I’m up nice and early again, raring to get on the bike and go despite having less than 100 miles to cover to reach my bed for tonight. It’s a fairly direct route too, with nice open roads to begin with, ending with a steep climb and some squiggly bits before the plateau, to one of the most remote areas I shall be staying at on this trip. I booked the hostel Los Quińones long ago and retained this location when I had to cancel the previous trip. I really liked the look of this place and not just the room and bar. The remoteness attracted me and was a key reason for not staying to watch all of the MotoGP. If I had stayed, I would have ridden much further than here to catch up for lost time. I don’t know just how squiggly or steep these roads are to this plateau and I’m due a day of rest so a short ride is the perfect compromise.

 

Day 5 Caspe to Fuentes Calientes

 

The road to Alcaniz was the same one I used to get to Caspe yesterday. A few bikes overtook me, at some pace, suggesting they were headed to the circuit. As I reached Alcaniz, there were police standing at most junctions, watching or directing bikers towards the track which is located up and beyond the town to the north west. I headed south west. I’m not thinking about it. Keep going. A squadron of bikes passed as I rode on, most raising their clutch hand in greeting and it was a good few miles before the clusters of riders dissipated to just the odd tourer. As I’m about to leave the N-420 and join the A-2402 at Castel de Cabra, I stopped for a coffee break. The only other patrons were all women and I noted, not one of them was unattractive. Or maybe I’ve been away on my own for too long. No, they were all lovely and friendly and chatting between themselves in this, out of the way pueblo halfway between nowhere specific and nowhere in particular.

The road has been terrific so far. Just blissful riding in comfortable sunshine. Beyond this point the countryside supports less vegetation with the hills bunching together more closely. The road narrows but at least there is room for traffic in both directions. Once it plateaus, there’s only rocky hill tops and the occasional homestead all around. The long straights and easy corners allow for plenty of relaxed riding and philosophical contemplation. I no longer question my sanity for a start. This is what I came to do: See Spain in it’s most undressed and unabashed state. And it’s beautiful. I need a 360- degree camera, like those on the back of Rossi’s bike, if only I can stop thinking about the MotoGP. The views are amazing. Even the side roads beckon. I could ride around these hills all weekend.

The route took me through Escucha, requiring a right turn at a non-descript junction and out through the other side of town facing a very steep hill. I’m following the signs to Teruel, which I purposefully avoided back at Castel de Cabra as the main road carries you around these hills instead of over them. There is industry in this busy little place. It was probably a thriving town once upon a time but there’s a hollowness to it now. I imagine these hulking factories and gaping quarries employ far less people than the town sustains.

I’m still not at the top yet. It’s 1,400 metres above sea level, before the see-saw tilts downwards. Once I crossed the Rubicon the occasional tree became an extended forest and then fields of scrub take over before becoming flat and cultivated. It soon changed again as the altitude increased once more, remaining at around 1,000 metres. The occasional village pops up to the right or left and the landscape now becomes more of a series of barren, flat, plateaux with vegetation having to fight hard to compete with the white, rocky terrain.

A large building with enormous grain silos came into view and a road sign depicting, Fuentes Calientes, (which, directly translated, means Hot Sources), is my cue to take the advice and ride the last couple of miles on a narrow but, well maintained tarmac surface into this remote hamlet. I’m 1,200 metres above sea level and there’s nothing to see but variegated yellows and browns of dried wild grasses and gentle undulating hill tops in all directions. I love it.

I rolled into the church square. It’s barely midday. I’m that premature they haven’t even called the midwife yet. In fact, when I was greeted by the guy who runs this little ‘habitación’, he had no documents from Booking.com to say I was even coming.

Neither of us spoke the other’s native tongue but my ‘Guide to Spanish’ booklet, which has handy advice on how to book a five-star hotel in Barcelona, with a jacuzzi, but nothing close to, ‘We have just taken over this establishment and the previous owners didn’t give us a guest list when they handed over the keys’. However, with a bit of gesticulation, mime and my photocopy of the booking confirmation, we worked it all out. I drank a large glass of ice, cold water before I was shown to my room. It’s fabulous. I’m in, sorted and already smiling like a Cheshire cat. I worked out also that Mrs Proprietor will be here in two hours to cook me a three-course lunch, with wine, and coffee. I was treated like royalty from the moment I stepped inside their door.

I spent the next 10 hours absorbing everything I possibly could of my temporary abode. I rode around the vicinity to check out two other villages, then wandered about on foot, where barely 130 people call their home.

