I left Madrid in the evening heading for Bilbao where I wanted to spend the night before finally driving to Santander to catch the ferry back home to England.

I reached Bilbao in the evening spending the night at a not so cozy hostel at the outskirts of the city. There were lots of mosquitoes and the place looked and felt as sterile as a prison. I parked the bike a few streets away a little concerned if it was still going to be there the next day.

But it was and in the morning I continued to Santander. I boarded the ferry and enjoyed the view from the various decks of the ship before falling asleep in my cheap cattle class seat.

The next day the white cliffs of the coast of England announced our arrival.

I disembarked the ferry…

… greeted as it should be by the congested traffic of London’s roads. At least I didn’t have to worry about driving on the wrong side.

After almost two months my journey through the south western tip of Europe had come to an end. With considerably less tread on my tires, many thousands miles more on the odometer, huge numbers of captured images on my hard drives and an infinite amount of wonderful new memories I parked the bike in front of my flat already wondering where my next trip would lead me to.

Finally the day has come. Day one of my Spain/Portugal tour.

My plan for day one was to catch the ferry from Plymouth which means a 5 hours ride from London to the port and then traveling to Santander, Spain by ferry, roughly 20 hours. Starting in Santanda I would circle Spain along the coast and ride back home to London through France.

The smart thing to do would have been to get up at 6am. But I didn’t. I had gone to bed late to finish preparations and got up at eight instead. So now my well planed three hours cusshion was already reduced to one hour. Well that’s what the cusshion was there for, right?… That is one hour additional to the one hour that ‘brittany ferries’ want you to be there. So I had two hours left. Still I was a bit worried because there is always something happening on the road and it’s never x hours if the GPS says so. But two hours should be enough, right? So I started packing my things onto the bike, set-up my gopro, checked the bike over one last time and got on my way. I knew that my fuel gauge showed one third left. No matter I thought I will just fill up as soon as I see a petrol station. The first one close to my home was closed. I have never seen it closed before. Unsettelingly I didn’t see another petrol station until I reached the motorway. No matter though, don stress out yet, on the motorway there are service stations at least every 25 miles. Usually that is the case but not if you are still in London. You need to get off the motorway to get to a petrol station. I know that – now. After reaching the M25 I thought well that’s a big one, there will be a service station soon. Nope. Whenever there was a service station on one motorway in reach I had to get onto a different motorway shortly before reaching that service station to follow my GPS rout to reach my destination. Afer having skillfully avoided three service stations with the fuel light flashing and one, two bars left n the gauge I started thinking about fuel economy and starting to calculate how many more miles I could make. Instead of 75mph I rode 50. There, another service station sign. TWENTY-FIFE more miles. ‘Not happening’ I thought. I stated thinking how far I could walk and how much time it would cost me if I was at least close to a service station to get some petrol.
At a certain amount of fuel left a new gauge shows up on the digital dash of the F650GS starting to count the covered miles from zero after having reached the critical level. I was at 9 miles and had five to go to the next station. I had no clue how far I could go after this doom counter had started. 11 miles, off the motorway, 12 miles through the little village, 13 miles, I can see the gas station! I had made it. However now the race was really on. My two hours advantage had shrunk to 35 minutes already taking into account the detour I had taken to get to the nearest petrol station. Of course now also the weather got bad. It started raining and when it rains there is always something happening on the roads. After my quick fuling pit stop I headed back towards Plymouth.

Of course traffic started to get slow. 25 minutes buffer left. And still I had 4 of five hours left to drive! Losing a few minutes here, a few minutes there and I would not make it. Lots can happen in 4 hours. I was concerned. Then there were roadworks. Instead of 70mph, 50mph which the GPS had not taken into account. Across then minutes. My buffer was down to 15 minutes. The rain had become so strong that I needed to make a decicion to either risk driving soaked, cold and shaking for four hours which would be unsave or make another pit stop, lose 5 more minutes but continue with warmer coths. I went for the pit stop. Safety first, ATGATT (“All The Gear All The Time”). 10 minutes left. ‘Yep, this is not gonna happen’. Then came Stonehenge. I had still not visited Stonehenge after two years living in the UK but I would have prefered not to see it that day either. Because it meant driving by with snail speed while everybody was trying to get a glimps of it from the road. (Granted it does look really cool). 10 minutes buffer left and still three hours to go. Finally a longer stretch of motorway and a chance to make up some time. I might have been driving a bit faster than I should.. – 15 minutes buffer restored. Fuel was running low again. I had covered qite a distance. Another fuel stop was necessary. This time I found enough petrol stations. 10 minutes left. Another fuel stop. 5 minutes left. At this point it should also be noted that I had no idea if I was going to the right location. I just entered Plymouth Ferry into my GPS in the morning and selected the first option. There were more than one in Plymouth. I calculated every minute, intersection stop. Finally I was in Plymouth and to my surprise had created a 25 minutes cusshion. I saw signs marking a ‘continental ferry’ port. I had no clue if that was a company like my ‘brittany ferry’ that I was looking for or if that was just the place where “the” ferries took of. My ferry was not one that goes between continents though which worried me a little. But the British always speak of going to Europe when they leave their island so maybe that’s why it’s called continental. At that point I thought ‘all or nothing’ anyway and continued to that port. On arrival there was not a single vehicle in any of the 10 lanes lining up towars the ferry port. Good sign.. I proceded to the gate to be greeted by a lady asking me: ‘to Santander?’ – ‘YES!’ – ‘this way please’. I had made it in time.

Getting onboard was easy. I just showed my passport, they printed me my ticket and I was on my way into the bow of the ship. There were easly a hundred bikes tied to the floor already. At least due to being the last motorcyclist to arrive I will be the first to get off.

Next stop,  Santander, Spain.