The Road To Malaga - Motorcycle Tour Of Spain On The BMW R1250 GS Adventure!

We are on our motorcycle tour around Spain. Today, we are leaving Ronda and heading to Malaga. Sean is just packing up the motorcycle. We parked in a little car park here while we looked around Ronda. You can see that in the previous video. We're just going to head towards Malaga, right? No real plan? Exactly. It looks like there's an awesome route there. Come along with us as we take our R1250GS adventure to Malaga on the awesome roads of Spain. So we are leaving Ronda now but we're actually going to be riding over the famous bridge which everybody comes to see. We stayed near it last night and you'll have seen that in our last vlog but now we're going to ride over and ride out of Ronda and hopefully into some incredible roads. It's looking good. There's a national park nearby so we're going to head north and then we're going to go east through the national park and then we're going to drop down south into Malaga which is going to be great. That sounds awesome. It looks like one of the roads is used to do like car sprints so I've got high hopes for it. And here we go over the very famous gorge bridge. Wow, this is pretty cool. Yeah, awesome place Ronda. It was a trip highlight. Right, that's the bullring that we went to. We didn't venture further up here, did we? No, we didn't do this part of town but I think it's just mostly shops. They're really nice though. A nice little town centre with a grid formation. What's so nice about Ronda is that it's so clean and so well preserved. Some of the facades and architecture dates back to the 1700s and it's really nice to see how well looked after this place is. So we are just about leaving Ronda now. We're on the outskirts in the more residential area. We plan on riding two and a half to three hours through this southern Spanish countryside and hopefully we'll see some of these famous little villages where all of the houses are painted white and they're very picturesque. So we'll be heading there now. Should we go down here? Yeah, why not? We can actually get all the way down. Let's give it a go. Such an unusual shape this lake. This is incredible. Maybe a cooking op. How are you? Wow, look at the birds as well. I think that's the end of the road. Up high I think. It's a bit sandy. Just a little. Wow, I would never have thought this was Spain. How cool is this? As we pulled into this little national park area there was a little gravel sandy track that we've took down to the reservoir and it's an absolutely beautiful spot. Nice and quiet, really peaceful. We just set up a little camp to cook some dinner because we were both getting super hungry. So we've got some pasta, some pesto, some plant-based sausages. We're going to cook them up and we nearly ran out of fuel on this trip. We're like two and a half weeks in and we've used about a litre of the Primus cooking fuel. I have to say it's lasted quite a long time. We've not been conservative. Not at all and you've had hot water bottles when you're camping as well which you use a bit of gas. We're going to eat this, enjoy the views around us and then get back on the road. It's still another two hours to Malaga and I think the roads are just going to keep getting better. There's some good roads up ahead and we quite like riding into the evening because it's not quite in the midday sun. We're going to eat this and we'll get back on the road in a minute. We'll make sure we put a tag of this in the description of this location because it's the perfect spot to camp overnight. We would have done it I think if we hadn't planned to be in Malaga this evening. It's a great spot, you're quite secluded, it's easy to get to from the main road and the sunset here would be something special. So we thought we found a secluded spot for our little campfire but we've been surrounded by sheep and rams. Sean, rev the engine. Seems to work quite well, keeping them at bay. It's a new feature on the GS Adventure, you can herd sheep with it. Maybe I should have stopped a little bit further up. Okay, let's ride. Thanks Pete. You're welcome. Thanks for picking me up. I enjoyed it, all right. Some big bumps here. Some big branches and smooth again. Smooth again. Smooth tarmac. Just riding through a sleepy Spanish town. It reminds me of some of the outback Australia where you stop on the Indian Pacific train I think. In the middle of that train track there were some random mining towns and that just reminded me of it. It was a nice town though. Okay, we're just stopping for fuel here at a GALP. It is a GALP, yeah. And we've got diesel, diesel, gasoline in the wrong place. Trying to trick me, trying to trick us aren't they. I'll step away from that. I'm going to go and see what the GALP has to offer us in way of drinks and snacks. Oh, it's a warm one today. It must be 25 degrees. We got two of these to try and red licorice which we already tried here in Spain. It's pretty good actually, so we're going to get that and then we'll get back on the road. We've just turned on to the A1775 and so far it looks fantastic riding these roads through Andalasia. Look at this. We're surrounded by cliffs at the moment. I hope we're going to go over them but it looks good. Not much other traffic on the road at the moment and the road conditions are pretty good. Fair news to Spain, they have got some really good quality roads. Hard to keep your eye on the road actually. The scenery is wonderful. Yeah, it's kind of hills and mountains and it's super green and you can just about see the sea in the distance. You can. It's quite nice, there's good visibility on these corners. See what's coming or what's