I was originally coming to the French run but had to pull out early for reasons I'll not go into. Unfortunately the reason became a non-reason. I could have tried to do a Des and get back on the trip if it wasn't for SWMBO wanting to pop over to Spain. I went here: [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaca[/URL] The reason for the post, is about the roads around the place. I'd gone down in the cage from Paris to Tarbes. On the following day, I popped over from Tarbes to Jaca (a distance of just over 120 miles) going through the Pyrenees and the tunnel of Somport. The roads on the French side are okay-ish, but I prefer the Spanish side. Much more twisty and turney and in general, much better condition and wider [1]. As soon as we arrived in Jaca, the BiL got me on his bike and we took a trip around here to start with: [URL]http://tinyurl.com/cqxgaf[/URL] (tinyurl'ed cos of a dodgy Spanish letter). [URL]http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=42.508,-0.6665&spn=0.01,0.01&t=h&q=42.508[/URL] ,-0.6665 The views were stunning, if not a bit disconcerting (with drops of 50 foot and more on the side of the mountain [2]) as we hammered around the bends. Here the roads were a bit shite mind, but the bike held it's own. For the part of the route where I was a passenger, I had to hold on for dear life as all the G-forces tried to leave me on the road. The roads around here are great. I learnt a helluva lot about getting the bike lent right over with a passenger on a 18 yo Africa Twin (thanks to the BiL). In one part of the route, I had a few lessons about going round bends and got my knee down! Yah hay! (It bloody hurt though as I had jeans on). I thought I'd be scared shitless as the Africa Twin is quite a tall bike and I wouldn't be able to do it but it was far much easier than I thought (I probably succeeded after the Xth try. :-) TBH, I think it was more a confidence thing than anything else. Now I need to try it on the Z. We must have done a couple of hundred km in total throughout the day (I probably did about half of this distance) all around the region, on some excellent roads with excellent scenery. The only few pics we took were in front of the monastery though as I'd planned to go back with the video camera strapped on the back of the bike. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. It's a great place to ride around and is highly recommended as a destination whilst going through Spain. I also got chance to try out his company motorcycle in his barracks. [URL]http://www.rosbif.org/otherphotos/index.php?gallery=JacaTrip&lang=en[/URL] 350kg of machine with all the toys and gadgets (It can be picked up when dropped apparently) [3]. There are 28 bike coppers in his workplace with 10 bikes working (they are BMW's after all). When they're not being repaired [4] (every 9000km apparently) in Huesca (about 70km away) or crashed, they're off the road for tyre changes. Also the DGT has a policy of buying bikes in bulk, so they wait until there are only 6 left before replenishing the stock. So it's not that often that the coppers actually get to go out on the road on two wheels. One comment though. One of the remarks from the BiL was that whilst he works, he tends to pick up bits of British bikers more than any other nationalities. I don't know why and neither does he. Ideas from the floor? [1] How mountains can change a climate is amazing. On the French side the temperature was down to 2,5°C and it was snowing pretty heavily. The place was covered in the stuff. On the other side of the tunnel of Somport (around 10km long) the weather was sunny, dry and around 12°C, if a little windy. [2] This is not Paul Corfield territory. [3] I've seen some good riders in my time, but some of the tricks BiL did were very, very impressive. [4] Mostly electrical problems, I suspect, with all the additional equipment.