I made friends with half a dozen totally non-English speaking people, which was made easier by the proprietors’ daughter when she got home from school later that afternoon. She has an admirable grasp of my one and only language. My lunch was formidable and my dinner which was served a mere five hours later, was the most delicious of all and of a quality five-star restaurants in Barcelona would be hard pressed to achieve. The wine was perfect too. The village has a farm that breeds bulls, a disused water mill called Molino Herinero, a spring, a waterfall and reservoirs. It was certainly well worth the traipse with my camera. There are almost as many beautifully maintained cottages as there are derelict hovels. I came upon a neglected football pitch which suggests that F.C.F.C., as they must be known as, play most of their games away from home. There is a Tourist Information point here too, which is mildly amusing but it really is a great place to spend a night or two whilst on your travels.

After dinner I took a walk into the darkness. The sky was filled with stars and with no street lights outside the village, Mars itself was a sparkling orange pip. I knew it was Mars because one of the locals back at the bar pointed it out to me. She spoke perfect English and revealed herself to be the previous owner of this hostel.

She now lives in another village some miles away but loves coming back for the tranquillity and gentle buzz this place produces on balmy nights. My guess is, every night is a balmy night. The clink of glasses and cacophony of chatter eventually curtailed and I made my way to my room and closed the shutters. This has been the best stopover so far since I arrived in Spain. Everyone has been so friendly and everything has just made me feel so good about what I am doing here and why.

I’ve travelled 110 miles today, including the mini tour to nearby villages. I paid £37 for my room. My three meals added £30 and a grateful donation to my personal translator. At 1,200 metres the air is fresh and the heat less stifling. My bike was safely parked outside the church across from my window which in all, suggests there no more peaceful place on this planet than ‘Hot Sources’.

 

Day 6 Fuentes Calientes to Ricardo Tormo Circuit Valencia

 

While loading the bike in the morning, a transit van pulled up and a man and woman began assembling a trestle table with an awning ready for the day’s trading. I could say it was market day, it is Saturday, but they were the only stall. They chose the prime spot to catch customers as it was right next to the entrance to the only other trading business in the village. The couple were very friendly and so happy in their work. They were not young. At one point, instead of lifting a box of goods from the van, the man grabbed the woman and carried her on his back to behind the now erected stall. They were laughing and joking as they spread their wares on the table. They stopped to say Buenos Dias and he came over and showed me a video clip on his mobile phone of him dirt tracking up in the hills. He smiled and put a big thumbs up when I fired up my own engine and made the gesture that he liked the growl of the V twin and Beowulf’s. Or maybe he was just glad I was leaving. I said farewell to those in earshot and felt quite sad to leave so early. The sun was beaming like their smiles and I wish in some ways, I could stay and enjoy the whole day, doing nothing but keep hydrated and soak in more of this wonderful hospitality. As I passed folk emerging from their own houses, I got more waves and smiles. I felt like an old friend.

The road down to Teruel tumbles nicely through narrowing valleys, crosses over dry river beds, around bends heavily protected by safety barriers and wonderfully long straights. I’m losing altitude now and the lower we get, the warmer the wind against my upper body gets.

I can feel the heat rising steadily around my neck and through my jacket. The first big village I passed was Alframbra. Watching over the village is a large statue of Christ from the top of the hill. It is similar to the famous constructions in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro. It’s certainly an eye catcher as you speed by.

Just as thought provoking, there are ruined railway buildings alongside the road suggesting there was once an active transport system connecting to bigger trading centres down the line. In fact, I spotted one or two railway cuttings and tunnels along the way. It’s all but gone now. Perhaps the Redeemer only saves souls and not industry. The village has known better times.

From this point the road meanders much more and I met the A-23 at Teruel some 30 miles into my journey. I have little choice but to take the A-23, a wide-open dual carriageway. I could have opted to cut across country and follow the A-234 southbound for a more scenic road but today, I needed to eat up some miles early on so I elected for this efficient, if mind numbing artery all the way to junction 31. I joined this road at junction 115, which would appear, to the uninformed, that there’s an awful lot of exits and therefore a considerable distance to go before I get relief from such monotony. But the junctions are not numbered in direct sequence but by the number of kilometres attained from a certain starting point. The easiest way to explain is, I joined the motorway at junction 115 and when I passed the next junction it was numbered 105. I have travelled 10 km. It might be useful to know how far you’ve travelled since the last junction but it doesn’t help with the mental arithmetic of how many junctions before our number comes up. So logically, I’m flummoxed as to its overall efficacy.

