DAY 6 TUESDAY 12TH JANUARY 2010

First priority this morning was to go to the medical centre to get my infected knee sorted out. It was only a short walk around the block from our Ibis hotel. I walked in, rolled up my trouser leg and said " Infectado. Antibiotics. Por Favo". The lady there reached behind her gave me the antibiotics and rang up €4.75 on the till. I was in and out in under a minute, what fantastic service! Back at the hotel I put the cream and other stuff on my knee and then we packed up and left. We stopped for petrol for all three of us within one mile of the hotel so we would all be ready to clock up some decent miles today. Unfortunately, the lovely early morning sunshine of Zaragoza soon gave way to driving rain as we headed south towards Valencia. It then got worse as we road along the southern side of the Pyrenees with large snow drifts. We had thought we had left the snow behind us in France but it was back with a vengeance here. When we pulled off the main road at lunchtime to stop for a coffee, it was back to UK like condition and we even struggled to park the bikes in the snow and ice outside the cafe. At times the dual carriageway was reduced to effectively one lane where the snow ploughs had piled up a few feet of snow at the edges of the road.

Later on we stopped for a traditional Spanish tapas meal which was excellent. This was just north of Valencia and we were ahead of schedule so the plan was agree to ride the motorway ring road around Valencia and stop at the next village on the coast.

Unfortunately we let John "TwatNavMan" take the lead. No sooner were we on the ring road around the town when his twatnav told him to turn off and ahead directly into the centre of town. And of course, John always obeys everything his satnav tells him even it is patently and bloody obviously wrong! I´ve read stories in the papers of people who have supposedly driven their cars into river because their satnav told them to but I always thought it was a tabloid exaggeration. Now having ridden with John, I believe those stories as John will always trust his satnav 100% even when it defies all sense and logic.

So I rode up the inside of John and called across "You silly fellow. We are on the blooming wrong road again" (or it was something like that I shouted!).

Once out of Valencia, we called down to the coast but the small villages were like ghost towns, all being shut up for the winter. We therefore decided to ride on to good old Benidorm. We thought even us muppets must be able to find a hotel in Benidorm as it probably has the highest number of hotels per square inch of anywhere in the world.

Whilst John looked after the bikes, Glen and I went to haggle with the hotels for the best deal. They have lots of empty rooms at this time of year so we figured a good deal was possible. After the long ride of 321 miles today in poor conditions we felt we deserved a decent hotel. I thought I had done a good deal at the first hotel but just as I was about to hand over my passport and credit card, Glen came in and told me he had done an even better deal at the posher hotel up the road. Well done that man! We managed a quality 4* hotel with a double room each, underground parking and full breakfast for around 40 pounds each.

Wonderful rooms, best so far on this adventure.

Back to my infected knee. It is definately getting better than yesterday back it is still bad. I´m no expert on medical matters but I know enough to know that it should not be green and yellow. I´ve put a clean sterile dressing and antibiotic cream on it and the pain is reduced.

Tomorrow we plan to cruise down the Spanish coasat to Algercias and finally meet up with all the other riders on this trip. The original plan was to meet up in Scotland at the original Calum´s road. Plan B was to meet at Folkestone but the weather also distrupted that idea. Plan C is to all get together in Southern Spain before we all cross together into Africa. Then the real adventure begins...