When you’ve got a few days holiday in Corralejo, Fuerteventura, why wouldn’t you hire a Specialized Allez Elite from Easy Riders Bike Centre and go for a morning ride each day from your villa at Bahiazul along the FV-104 between the shore and the famous dunes?
In total, I managed 324km whilst we were there (plus some walking/hiking). See my March 2025 Stats post for details.
I started doing little selfie videos to annoy friends on Facebook, so here’s a collection from March 2025:
May began with me looking forward to a long weekend in Cornwall on the BMW R1250RT and that didn’t disappoint, even if it – meaning Cornish Pasties, cream teas, and pub meals – led to a few days off from the Pain Cave.
Most of my time other than that was spent in the Pain Cave for more FulGaz rides, mainly my usual John Hallas’ Weekly Challenges, but also the FulGaz Winter Escape Tour 2025, which they put out for the riders in the Southern Hemisphere (remember that FulGaz was started in Australia).
Turning to my weight, at the end of April I weighed 86.8kg and at the end of May I weighed 87.0kg, which is up by 0.2kg. Body fat percentage was down from 25.6% to 24.8% which wasn’t bad considering the pasties.
The RT had its initial service in late March 2024, so was due another service – its first “full” service – a year later, so I booked it in for 1 April 2025.
In the meantime, it’s been back to Bahnstormer for the SOS button issue to finally be fixed and they also took a look at the oil mist from the damaged rocker cover on the offside.
It was going to be a quickie this time, so I turned up and hung around whilst the service was carried out and I may have accidentally scoffed a bacon and sausage bap whilst I was there!
The rocker cover is still weeping, apparently, despite having had new rocker cover bolts and a gasket fitted, so I’ve bought a litre of oil to keep on the RT just in case and they’ve quoted me for a replacement rocker cover.
Mileage is now up to 4,768 miles.
The next planned ride is with Bahnstormer themselves down to Cornwall, so I’ll be trying out a new dji microphone setup after the last disastrous video shoot, where I went into detail about the powered phone bracket, navigation, and a mini-test of the R1300GS, all of which had no (or hardly any) sound and narration captured…
Jamaica Inn
Herself was supposed to be coming for second unit filming, but is double-booked, so I’ll revert to a two camera setup with one on the Arai and one on the bars instead.
March started with that work visit to New Delhi for a Hearing. The hotel had a pool and allegedly a fitness centre; the former I didn’t really get to use because we ended up working well over 70 hours that week, including the weekend, and the latter was better than it looked on their website. The treadmill also linked properly to my Apple Watch Ultra and launched an Apple Fitness+ run which appeared to show video on the main screen and the photos that were mentioned came up on the Watch. I only managed to get it to work like this once, though.
But that was only short term as we were off to Fuerteventura for a combination of remote working and holiday: I’d already booked a villa for a week but still had two days’ holiday to take and had looked at the cost of a city break before deciding that I could move our Business Class flights a week earlier and book another week (albeit in a different villa in the same complex) for less. So I also amended my bike hire with Easy Riders Bike Centre in Corralejo to ensure I could do some road riding whilst I was there … and that I did: something like 324km on their Specialized Allez Elite.
Here are March’s stats:
March 2025 Statistics
Activities: 36 Distance: 503.97 km Time: 28:49:39 Calories: 25,850
Turning to my weight, at the end of February I weighed 87.4kg and at the end of March I weighed 86.1kg, which is down by 1.3kg. Body fat percentage was down from 25.0% to 22.6% which I think was a minor blip.
2024 continued my fitness consolidation with a combination of real-world activities when we were in the UK and in many parts of Europe (but not the Middle East where I didn’t venture outside the hotel to exercise), using the gym equipment for use in Alison’s personal training venture.
Since early November 2023, we’ve been back full time in the UK – other than holidays, of course – so the Pain Cave is visited pretty much every day first thing before work.
This definitely helps with the pain by building support for the affected areas including my knackered (necrosis-riddled) knee and the pelvis and spine from the motorcycle crash. ‘Helps’ but doesn’t get rid of the constant pain that I have had to come to terms with.
Anyway, moan over, here are the stats:
2024 Statistics
That one instance of using the gym? Yes just after Christmas when I decided to get some coaching from Alison as a PT to try and do some upper body work for a change, Must. Try. Harder.
Weight-wise? On the 1st of January 2024 I weighed 86.2kg with a body fat percentage of 24.5% and on 1st January 2025, I weighed 88.0kg with a body fat percentage of 24.6%. I can live with that, but there’s still room for improvement.
September 2024 saw the end of the holiday theme starting with a few days in Prague and ending with a weird week in Corralejo. Weird? Well the last time we were there it was as residents moving back to the UK full time and this time we were back as bloody tourists staying once more at Bahiazul.
The complex contains the ‘main’ Bahiazul operated villas but also others we’ve used before: Villas Veaco and KATIS Villas. The upside of booking with Bahiazul is two-fold:
Breakfast in their restaurant is included so that sets you up nicely for the day; and
You have access to the gym which is relatively good, though not as good as our Pain Cave.
