Day 1 – Monday 31^st July – Barcelona to Sahune (555km)

Travelling my motorbike attracts good vibrations. I have found that it is certainly one of the best ways of meeting new and interesting people, and as I was loading the bike, parked in front of my apartment, I was looking forward to the next few days on the road. What I was not expecting, though, was the first meeting to happen even before getting on it.

“You live here, right?” I heard someone ask me. I turned around, surprised, as most people enquired about the bike, and saw a tall young guy holding a helmet. He pointed at a KTM 1150 Adventure R parked across the street and said “That one is mine”. I had seen that bike lots of times and wondered who the owner might be. It had knobbly tires and mud splattered here and there, showing it had been put to its intended use. He introduced himself as Marc and told me that we were neighbours. We chatted for a while and promised to go out for a ride after the holidays.

I refused to pay tolls on the motorway here, so I headed to Ripoll to cross the border in Prats de Motlló, which is a much nicer route that the one all holidaymakers take along the A7. For the first few miles I followed the exact same route I take to work every day, leaving the city amidst the tide of early Monday morning commuters, but instead of being just another anonymous road user, I noticed that people were looking at me and the bike, noticing that I was going someplace else. Once away from the big city the sun came out and I thought the weather was perfect – clear sky, getting warmer but not too much as I was gaining altitude towards the Pyrennees… I was lost in thought when I noticed a black Alfa that had pulled alongside with two beautiful girls inside. The passenger smiled at me, took a picture with her phone and gave me the thumbs up. Hell yeah!

I stopped for petrol just before starting the ride up to coll d’Ares, the mountain pass that thousands of people desperately crossed in the winter of 1939, fleeing from the advance of the fascist troops in the last months of the civil war. Opposite the petrol station, there was a police patrol fining a French biker that had been caught by a speed camera in a hidden car a couple of kilometres down the road. Fortunately, a van coming the other way had warned me and I had slowed down just in time.

I rode down into France through the gorges of the river Tech, always a nice route. When I reached Ceret I turned north into a small country road because I wanted to go a bit further before taking the autorute, and I discovered a few beautiful villages. After lunch in one of them (Llauro) with great views over the plains opening to the Mediterranean, it got too hot to enjoy riding, so I took the motorway near Perpignan. The plan was to reach Grenoble, find a place to sleep and do mountain roads the rest of the way to Thonon-les-Bains on the shore of lake Leman, where the Route des Grandes Alps begins.

Near Nîmes, however, I was not so sure I would get that far. The temperature had been creeping up and for a while now it had been a constant 40ºC, I run into a traffic jam where the motorway splits to Marseille, and it did not get any cooler when I joined the A7 towards the north. By Bolène I had had enough and decided to cut east heading to Gap on country roads. I would find a place to sleep near there and complete the journey to Thonon-les-Bains the following day.

Soon after leaving the autoroute things changed radically. I entered the area of the Baronnies Provençales natural park, the temperature dropped, the traffic disappeared and the wonderful French countryside opened before me. I usually say that I don’t like having to travel through France to get to other further destinations, but that is only because I have to do it on the motorway. Riding through these small, quintessentially French villages I remembered what a beautiful and varied country France is.

I passed a few campsites before I found what I was looking for: a small municipal campsite by the river in Sahune. Quiet, cheap and next to a swimming spot. Gap was still a while away, but I was sweaty and tired, so I decided to camp there.