Can't Wait for 2019

Not a fan of this time of year, I can't wait for 2019 to get itself here and have a return to normality. As I write though, it has already arrived in some parts of the world, so I'll wish all of my readers/followers a happy one, with this last blog of 2018. Health and happiness to all.

What I'm looking forward to most, apart obviously from the tour itself, is soon (hopefully) being able to book the last couple of first choice hotels. These have been 'booked' on Booking.com every time I've looked. This happens sometimes, where hotels don't release dates/prices till the new year. Rest assured then, that I shall be checking come tomorrow morning. I do already have hotels booked but these two are either more convenient and/or in a more spectacular location.

Since my October post, Sanch O'Panza has had his hip operation and I've finished breaking down the tour routes. The old fella is just about 3 weeks from when he had his op and by all accounts is doing well. Hopefully it won't be too long before he can swing his leg over the bike again and I wish him all the best in his recovery.

 Due to Tomtom's limitations, it is easier to have a separate 'route' for each stop during the day, hence why I have broken them down. My only concern now, is whether they will all fit on Tomtom. Recent map updates were too big to go on the device without deleting the maps first and the same has happened with a smaller update too, so I'm half expecting to have to ramp up the storage with a micro sd card. I also expect, as always seems to be the case with Tomtom, that I shall need a Tomtom supplied sd card, at a stupid price. Butt fucking, Dutch style! I'll be giving it my attention asap, to avoid any last minute panic.

Not much else to report at the moment, so adios for now and I'll be back when I have some news in 2019.

Another tick in the box

What a difference 2 days makes. A new month and I was able to book another one of my elusive first choice hotels. This one, the Hotel Zeus in Merida, will be our first 2 night stay. Merida has a shed load of Roman ruins and I plan on us getting out to give Sanch O'Panza's new hip a workout by visiting as many as possible. Just one more to tick off the list and I'm done.

Hotel Zeus, Merida, Espana

Dark Days of Winter

After one of the hottest/longest summers on record, Autumn (Fall) has come in with a bang over the last few days and with the clocks now having gone back one hour, that winter feeling starts to take over. What better time then, to do a little bit of blogging about the Wild Hogs summer tour.

To be fair, there is little to talk about. I've been keeping my eye open for some of the first choice hotels I couldn't book, to see if any have begun to publish dates/prices for 2019 and a couple have. I have, therefore, booked them up and have cancelled the backup options I'd already booked. One, despite now having dates published, claims to be sold out for the one night we want to stay, though every day around it is available. Not a problem, I've booked another hotel in the same town. That wasn't an option previously. I'm still waiting on a couple and hopefully as we progress towards the end of the year, they too will become available for me to book.

For those interested in where we are staying, I've created a list, Homes from Home, which you'll find on the right hand side of the blog, if you page down a bit. I'm really looking forward to staying in some, as the locations are just fantastic, looking at the photos.

Grizzly, a.k.a. Sanch O'Panza, is scheduled for a hip replacement in December. Hopefully everything will go OK and he'll be like a new man by the time we depart for Iberia in June. Riding and getting on/off the bike can be quite painful for him at the moment and sometimes, amusing for me. I'll gladly give up the odd chuckle to see the wee fella fit again though.

Besides the hotel booking, I'm looking at the route again and breaking it down in to more manageable Tomtom sized chunks. Given the way Tomtom identifies stops and way-marks or more accurately, the way it doesn't, it is easier to break each day up into tiny routes to each of the stops during the day. I'm hitting the usual problem though, as we head into winter, that being that some of the mountain roads are already closed, so the route displayed, is not the actual roue we'll be taking. Still, there's plenty of time to get them sorted, once the thaw comes next spring.

If you haven't already signed up for email updates, then get that done. That way you won't miss any updates. I know there aren't many at the moment but that's the point, you don't want to miss one when there is one.

When a plan starts coming together

With the ferries to Spain booked and most of my first choice hotels already bagged, Grizzly and I discussed the first day, i.e. the day he arrives in England and I ride to Portsmouth. I'd imagined that he'd ride the whole way from Pembroke to Portsmouth but Sanch O'Panza ain't as young as he used to be or he's just a wuss, one of the two, so he's decided to split the journey when he arrives in Blighty and has thus booked a hotel on the M4 at Magor, just passed Newport, for the Monday night.

To be fair to the old fella, he will have been up since about 5am in order to get his ferry at Rosslare, so a 250 mile ride this side, having done a hundred or so back in Ireland, might be a bit tiring. In any case, there's no rush. We'll still meet up in Portsmouth on Tuesday 11th July, for an overnighter before the ferry to Bilbao.

I've booked us in the Keppel's Head Hotel, less than 3 miles from the ferry terminal. It's an historic hotel, built in 1779 and sits right by all the dockyard attractions, HMS Victory, HMS Warrior and the Mary Rose. If you look on Booking.com, some of the photos are so grainy, they may well have been taken on a 1779 camera! (yes, I know they didn't exist then). It has free on-site parking, which is always something I look out for on our tours and includes both a full English and Irish breakfast. That's us both sorted then. 😉  It also has a bar!

That's all for now.

Our overnight in Pompey

All Aboard

After Grizzly being told the 2019 sailings would be released mid July and me end of July, this evening I received an email from Brittany Ferries to say they were available.

