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Day 1 - Santander to Chinchón, Madrid - 301 miles
Day 1
Day 1 profile
Again navigation was by GPS Garmin GPS V and the Garmin MapSource program. Even with the latest European City Select v6 there were the occasional glitches mainly due to a different priority on the road to that held by the database e.g. "Take a right turn." but the road goes off to the right anyway and there is a minor road leading off to the left. That you can live with. The more serious error occurs when the reverse is true e.g. it doesn't tell you to take that minor road to the left because the assumption is that the priority is such that you would be taking the left turn by following the main road. 50 yards past the junction you find you should have taken that cart track that flashed by you on the left-hand side. Also, in Spain especially, they are still building roads faster than the mappers can keep up with and there are many more roundabouts and link roads than the map database shows. However, in nearly 2,000 miles I think we made about 11 wrong turns - in the last two days we made none. I think that you would be hard pushed (considering some of the junctions and minor roads we took) to better that with a paper map. Furthermore, decisions made using the GPS are made on the move, with a map most bikers have to stop to read it!
Of course the other good thing about he GPS is you an look back on your track logs and see where you were at what time and at what height etc - quite useful when you are writing the trip report a few weeks later and can't quite remember where you took that picture!
I cleared the port gates at 11:53 (all times are local times). There are no photographs of this day as I was a man on a mission - the mission - to get south of Madrid before dinner. It only took about 15 minutes to get clear of Santander.
I took the N623 towards Burgos. This is an excellent road as I have reported before. Within 50 miles you climb up to just over 3,000 feet. It is one of the best introductions to Spanish roads as it is wide, with lots of forgiving open aspect bends. The weather was good, reasonably sunny but not too hot.
At 14:12 I was just south of Quintanilla-Sobresierra and found a restaurant with about 10 artics parked outside it (always a good sign). [14:12:23 (UTC+2) 3082 ft N42.53709 W3.69517]. Time to try out my newly acquired Spanish. "Una mesa para uno, por favour." It got me a table, I only understood about one word in ten that was said to me but I had a good meal and ended up eating almost what I thought I had ordered.
At 14:43 I was on the move again. Burgos at 15:11 and straight through and then on to the N1. Time for the boring bit. 15:50:57 (UTC+2) 2844 ft N41.78012 W3.69577 and fuelled up.
17:31:43 (UTC+2) 2352 ft N40.50926 W3.65742 on the outskirts of Madrid and a thunderstorm looming, it started to rain. I wear textiles so I had no need to stop but I would have preferred Madrid in the rush hour to have been a dry experience.
On to the M40 with slight disorientation since the course of this diverges from the GPS map. First mistake came when I got to the junction of the A40 with the A3. Visibility was severely impaired by the rain and as you come off the slip-road it splits into two before you are even 20 yards from the motorway. The GPS indicated take the left fork but that looked wrong and the right fork was marked Avenida Del Mediterráneo - brain quickly computes "I am heading for the Mediterranean" so I took the right fork. 15:love to the GPS. I was now heading in exactly the opposite direction to the one I wanted. I decided to do a loop around, first going north then east to come back onto the M40, taking about 13 miles, in the rush hour, in the rain, to get back to the point I went wrong. I could have saved myself a fair bit of time by going a few hundred yards further and going all the way around a roundabout and I would have come back along the road on which I wanted to be. Hindsight is a wonderful gift!
Since the weather was deteriorating fast I tried to create space around myself. Absolutely hopeless. Every time I created some space some car would invade it. In the end I tucked myself in behind a box-van after making sure the driver knew I was there and just took it steady.
Back on the right road at 18:03 having wasted 20 minutes and I left the A3 at junction 21 and headed along the M506. I am sure this would be an excellent road in the dry but by this point there was lightning flashing around and mud being washed onto the road. Furthermore, I was not comforted by the sight of Los Bomberos (fire brigade) parked in several lay-bys obviously watching for flash fires caused by lightning strikes. I was just about to go over the top of the highest point around. Fantastic. There was a 4x4 driving steadily in front of me - I just stayed behind him, my sense of humour starting to wane at this point.
18:37 saw me arrive at the Parador de Chinchón at N40.13962 W3.42319 alt 2440ft.
The entrance to the Parador is up the curb and up a steep cobbled ramp. Cobbles - wet cobbles. Great.
El portero helped me in with my bags and I registered and dumped my gear in my room. I then went back to put my bike in the underground car-park and pressed the key fob to disarm the alarm. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. Fortunately, I always carry the spare when touring and that worked.
Bike parked underground, I returned to the Parador. Just arriving was David, also on a red Sprint ST. We had met briefly whilst waiting to disembark and established that we were heading for the same hotel. Coincidence? Only other ST on the ferry, a red one at that and we were going to the same hotel! His sense of humour was more dented than mine as he was wearing some very damp leathers. His waterproof had fallen off his back seat and jammed between the tyre and the seat pan and had melted and shredded.
We spent a pleasant evening dining together and swapping biking
tales. I didn't see him in the morning as I skipped breakfast to be on the
road as soon as I could.
Stats
301.1 miles
6hrs 21min (excluding lunch)
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