Hi,
I am planning to spend 3 weeks on a bike in south...
Draft of the route attached...
All hints highly wanted... Joseph???
And rest of you, you can be jealous
Hello friends!
Let me add to the discussion that these kind of subjets should rather be settled with a well beer furnished table in between!
About your trip, here are some comments...
From the French border to Santiago de Compostela you seem to have chosen a route with a number of historical cities along the way, with plenty of top remnants from the Middle Ages.
So, it's OK if you want to visit Burgos (great cathedral and wonderful sculptures in Cartuja de Miraflores, also las Huelgas), or León (cathedral and sorroundings) or Santo Domingo de la Calzada (and its rooster) or Santo Domingo de Silos or even Astorga (its bishop's palace, together with some near Santander, are the only works from Gaudí away from Catalonia). Landscapes, though, are flat and hot, with reaped fields. If you don't care about history, you'd better choose another route (which would be slower).
From Marinha Grande to Gibraltar, it's overall OK (or it suits my own preferences
). Extremadura is possibly the least populated area in Spain (specially in the N), and this gives some special athmosphere when you ride there. Plasencia is a bit too far N for your plans, but the area around the nice city of Caceres is nice, Trujillo and specially the great Roman remnants of Merida are also well worth a visit. I hardly know the Portuguese side, but I have memories of landscapes pretty much similar to the ones on the Spanish side, and Evora, a city also with Roman past. Near Gibraltar, you have an area of picturesque villages, in white
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Towns_of_AndalusiaFrom Gibraltar heading N, I can only recommend you the same I did to Erik a couple of years ago, which is definitelly otherwise than your plans! I'g go to Ronda, the las Alpujarras (S side of Sierra Nevada, higher than the Pyrenees), Granada, then near Almeria to Tabernas (a desert area where Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood and many others filmed spaghetti westerns) and Cabo de Gata (desert and sea meet). Then N to Albacete, Cuenca, Albarracín, Teruel, Morella, Valderrobres, Horta de Sant Joan (Picasso painted a few early cubist works there), Gratallops (world top red wines),... and then one route or another depending on whether you want to go to Barcelona and/or Andorra or not. For instance, if you are in Andorra and feel the need to climb some mountain, you can head to France via el Port d'Envalira (don't get into the tunnel!), when in France take the first road to the right to col du Puymorent (don't get into the tunnel!), then go left to Mont Louis and then take the road to Axat but before you reach it, turn again left and go up the col de Pailheres. Finally you can go to Foix, Limoux, Mirepoix, Carcassone,... Toulouse, Montauban, the Perigord,... I would not waste my time in these last areas, but visit them thoroughly some other time!
If you followed the Mediterranean coast because you meant to go to some beach, then the above route can be changed so that you could do so, but not more than necessary (lots of people and traffic). If you take this route for the sake of speed, you already know that this is a boring toll motorway...
I can see that while you'll be doing all this, I'll be taking some refreshments somewhere in England. So, if you happen to visit again the beautiful city of Tarragona, take a beer on my behalf.
Regards,
Josep