I have finished the last leg of the Emigration Tour and now I am in Sweden in the region of Värmland – where it all began 15 years ago. Wonderful to ride those roads again where I first learned to ride. The sun has been shining and Sweden is at its best.
I was lucky to get company with a good friend from Gothenburg and onwards. She was on her way further north so it was perfect – after a night at my parents’ I followed her a bit on her way saying goodbye at the petrol station in Molkom.
Second day has come to an end, I crossed the river La Garonne and realised that yes, it is not only a wine. Now I’m hiding in my tent to not get mosquito bites, I got some nasty ones already and I don’t fancy more. My tent is on the small side, I can barely sit upright in the tallest section. But it was the smallest and lightest one when packed – pros and cons ?
Today I have been riding the whole day using the GPS and it works beautifully. Even though I can’t use it with audio, I always ride with earplugs, there is no problem understanding where to go when on the open road. When trying it in Madrid city it was a bit trickier though. I should have got one ages ago if I had known, well, well.
Today I rode north from Huesca crossing the Pyrenees passing Lourdes and further north east. I have stayed on the small roads and since I covered about 400k that was a full day. I have seen so much beauty. I opted to go on a small and twisty mountain pass since I don’t know when I’ll come back to the Pyrenees again. When crossing into France I did shed a tear, but then I stopped in a café and had a French omelette with cheese and felt that life is good.
The most spectacular thing I saw today was a valley where there where flocks of birds of prey hovering over the ground. Since I was on a viewpoint rather high up I could see them from both above and underneath. It proved difficult to capture this on camera though, Christopher should have been with me, he would have managed better.
Once again I have participated in an organised ride by the organisation Por Madrid en Moto. This time the theme was “back to school” and the ride took us round the outskirts of Madrid on vindy scenic roads to a traffic school where we could try and take the driving test for the category A2.
As always when I read Spanish I missunderstand things and I was disapointed that I couldn’t use my own bike. I thought this would be a perfect oportunity to practise manouvering in slow speed and other tricky stuff. But the circuits were done on the various small bikes that the traffic school had, therefore I gave it a miss. Never the less it was interesting watching. One girl who if I understood it correctly, didn’t have a licence actually aquired one passing the test.
For mor information about Asociatión Muévete por Madrid en Motos (MMM) and this ride.