not. Currently riding on the MA3101 and this is going to take us into Malaga. We've got about 40 minutes to an hour on this road and it's all twists and turns all the way down to the coastline, so it's a great alternative than the motorway. Or if you're going to hire a motorbike from Malaga, this is a great road to come on for a little bit of a play. Yeah, it feels like you are riding on top of the peaks, just skipping one to another and carving your way through them. You've got quite a lot of altitude, which is nice because you can see the sea in the distance as you keep approaching. What a great road. Yeah, and it doesn't seem very busy. I think it's more of an access road for the people that live up here, but what a place to live. Well, I've just pulled over. There's an absolutely lovely set of S-bends just coming straight ahead that's hugging the mountain edge. So let's go ride them. Let's go enjoy it. They carry on as well. There's the sea and I'm guessing Malaga is just down there. Whoa, it's like brand new tarmac. What road is this, Shaun, for everyone? It's the MA3101 and we're heading south. This is not one to be missed. Peaks coming into view. You can just about see the boring motorway from this road. All of the people on that wishing they were on this. Yeah, they don't know what they're missing out on. And we're riding this as the sun goes down and there's just nobody on these roads. No, it's not, is it? Who'd have thought Malaga was a motorcycle paradise? Not me. You think of Malaga, you think of just cheap booze and resorts. Well, we might have some cheap booze tonight. I think you deserve a beer after all these curves. It's not what I expected of Spain, to be honest. I don't know what I did expect, but these little hills that lead into mountains, it sounds crazy, but it looks like the Hobbit land in Lord of the Rings to me. I think you'll find the Hobbit land is called the Shire. I do apologize to all Lord of the Rings fans for that. One does not simply go up Lord of the Rings. Cut and shortened, these are great. This is so much fun. There's infinite combinations of these roads as well. There's not like just one route. This for me is the best time of day to be riding in Spain. Temperatures drop just below 20 and the sun's going down. It really does feel like you could go on these roads all day. There's lots of little offshoots to go down, loads of villages to explore and you're so close to Malaga. Absolutely, even if you're using Malaga as a base and you want to escape for a while. I don't know about you, I know we've had this bike for two weeks and we've taken it on a couple of other tours at 1250, but I've fallen in love again. Yeah, it's great, isn't it? We've got just about to turn over to five and a half thousand kilometers on the clock on the bike and that's straight out the showroom and it's been fantastic. For anyone wondering as well, we get a lot of comments about our helmets. We're actually wearing the Touratech helmets this trip. They're carbon fiber and they've been fantastic so far. Really light and we love a flip-up helmet when we're traveling. Yeah, the flip-up lens are such an advantage. Yeah, just stopping to take a photo, taking a drink, we really like them. It just keeps going, this road just keeps on skipping and hopping from hill to hill. The sky's doing well. Go on, go on lad. A lot of respect for the cyclists coming up here. I'm exhausted and I'm on a bike. Maybe when we find a restaurant this evening we can have a look in the Lonely Planet, see if we can plan a little walking tour for tomorrow. Yep, that'll be good. We have to look at our schedule as well because we have to stay on target now because we're coming towards the end of the trip. I think it's all going to work out. Yeah, I think we're about 2,000 kilometers, 2,200 from Switzerland, so we need to break that down so we don't end up doing an 800 kilometer day back. Yeah, that happens quite often. We leave at the last minute and then it has a a nasty motorway slog back home to finish off the tyres. Yeah. Is that Malaga down there? That's Malaga down there. It's quite big. I'll show you guys on the approach. There it is. We haven't booked anything so if we don't like the look of it we can carry on. Yeah, we'll let you know if we end up in Valencia, which I think is the next city. So we have arrived in the city centre of Malaga and there are loads of road closures and there is quite a lot of traffic so we are just driving through it but it's a little bit hectic today. We haven't got a hotel yet so I've just been having a look on the back but I'm also navigating for Sean so it's 400 meters turn right by the way, Sean. And then we're going to be heading into an area near the port. Hopefully we'll be able to find a hotel there. Obviously with it being a city it's quite expensive so we're already arriving late. We don't want to spend too much so we'll have a look when we get a bit closer into the town centre, see if any hotels pop up that are a good a good price. Then get checked in, get into some comfy clothes and maybe take a walk along the Malaga beach and grab some scrummy food. That's the plan anyway but first you've got to turn right in 100 meters. So far Malaga looks like a very interesting city, lots going on, lots of different smells, lots of different bars and restaurants. It's really hectic on the roads but we're nearly at the hotel. What a great day we've had today riding the Andalusian hills but we're in Malaga now, we've checked into the hotel, the bike's safely parked away in the car park so we're going to go get some rest now because tomorrow we're going to go and explore Malaga. So see you in the next episode.