A quick look at the sailing schedule showed a change to the sailing days/times from Santander, leaving me no choice but to cut the trip short by a day and to bring us back via Bilbao. It's no big deal, it just means instead of 2 nights in Pamplona, we'll have a night by the seaside in San Sebastian instead, which sounds THE place to go for some Basque tapas style delicacies.

It's all booked now with a deposit paid, so that's a huge weight off my shoulders. All I need to do now is fine tune the route and make sure I have enough waypoints to ensure Tomtom goes where we want to go and not where 'she' thinks we should.

That's all for now.

Full Steam Ahead

In my last post, I was concerned about the challenges I/we would face in getting this tour to float. I am able to report, happily, that not only are we afloat but we seem to be sailing through calm waters!

The Cork ferry route times & costs were released in March and it very soon became clear that that wasn't really going to be a suitable option for Grizzly. He therefore decided that he will come across to Portsmouth and that we'll sail across together.

Given the route I had already mapped out, it also became clear that our best option out to Spain, was to Bilbao and not Santander, the Bilbao sailing arriving just after noon and thus allowing us the time to hit the road and get to our first overnight stop up in the Picos. Going to Santander would have pretty much meant us getting off the ferry and finding a hotel.

With my route already mapped out and arrival times known, the next step was to plot the fuel stops and subsequent overnight stops. I had imagined that this would be a fairly leisurely exercise over the next 2-3 months but Grizzly got some intel from Brittany Ferries, saying that ferry booking for 2019 would be available from the middle of this week. It's vague intel, I'll grant you but I didn't want to get caught with my pants down, so I put all my efforts into getting the fuel and hotel stops identified and plotted. It wouldn't surprise me if the bookings are only for the first few months in 2019 but I'm ready now regardless.

With a couple of little tweaks, to take into account of the ferry sailing back, which WILL be from Santander, I had the entire route/trip mapped out. Wishing to strike whilst the iron was hot, I also booked the hotels for the trip too. With a few exceptions, the ones I first identified were all available. Those that weren't (they could be later on) I replaced with other options in the same region. I'll definitely look to go back and book those first options at some point in the future but for now I am happy that all I need to do now, is to get the ferries booked.

This is one serious blockbuster of a tour, my most ambitious yet and will see us away together for 32 nights, so make sure you are signed up to receive email updates, else you'll miss out on an amazing trip.

This could be a challenge

Anyone who knows me well, will know that despite spending 34 years working for a big corporate outfit, I don't subscribe to what I call corporate bollocks, such as, 'there's no such thing as problems, they are challenges'. I'm a glass half empty kinda guy, that's if I haven't already knocked the glass off the table or broken it in the wash, so anything not going perfectly to plan or as desired, IS a problem.

What I will concede though, is despite a number of potential minor problems already looming with this tour, it will be a challenge to get them ironed out. A challenge though, that I am prepared to meet head on.

Now I guess that all sounds rather dramatic. Hey, what's a tour blog without a bit of drama, a tiny touch of spice, such as someone trying to use a year old booking reference for Eurotunnel, or making 3 circuits of Monaco because the intercom system is broken and there's no audible directions from TomTom? No, a touch of spice is good, yeah?

The drama, spice, call it what you will, at this early stage surrounds us getting to Santander. Why are these challenges always down to ferries? As with the Scandinavian tour, you think you have it all sussed out, then blam, no you don't. In that case it was the ferry route to Esbjerg being decommissioned. In this case, it is the exact opposite. Britanny Ferries have just announced that they are introducing, in the Spring, a new route from Cork (from whence Grizzly hails) to Santander. Now that in itself isn't a huge issue but like the pebble dropped in the pond, the ripples it creates affect other things. Suffice to say, at this very early stage, I already have 3 different route maps, without the slightest idea which one we'll actually be following.

There are questions to be answered, to which, there aren't yet any answers. For example, we don't have a definitive cost for the Cork route. Whilst it may be easier for Grizzly to take that route to Spain, if it is going to be a lot more expensive than him coming to blighty and getting the ferry from Portsmouth, then it probably isn't an option he'll want to take. We shan't know the cost for another few weeks when the prices go online. Only then can we fully calculate which option is best and plan accordingly. The other issue with the Cork route, as we have seen sailing times, is that arrival in Spain doesn't necessarily correspond that closely with those from Portsmouth, so someone could have either a considerable wait or even an overnighter, whilst waiting for the other to arrive. And that's not just an issue for the outward journey, it will also be the case for the return, IF we decide to ferry back.

For now though, we have little choice to wait for the crossing prices to be announced.

Check back towards the end of the month to catch up with the news or better still, sign up to email updates and you'll know soon as the next update is published.

Hola, Olá

Welcome, to this, the Wild Hogs 2019 Tour blog, A Fistful of Euros.

Now I know this is going to get confusing for you, as I already have the Wild Hogs Go Racing blog running (which you will all be signed up to, right?) but hopefully I won't get confused and post the wrong updates! It shouldn't be too hard to follow, as the NW200 is just 99 days away, whilst this Iberia tour is planned for May/June 2019. By necessity though, the two have to run together.
The NW200 blog is about a quick dash across the Irish Sea, whereas this blog will carry you through a month (?) long tour of Portugal and Spain, so there will be a lot more for you to get your teeth into in this one.

For now, all you have to do is get yourselves signed up for this one, sit back and wait for the updates.

adiós por ahora mis amigos