In search of Coffee in the Picos Mountains

Peter, Wellsy, Martin and Eileen tour together. They call their group 'Guzzis Rule' as Wellsy is a Guzzi fanatic and owns several, some of which actually run, but never for very long. Regardless, they decided to head for Spain

- Peter Steele

I'd seen the MSL tours brochure which included the Spanish Picos Classic tour. It's a self-guided tour, which suits us, and the hotel is in Suances right on the coast, only 30km from Santander ferry port. We had stayed in Las Arenas is 2017 and this time the cost with MSL was almost half what we had paid by organising it ourselves, and included breakfast and a buffet evening meal with wine.

I've been riding for 38 years and my current bike, a manual Honda NC750X, is my 20th. I've toured Britain and Europe on bikes ranging from a Yamaha 80 with panniers made from Tesco carrier bags to a BMW F800ST with throw-over luggage. Wellsy's bike of choice was a KTM 1290 Super Duke GT, Martin's a BMW 1250GS. I was outgunned in the horsepower stakes by about 80, as my NC makes 54bhp. But the low-down torque, 200-mile tank range and the incredible 80-90mpg suit my somewhat aged laidback-and-tight-with-money nature these days. It was also a bargain as I paid £5400 for it in a very wet and cold October 2017 - always buy a new bike at the end of the year!

I bit the bullet and spent a small fortune on a pair of Givi hard panniers; better than Tesco's carrier bags and just as waterproof which, together with the NC's 22-litre dummy tank/storage trunk, gave me more than enough space for packing light, which I still haven't managed, so I took my top box as well.

In July we had an email from MSL Tours saying Brittany Ferries had changed the port of departure from Portsmouth to Plymouth. A 250-mile trip instead of 95 for us. A bit of a pain but not MSL's fault.

Rick Joyce from MSL Tours sent out an email with suggested routes which could be downloaded using an app called 'MyRoute. This worked really well with my TomTom. If you've ever used TomTom's 'MyDrive' planning software you'll know what a pain it is to use. I found using MyRoute an awful lot easier.