In the land of the Marquez brothers

Motorcycle touring in Lleida

- Dave Manning

Anyone who has ridden a motorcycle for more than just a couple of months will have had the experience of arriving at a destination – whether that be accommodation, restaurant or pub – and feeling that you’re not welcome just as soon as the proprietors realise that you have arrived on a motorcycle. It’s a feeling that is disappointing and frustrating, even in our home country, let alone somewhere new, where we may not speak the native tongue.

So, any scheme that helps us to find the places that openly welcome us as motorcyclists has to be approved. And what better way of finding out how well it works than by heading to Catalonia in northeastern Spain and trying it out?

I boarded a cheap flight to Barcelona to check out the Pyrenees – an area that I’d heard so much about, yet had never visited. I was set to ride a hire bike, and was collected from the airport and driven west into the province of Lleida (and past the eponymous city that we’d be visiting later in the week) before heading north on the N230, a marvellous piece of road which steadily grew more interesting as the terrain changed from near-flat farmland to the vertiginous hillsides of the foothills of the Pyrenees, with arable crops turning to vines, olives and fruit trees. For much of its route the road runs along the divide between the regions of Aragon and Catalonia, and alongside the Panta d’Escales reservoir. After our first night’s stop we were to stay to the eastern side of the line, albeit heading north and east towards France and the landlocked Principality of Andorra deep in the Pyrenean mountain range, although the first night was spent at the Hotel Cotori in Pont de Suert.