DAY 10 SATURDAY 16TH JANUARY 2010

GRANADE TO ALGERCIAS
Woke in time for breakfast today and ready to do some riding again. Bikes were loaded quickly and everyone was ready to leave. The procedure seems to be that six of us all get completely ready to go and only then does Roger start to put on his helmet and gloves...
The road out of Granada was a revelation, no snow, no ice, no rain and no vicious cross winds. Just pure riding pleasure on lovely roads with spectacular scenery in warm weather. This morning the thick winter gloves gave way to the thin summer gloves.
Another first for me was riding a bike whilst listening to an Ipod. My son Martin gave me an Ipod for Christmas and loaded all my favourite songs on to it. At the NEC Bike Show in early December I had ordered a set of custom made in-ear moulded speakers to come from USA. These arrived a couple of days before we left leaving no time to test them out. So the speakers and the Ipod were used for the first time as we left Granada. It is fair to say that I have a rather diverse taste in music with the range of artists going from Chas & Dave, Meatloaf, Susan Boyle, Dr Hook, Leona Lewis, Def Leppard, Beautiful South, Ian Drury, Jim Steinman to Queen. I put it on shuffle to get a random selection from that lot and it picked Meatloaf´s "Bat Out Of Hell" as we rode out of town. It was fun listening to the opening notes of each song and trying to guess both the artist and the track. Perhaps the greatest musical contrast was listening to Ian Drury and The Blockheads sing about "Sticky Vicky from Billericy" (apparently well known to Roger!) and then having Susan Boyle´s rendition of "Amazing Grace". The other riders expressed surprise at my tastes in music but I loved the variety.
The time seemed to pass much quicker today with the music and the varied scenery. On the left hand coastal side of the motorway is the hideous concrete overdevelopment such as Malaga whereas on the right hand side is a stunning mountain range.
Before we knew it, we were entering Algercias, the gateway to Africa at the southern tip of Spain having just passed Gibraltar. Glen was waiting for us at the hotel entrance to take photos of us all arriving.
Finally, after 10 days and just over 2,000 miles riding, the Calum´s Road crew were all together in one location. After swiftly unloading the bikes we checked into our massive rooms and changed into our shorts and sandals as we were in definite "summer mode" now. We were amazed to see there was a log fire burning in the hotel reception on what we would be happy to call a good summers day. It was then time to relax on the patio where Glen had kindly already arranged beers for us. From the hotel garden we could see numerous ships passing through the Straits of Gibraltar and the ferries going back and forth between Spain and Morocco. Soon we would be aboard one of those ferries but first we had to arrange to have our off-road tyres fitted. I rode around town trying to find a suitable tyre fitter but everywhere apparently closes early on a Saturday and doesn´t open again until Monday. Oh dear, it looks like we will have to have yet another rest day. If you have been following this blog since the start you may have noticed that recently we seem to ride for one day then rest for one day. At this pace it might take us a while to reach Calum´s Road but we have plenty of slack built into the timetable.
After the beers (or a few Vodkas in Roger´s case) we all set about giving the bikes a good once-over. Mikey needed to fit a new fuel filler cap which had been sent to the hotel especially. Roger decided to do an oil change on his old "airhead" BMW but we are sworn to secrecy about exactly how he disposed of the old waste oil!
From now on, once we cross to Africa, the blog will not be updated on the same day as we do not wish to disclose our exact location. I will of course continue to write up my notes but in future they will be a few days behind our actual location and may also depend on the availability of internet connection.
The real adventure begins here.
Thanks again to everyone who has donated to the www.justgiving.com/sidhorman link. It is great to see donations coming in whilst on the road and it is much appreciated.