ukgser: Gibraltar Trip - DAY 4 - 17/09/07 Cuenca to Gibraltar

Start mileage 49848

Big push today to get to our objective .. GIB !! Bloody hell we might actually make it !

Nightmare sleep but we were up and about at 7.30am. We de-camped and said goodbye to the couple in the campervan . ( We gave them some milk we had bought but not used )
and we left the campsite at 9.00am and fueled up 10 miles out.

We cracked on down the N-420 , bit of a steady day today , lots of long straight with a few twisty bits thrown in to keep us awake. The roads were flanked by olive groves.

Now I have to say that today we rode at approx 70/80 mph all day with nothing but olive groves as far as the eye can see. Miles and miles of the bloody things , what do they do with them all?. Surely the must all rippen at the same time ? How do they pick 'em all ?
And they were planted right up to the top of really steep hillsides! you can see what I mean in this short vid

Olives , fruit of the day. ( no need to check .. it is a fruit )

We stopped for fuel and fluids again at about 3.15 when I clocked 50 Thousand miles !

Like typical Gringo's we parked in the full sun , right next to the parking shade!
It was baking hot here out on the plains , in the mesa next to the station were hundreds and hundreds of solar panels lined up. There'll need to be a lot of global warming before the UK get's this organised.

Crossing this region I saw a statue of Don Quixote, this was the area he and Sancho Panza travelled . This brought to mind his love of his 'fine stallion' horse whom he considered a a magnificent beast which in reality was a knackered old ratty mule. He ; in his deranged state of mind tried to joust with windmill he thought were giants. Certain comparisons could be made here as I love my bike but others ( See Neil ) think it's a nasty old pile of shite. So in Honour of Don Quixote's mule I christened my bike " Rosinante'

We stopped for an ass break at a lookout post in a gorge mid way through a particulary twisty bit of road over a mountain called La Caballeros , part of the Sierra Morena. It was a fantastic road to ride and a good place to stop for a look into the gorge and take stock. View to a house across the gorge

One of my strange giant biscuit things. I bought these yesterday in the Cuenca camping shop. They kept me going for a couple of days, a sort of biscuit / wafer thing that was aniseed flavour!

I didn't know that of course as I can't read Spanish!.

Bit of vid from our lookout post.

We slowed on a steep road up and out and baked slowly in the traffic, soon enough we came across a massive lorry with a blade from a wind turbine, they are bloody massive up close . The lorry had slid off the road down the verge. God only knows how they got it out.

We turmed off south onto the E-902 . The roads; although motorway ; never cease to amaze us , the scenery is fantastic - and still miles of bloody olives !

More views at high speed

Hang on ....Bloody 'ell , there's the rock !!

Neil's spotted it as well...

Nearly there..

We pulled over for a couple of minutes in La Linea to get our documents ready for the border crossing.

The border was a pretty simple affair, it was nice to see proper bobbies on the gib' side. Just near the end of this clip we cross the airport runway ! Dozens of vehicles / pedestrians milling about , bloody mad.

Then we ride into town on Winston Churchill Way ... Tally Ho Ginger !!!!!!

The original plan was to get down to the harbour front at the furthest tip for an 'end' of the continent photo, but Neil was suffering by then from the heat and probably a bit emotional by the as well all things considered , so we headed for the hotel ( The only pre-booked accommodation of the trip ) and got parked up . Neil binned his headlight protectors here after carrying them under a bungy rope all the way from the first morning in France !!

We carted all our gear to then hotel in about 4 relays after Neil had been in and done the usual.This was a nightmare as even though it was 7.15pm when we arrived it was still boiling hot.

Once unpacked we locked up the bikes and time for a Shower and a relax !! Yeehaa..

Our Hotel from the carpark

We dumped our gear into the room and Neil put some of his kit into a secure room on the ground floor. ( I left my Ali' box's on the bike as they contained my camping gear only and tonight we had the luxury of a proper bed each ! )

View out to the carpark from the balcony.

View to the right , out to the harbour.

View to the left . The ring road snakes right round the hotel and there seemed to be a continuous streem of vehicles especially scooters racing around it. I supose they've got nowhere else to go without having the hastle of the border control.

We got ourselves showered ( I put my mangy clothes in the bottom of the shower and trod them about to give them a wash and hung them out on the balcony to dry overnight ) and had a discusion about the rest of the trip. Neil was about ready to quit. The daily mileages coupled with the incredible heat were telling on him at this stage and the thought of even further to ride back was sounding like hard work. Also he had a lot of folks backing him with sponsorhip for Cancer Research so all his focus was on getting to Gibraltar.

We discussed whether we could ride together to Santander and he could get the overnight ferry to Plymouth and I would carry on. We decided to get some grub and take stock so we and headed off the town .

The centre was only 2 mins round the corner and we scoped out an internet cafe to upload some pics on the charity page next day. It was half the price of the pc in the hotel. I stopped in a small touristy shop and bought a set of about 10 postcards and some stamps to send back.

We stopped at the first outdoor place we came to in a little square and sat under some big umberellas . The waitress was hungarian but we were hungrier, unbelievably the whole menu was english grub. We had ridden 1600 miles across europe and not had any local cuisine ! Whilst we were waiting to order I noticed a TV hung up under the canopy and it was only here we heard that Colin McRea had been killed. We hadn't seen or heard any english news since we left Portsmouth.

Whilst we were waiting for our all day english breakfast ( at 8.30pm!! ) Neil made some calls home , particularly to close family, who were really pleased that he'd made it. I didn't call anyone , I only have one mate and he was here ! It was nice to kick back and relax , Neil had a couple of scoops and we talked over the trip so far, by about 10.00 we were goosed so went back to crash out.

At the hotel we had further discussions about the return leg. We got the maps out and re-routed our journey back taking out Andorra. ( This was on Neils itinery to visit ) this reduced the overall mileage and we replanned shorter mileage days back on roughly the same route. We even discussed going back a day later as we both had a buffer day planned in at the end. We also gave ourselves a bit of a lie in and a midday start next day so we were back on track. Neil noticed a sign in the room saying " Do not hang clothes on the balcony" Doh ! I uploaded the days photos and video clips onto my Archos and crashed out.

Bit of a blurry pic out on to the Gibraltar 24 hour race track