an amazing amount of energy. He would constantly zip around the restaurant, serving and talking to people, and never once seemed to stop. There was a wonderful atmosphere in this place and we got talking to a very nice English couple. The wine that we were drinking was made locally and was very strong.
I couldn’t help but notice that Kay was drinking rather a lot of it. I expressed my concern about the fact that she had to drive. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’ll be alright if I have something to eat,’ and promptly fell off her bar stool, hitting the floor with a thud and an, ‘Oh dear!’ Everyone watched in amusement as she clambered back up onto the stool, and I expressed aloud: ‘¡Esta manejando (she’s driving)!’ To which I got some very sympathetic looks. She ordered some tapas, still insisting that she was fine and that she just slipped. And I ordered us a couple of black coffees, which she laced with Cognac. I was beginning to worry.
Soon after that we left; but not before I had forced her to drink a straight black coffee. I then spent the journey back to Calpe gripping the edge of my seat and trying my best to shut her up and make her concentrate on the road. ‘I’m fine!’ she would claim, as she swerved the car back from the middle of the road. Don’t ask me how, but we managed to make it back to the pension safe and sound. I made a mental note never to allow this woman to drive me anywhere ever again.
I left Calpe and headed further south. I was still clinging to the theory of it being warmer there. I continued along the coastal road, stopping at Alicante and Cartagena. The great thing about Spain is that you can park your bike on the pavement, which meant that I could park outside the pensions and not have to leave it on the road. In Cartagena, I parked right outside the front door of the pension. The owner was very friendly and helpful. Although I think his wife was a bit mad, as she just sat and glared at me each time I walked past. I tried greeting her a few times, but she just continued to glare and mumble to herself.
From Cartagena, I rode to the Province of Almeria and stayed in an area called Cabo de Gata. The area receives 100mm of rain each year, making it the driest place in Europe. It is also a magnificent sight. Riding in, I almost felt like I was in the American west, and half expected to see a band of Indians come whooping over the hills.
I rode in to the breathtaking sight of stark desert meeting sparkling ocean, and found a room in the back of a beachfront restaurant. The surrounding mountain range provided some great rides and I spent the next couple of days exploring the area. It is probably the most undeveloped part of the Costa del Sol and has only a scattering of small towns, which are very quiet at that time of year.
The further down the coast I had come, the windier it had become. As I rode on to Marbella it began to feel a lot colder. Over the five days I spent there, I had one day without rain and used it to ride into the Sierra Blanca mountains. I rode through a series of whitewashed villages. Every single building was white.
I wondered if when it came time to repaint, they just evacuated the village,
covered the roads and had a plane fly over and dump a few tons of white paint
over it. I headed onwards to Ronda; a town set by the side of a deep gorge. My
route took me through a high mountain pass that was in terrible condition. I
bounced and shook my way for miles until I came into Ronda. I hoped that nothing
had been shaken loose on my bike, or come to think of it, me.
I took the main road back to Marbella. I was hoping to continue on toward Portugal the next day but it wasn't going to happen. This part of Spain was having its worst rain in years. I was staying in the British run Hostal del Pilar. Fortunately it had a bar and open-fire. Mike, the owner, told me that there had been severe flooding in the area. After five days there, I was beginning to claw the walls and decided to make a run for it during a break in the rain. I knew that if I headed west, the weather would get worse, so I headed back east. As soon as I got past Malaga the sun came out and it warmed-up. So much for my theory about it being warmer in the south.
I headed back to the Costa Blanca where I knew there would be good weather. I
took the road that went through the mountains north of Almeria City. Apparently
a lot of Western movies were filmed there at one time, because of the similarity
with the American west. I passed through an extremely cold patch, and to take my
mind off it, I tried to imagine myself as Mickey Rourke as he rode his Harley
Davidson from Texas to LA in the film Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. The
scenery was right, but it proved impossible as Mickey Rourke never had a pile of
luggage on the back of a dirty bike, and wasn't freezing his arse off in weather
that made your nose run like its life depended on it. I felt more like Lloyd and
Harry riding into Aspen in Dumb and Dumber. I stopped at a garage to get my
circulation going again, and saw a dog curled-up in the corner looking cold and
pathetic and I thought, “I know exactly how you feel.”
I spent another week soaking-up the sun in Calpe before riding back to Bilbao to catch the ferry back home. This time the sea was as calm as a lake. I was sorry to go, but I intended to return one day to see more of this beautiful country that is, in my opinion, a motorcyclist's dream.
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