This time decided to try out Portugal - same team, me and Geoff, and no accidents, breakdowns or close encounters of legal kind this time. Original plan was to loiter in Northern Spain for a couple of days then dive south, but damp weather when we arrived at Santander persuaded us to head south pronto.

Good trip - about 2,500 miles in total. and made it as far south as Sagres (lovely little place) and as far west as Finisterre (that is, 'the end of the world'. It isn't). Promised to spend more time taking pictures this trip, and did - but quality is crap, as you can see from my best six, below. But - places to see and snap? Not much really. Portugal is OK, but only in the north of Spain did we find really interesting roads and the further south we went in Portugal the more relaxed the car driving became, especially in the afternoon...

Surprise of the trip was Santiago de Compostela. It's in Spain, a Unesco world heritage site (the whole town) and we got there a couple of days before the ferry home, in the rain. Beautiful old city, just granite, pedestrianised and truly a joy to wander through. It was the third most holy city in Christendom after Rome and Jerusalem, owing to the bones of St James being interred there (he being the son of Zebedee and Salome, hence first cousin of Jesus Christ, oh yes). Believe that and you demonstrate faith in spades (there is apparently no biblical or historical substantiation), and we do - it's full of 'Caminos' putting the grim into pilgrim, and it's through them how the place got seriously rich. Read the Rough Guide to Spain for chapter and verse; this was the first example of mass tourism and it continues to this day. If you walk the last 100 miles on one of the numerous, well signposted routes to the cathedral you get let off half your time in Purgatory. Cycle the last 200 miles and you get the same deal: see here for full details. Couldn't find anything about motorbikes, but I'm quietly confident the 2,000 odd miles I did to get there means the Ducati's next service will get done in half the time...

Got so involved that we stayed until the final night, assuming the trip back to the ferry home would be easy (hell - didn't have to be at Santander until 8pm!). Very nearly a bad assumption - we were saved by the motorway from Oviedo, owing to some lovely roads prior to there. And they've been doing a lot of road building recently - my Garmin 550, with latest maps, had more missing or re-routed roads (including a couple of motorways!) than anywhere I've been before..

Lesson from this trip was that Northern Spain has a lot to offer in a fairly small area. Am thinking about the next trip there being based, pre-booked, in a couple of places, but that does put us at the mercy of the weather and the landlords... ho hum, need to think!