Usually, you have plenty of time to cogitate such conundrums when you’re firing along the motorway but in Spain I needed to keep my wits on high alert. Cars go by at the same velocity as if the speed limit was 120 mph and not 120kph. The lorries are not much slower. A speck in the wing mirror becomes a flash across your visor in no time as the super-fast vehicles also cut back into your lane far too close for comfort.
The scenery left, right and forward is good but I can’t wait to get to junction 31. At 80 miles my number came up. I pulled off the road and parked up outside Aldi’s. Some bottled water and a Madeleine and a quick check on the map and sat-nav and I’m heading for Gatova. It’s up a mountain and down the other side and once I ‘gatova’ that (stop it), I’ll head for the Valencia race circuit and get some lunch.

I’ve reached the province of Valencia already and this next sector is Serra Calderona, a 30-mile mountain range that promises spectacular views and some extremely remote villages.
Leaving Altura was a doddle, I found the CV-25 and for the first few miles it was a very pleasant ride, through olive groves and the occasional vineyard. Along the way, I had to negotiate getting in front of squadrons, of lycra clad cyclists. At the lower level, this wasn’t too difficult but after I reached the road sign that warned ‘bends for the next 3km’, their progress was hampered by the climb and mine was hampered by their hogging all the road. Then it got serious. First gear, open clutch a little, high revs, sharp left, don’t look down, that drop is getting scary. Second gear until the next bend, down to first, swing out and attack the hairpin, second gear, climb. Repeat and rinse sweat from helmet. This isn’t a road, it’s a staircase. And it wasn’t only 3 km distance either.

I bet the views are stupendous but there’s nowhere to kick the side stand down and I’m definitely not going to be overtaken by cyclists. I need a lighter bike with better ground clearance and an oxygen mask. I battled the heavy Bulldog around these hairpins that were sharper than the pleats on a kilt. The 3km turned out to be 9 miles of beautifully, twisty, scary, fabulously enjoyable; but only when it was over, motorcycle madness. When I finally climaxed, a couple in a motorcycle and sidecar were coming the other way. Goodness knows how he will steer that thing around those ultra-sharp and narrow bends. I guess he’s local and maybe his wife is heavily pregnant and he’s trying to move things along by hanging the sidecar over the edge a few times to startle her into labour.

When I reached Gatova, the café near the traffic lights was swarming with resting cyclists. I continued on the downward section. The snippets of scenery I did get were good but the villages that hang on to the edges of these heavily forested cliffsides, defy gravity. Heading down was easier and therefore, quicker. The CV-25 transforms at Olocau into a wider, vehicle friendly country road all the way to Lliria. I could take the CV-50 road to the circuit at this point but my brain said no: It might be another concertina ride. Besides, I’m getting hungry. By contrast, CV-35 was more like a 3-lane motorway. These road titles are meaningless. I took the sat-nav advice and blasted along the major thoroughfares all the way to the Ricardo Tormo circuit. It’s on the outskirts of Valencia, barely 35 miles from the remote, sky touching heights of Gatova.

The Valencia circuit was busy. The go-kart track was crowded with enthusiastic parents watching their excited offspring careering around in oversized helmets and brightly coloured leathers. Inside the main gates I sat next to a miserable looking couple in a shaded corner of an outdoor café and enjoyed an over-priced bocadillo and much needed refreshment. In all the time I sat there consuming my purchases this couple never moved a muscle or spoke.

They would fit in better at a wake instead of here, one of the finest racing circuits in Europe. On the main track, suitably suited speedsters on suitably assembled sports bikes were blatting around the bends and down the straights, just like the pros do. It’s very impressive.

What was also impressive but at the same time recklessly risky were the scantily clad girls that arrived with their beaus on the back of a bike. Tee-shirts, denim shorts and bare legs. The riders were togged up to some extent but these couples had obviously bombed it up the motorways where nutters were carving between lanes at speeds too silly to contemplate, their girlfriends in beachwear hanging on for dear life. Eye candy, yes. Worth the risk? Not a chance in my book. This is a lovely circuit with great facilities and is a must for all major international and domestic racing events.

It’s early afternoon and I’m eager to get back on the bike and leave my own rubber in my tracks. A track day for the Bulldog would be like entering a camel in a cat show. I’ll stick to touring thanks. I’ll let the experts and nutters entertain me on the circuits. Today, I feel like riding and I’m going to check out another track and maybe push on a little further. The roads from here make it capable to add lots of miles quickly as the scenery is less distracting and the distance covered today means less to do tomorrow. The quickest getaway from here though is the multi-laned A-23.

