Intro

It had been quite a while since the last long trip on the bike and I was really looking forward to this one. I wanted to see the south of Spain, as I had never been there, and knew I had nine days off work for Easter holidays, but we were not sure how long my girlfriend would have. In the end they only gave her four days, so I started considering a possible five-day route to be back in Barcelona in time to spend some days together, but not only did five days seem a bit of a hurry to cover such long distance and have time to visit a few things, she also wanted to spend a few days in the south. For a brief moment I contemplated organising a four-day trip via some low cost airline to the south and then aside from that going away for a few days on the bike, but I still wanted to have a bike to explore the south. We checked out some rental companies, but the price per day of even the most basic bike for two people and luggage was too expensive, and then I saw the answer staring right back at me from the figures I was getting from rental companies

If I was willing to pay that amount to have a bike, plus the deposit, plus the risk of damaging the bike or have it stolen, etc. why not take my own, use it until the very last day of holidays, fly back to Barcelona and have it shipped? I reckoned it would still be cheaper than renting one for four days.

A friend of mine had recently bought a second hand bike in Valencia, but since he was still in the process of getting his license, he had a motorbike transport company deliver the bike to his doorstep for only 90€. I could go away on my own for five days, meet Nat somewhere in the south, spend four more days there and then take a plane home (no two-day trip to ride back to Barcelona). Great idea!

At first it seemed that it was going to be a bit more complicated than I thought, since it turned out that all the companies I contacted only offered door-to-door service, that is, they would pick up the motorbike from a specific address, they did not have facilities in Granada (that’s where we were flying from) where I could drop the bike on the last day and hop on a plane, and we did not know anybody there we could leave the bike with until a transport was full and ready to head to Barcelona. Things were looking bad… If I could find a garage or dealer in Granada that would be willing to keep the bike for one or two days until it was collected things might work out, so I decided to try and ask the guys in Hamamatsu Motor who had always been very helpful in previous trips, and they gave the contact of a company that transports their motorbikes and also work for other brands. They told me they had a big fleet of transporters and worked with dealers all over the country. I called them and they confirmed that they had an agent in Granada where I could leave the bike. So, with that detail sorted, the trip was go!