I’ve been an avid motor­bike rid­er since I was old enough to ride legal­ly (a few times before that too, but I digress). Sad­ly I’ve been rid­ing less and less in the last few years. I’ve also nev­er real­ly enjoyed road-rid­ing in the UK that much – well, most­ly south­ern Eng­land to be honest. 

Nowa­days I tend to either spend qual­i­ty time on track or trav­el­ing abroad when pos­si­ble.
Rid­ing back and forth with­in Italy and the UK, cross­ing the Alps in Switzer­land, is a rel­a­tive­ly com­mon occur­rence.
This East­er, with a friend, we decid­ed to board the fer­ry from Portsmouth to Bil­bao, cross the Pyre­nees (weath­er per­mit­ting) and point back to London.

I wasn’t real­ly sure about tak­ing the fer­ry, but the overnight cross­ing to Bil­bao revealed to be pret­ty pleas­ant and felt mag­i­cal­ly fast (for a 23 hours fer­ry ride).
I guess it helps being extreme­ly tired after a few hec­tic weeks at work and slip­ping into a sweet coma as soon as you lay on your cabin’s bed.

We trav­eled at a rel­a­tive­ly leisure­ly pace over 6 days. Most of the route was kind­ly pro­vid­ed by a good friend, we retraced his steps and added a few easy off-road bits bor­rowed from the Span­ish sec­tion of the Trans Euro Trail.
The screen­shots of the route/elevation from Garmin Base­camp and Insta­gram short videos below are from the sec­tion near Les, in the Aran Val­ley, Catalonia:

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Slow­ly plough­ing along… #r1200gs

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We had to reroute a few times due to moun­tain pass­es being closed for snow (April is pret­ty ear­ly in the sea­son still), but we have been pret­ty much quite lucky with just a cou­ple of rainy days on the way back north.

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Last stretch towards Jaca.

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Also, and most impor­tant­ly, the route has been cor­ner after cor­ner after cor­ner all the way from Bil­bao to Aube­nas, where we rejoined straight roads and then the motor­way head­ing north towards Dijon and then London.

A pre­view of the con­ti­nen­tal part of the route can be seen below, and a .gpx file is avail­able for down­load here. Enjoy.