 

Ricardo Tormo Circuit Valencia to Hellin

 

I’m heading for Requena and looking forward to the N-322 because these motorways sap your enthusiasm. I don’t know how riders can roll off the ferries in Spain or France and just blatt along for hours on end just to find an Irish bar 500 miles away. I want to enjoy the side roads and lesser known towns. The N-322 is a prime example of what I mean. It’s a beautiful road. I can race along or dawdle. The bends are varied, there’s steep inclines, barriered walls over rivers, open fields, vineyards, olive groves, forests and straights longer than a life sentence for murder. I’ve just ridden through Cava producing Utiel Requena and I’m now in Manchuela where they grow the amusingly named Bobal grape. I’ve never heard of this variety before and discovered that it is unique to this region. The reds are predictably rich and high in alcohol and both domains are investing heavily in development. There are several wine trail excursions for enthusiasts not streaming through to visit another motorcycle racing circuit. I’m thinking I might have my priorities wrong here.

I was almost disappointed to reach Albacete but only because the road was so enjoyable. It was mid- afternoon and a busy restaurant with tables outside which sprayed cooling mist from pipework plumbed under the canopy enticed me to shed my jacket and helmet and relax for an hour. I was served a wonderful salad and emptied a large bottle of water as I worked out my next move. I’m not finished for the day. I didn’t feel like staying the night here in the town. The hotels I searched online were nothing special for the price I’d be expected to pay. I checked further afield. Lets’ keep going. I found a hotel in Hellin, after targeting Pozohondo, for no other reason than the quirky name. Both towns are in the general direction of tomorrow’s route and the Hotel Bella Hellin hit my ‘g’ spot powerfully enough for me to click, ‘book now’ on my mobile. It’s only 45 miles away. It’s outside the town itself and on the south side too. It looked perfect.

I popped out to the race track they have here. I expected it to be closed by now but I wanted to tick it off my list anyway. Provincial though Albacete may be, the circuit is another excellent example of how serious the Spanish take their motor racing. They’ve been racing round road circuits in this town since before the 1930’s. The current circuit was built in 1990 and has been updated as recently as 2016. It’s a firm favourite for domestic motorcycle club racing and is also used for testing by the International event teams.

Retracing the short route back to the bypass it was time for the last stint of the day. I take the Autovia de Murcia road south. The landscape became much more rugged and the mountains were turning blacker the nearer I got to my destination. This road opens out onto some very wide plains where vegetation once more gives way to Jurassic backdrops. I’m half expecting to see flames and smoke from the lava like encrusted crests. I’ve not encountered too many bugs taking kamikaze dives at all but the ones that do connect, make you jump. They’re as hard as peach stones and make me wonder if my visor will crack. It’s late afternoon now and I felt the rifle shot impact several times as, whatever these bugs are, play their own version of roadside chicken. They leave no splatter. Maybe they wear Kevlar.

I rolled into the hotel grounds around 19:00. It’s in the middle of nowhere. The exterior is modern, two story and tucked in a depression making it invisible to see until you are inside the grounds. My only gripe was the chalky rough stone driveway and slope that leads down to the main entrance. Gregorio, the proprietor came out to greet me. I was shown to what could easily be a honeymoon suite. In fact, I had a choice of suites.

It’s off-season, only one other room was taken. Using his voice translator app on his phone we had a great conversation. They make their own cheese from the herd of goats they keep and there’s no meals being served tonight as the chef, his wife, had plans to go out. I guess they hadn’t considered me searching for a bed so late in the day.

That all might seem a disaster for any newly arrived guest but I was fine about it. My room was amazing, the bike was safe outside, under my window and the goats didn’t bleat or smell. I had already eaten a great meal not too long ago and I can have the last of my madeleines for supper with an ice cold beer and a two litre bottle of water. It was perfect. This was a luxurious end to a fantastic day’s riding.

Compared to the size of a couple of rooms I’ve stayed in on this trip I’ve gone from ridiculous to sublime. I’ve completed 300 miles today. The hotel cost me £39 and a few pennies extra for the beer. It seems I’ll have to stand on a street corner in Madrid to give my money away.

Next: Spain by Motorcycle Pt. 4

Tags: Eddy Smith, Motorcycle Routes Spain, Motorcycle Touring, Motorcycle Touring Spain