Your Day Today!

[Pedro]

Stopping by my mechanic today to take off the current tires and put the gay dunlops back on. The current ones have a while to go yet but next week I'm going to be taking a group of Irish around the whole of Portugal, and I don't think there's enough life left in them for that. It'll be a very cool trip if the weather cooperates, but 2200km, plus getting to the Algarve and back as that's where we're starting and finishing.

 

[Nute]

How long is your trip due to take. It sounds like fun.

[Pedro]

1 hour ago, Nute said:

How long is your trip due to take. It sounds like fun.

It's going to be 2200km in total, starting and ending in the same town in the Algarve because most are flying from Cork and the only direct flights are to Faro. 8 days riding so people arrive during the afternoon before and leave the day after, to them it's 10 days here. Faro is lovely because it pretty much guarantees nice weather for the start and end of the trip.

Shorter distance planned for one day is 250km, longest is 360km, but I can improvise to get away from the weather or take them somewhere more challenging if we feel like, it's all away from bigger roads except one day we hop on a motorway for a couple of hours to go and visit the AJP factory, which is interesting to them as two or three have AJPs at home. We'll have two nights sleeping in the same place in the Douro valley so on that day it'll either be off the bikes or anything from 100 to 300km according to their desire to do more or less, being me and Sofia also means we can split the group if some want to ride and others want to go visit a vineyard, go on a boat ride or just hang around the pool. Older rider is almost 75, I think, and younger is into his 60s but I'm told they're bike fit. It's all inland, so far away from coastal towns and big cities except first and last night.

We'll eat mostly in typical unpretentious places, so they'll get a taste of the food as well, including a night in which I might cook a nice beef BBQ on coals. I hope it's good weather, the forecast was gloomy a few days ago but now it's looking like it's improving day by day.

It'll be the biggest tour Sofia has organized, with 7 bikes plus us 2, usually we do 1 to 3 and I prefer that but they're a close group of friends who usually wouldn't want a tour guide except they're treating this as a no planning week with their friends.

 

[Nute]

That all sounds really fun. Is this an occasional thing for you or are you both regular tour guides.

I assume the bikes are hired? Id really like to do a circuit of Iceland oneway, maybe once I finally retire ...  

[Pedro]

32 minutes ago, Nute said:

That all sounds really fun. Is this an occasional thing for you or are you both regular tour guides.

I assume the bikes are hired? Id really like to do a circuit of Iceland oneway, maybe once I finally retire ...  

It's a side business Sofia started, we do custom guided tours tailored to what people look for. We try to keep it simple and casual like if you were to go on a road trip with a friend showing you around, so no support vehicles or anything like that. We haven't done many, it's basically going from word of mouth.

On this trip all bikes are rented from a partner here that has a nice fleet of bikes from scooters to R1300GSA, in this case they're going to be three different sizes of CF Moto, a Transalp and an Africa Twin. We've had people coming from the UK on their own bikes though, and we meet them on the border or exiting a motorway somewhere.