As far as I was concerned, I could simply run or walk but my knees and post-crash issues make that uncomfortable to say the least, plus I wanted to ride a bike anyway. This meant hiring a mountain bike from Easy Riders which was a painless experience and recommended. As I knew I’d be heading out on the roads past the dunes, I needed to wear a bike helmet and didn’t fancy hiring one, so I bought an alpinestars Vector Pro Atom helmet and some needlessly flash Galibier Campionissimo Luxury gloves. Both were excellent.
The hire bike – a Trek Marlin 7 – had two issues for me:
The gearing was great for climbs and no doubt spot-on for off-road riding, but on the road I was unable to pedal quicker than 31km/h due to the low gearing (104rpm cadence). My fault for choosing an MTB but the road surfaces can be a tad iffy out there.
The seat post kept descending due to my weight and the bumps, so I was needing to stop to heave it back up again because I didn’t have the necessary Allen key.
Lesson learned and next time I may hire a road bike or choose one with a larger front sprocket.
Anyway, here are September’s stats:
September 2024 Stats
Activities: 41 Distance: 406.47 km Time: 31:12:40 Calories: 20,118
Turning to my weight, at the end of August I weighed 85.4kg and at the end of August I weighed 87.1kg, which is up 1.7kg. Too many good breakfasts and restaurant dinners!
August 2024 continued the holiday theme following my son, Jack’s wedding before heading off to Venice for a few days at the Hilton Molino Stucky and ending with a few days in Prague at probably the best hotel we’ve ever stayed at, the Mandarin Oriental.
Hitting the gym at these luxury hotels was difficult so we also went walkabout a lot – Alison is going to compete in 2025 in the Masters’ Bikini Class, so needs to bang in many thousands of steps every day along with her workouts.
So here are August’s stats:
August 2024 Stats
Activities: 22 Distance: 288.87 km Time: 21:34:09 Calories: 14,161
Turning to my weight, at the end of July I weighed 84.7kg and at the end of August I weighed 85.4kg, which is up 0.7kg.
After breakfast, we set off and after a few hours on the fabulous N-260 road, we were still 3 hours away from the night’s stop. Sadly the cafe we stopped at wasn’t serving food due to a staffing problem, so it was just a Coke and a water for now (plus one of Alison’s Rice Krispies bars).
RT roadside in Boltaña
Then it was on to our next Parador, the Parador de La Seu d’Urgell with the mileage now up to 637km so far having enjoyed all the sweeping bends of the N-260 today.
Secure parking for your motorbike is always a bonus, so I was pleased they even had a special shed for motorbikes too, which is nice. Luckily they don’t do Aperol Spritzes either…
The food was good, but not as good as the night before, sadly.
Day 2 dawned bright and early as we had to be up and out of our cabin a half hour before docking into Santander at 8.00am and we wanted breakfast before as well.
I had already planned a route and imported it into the pitiful BMW Connected app and set it to “Winding”. That setting gives you three options: “Min:, “Max” and a middle setting. and I assume – because there’s no help file – that Min means it’s not too windy and max means it’s going to take you all round Will’s mother’s.
So off we went. And yes, it decided that what we really wanted to do on an RT touring bike on road tyres, two-up with luggage was to use gravel tracks… And that was when it was actually keeping Connected. I think BMW Motorrad are taking the piss calling it that, because for any navigation you have to use their app. To do so, you have to pair the phone to your bike – woe betide you if you want to use your phone with your intercom on any other bike, because the bike has to be the intermediary and you have to unpair your phone and intercom.
Once you’ve connected via Bluetooth and planned your route, you tell the app to navigate and then you have to set up an additional wireless connection to the RT just to see the maps.
So far, so good(!), but at a random – or many random – points on your journey, that wireless connection will drop out and to top it off the Bluetooth connection might also randomly drop out, leaving you to have to stop by the side of the road, open the storage compartment, re-establish the connection – which may or may not mean restarting the RT – and then get going again.
Later on, the RT decided it might just reboot itself completely, leaving you with a blank screen without any speed information, let alone any navigation.
It is utterly pants. It’s not even like the navigation system properly displays POIs or warns you of safety cameras, for instance. Indeed, at the start of Day 3, I was very low on fuel and the Connected (cr)app was telling me the nearest petrol station was 87km away when there was actually one showing on Google Maps and Apple Maps 3/4km away. But you can’t use those apps on the RT because BMW are too stupid to get CarPlay working on their bikes, whilst it’s working on their cars. It Connected or nothing!
Anyway, whinge over, we set off and then rerouted manually to at least see some scenic roads and stops for coffee along the way to our first night’s hotel, the Parador de Sos del Rey Católico.
Now I’d first heard of Paradores on the wonderful Harry’s Garage YouTube channel from some of his road trip videos and unknown to me to start with, this particular Parador was featured in Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’t excellent series, The Trip to Spain.
View from the terrace at the Parador de Sos del Rey Católico
Parador de Sos del Rey Católico Room
After a shower and a freshen-up – it had been quite a warm ride with us seeing 37°C at one point – we decided that wine and generous gins on an empty stomach would help help…
Before dinner, we headed off into Sos del Rey Católico itself for a little exercise despite it still being pretty bloody hot. The place is very hilly but very picturesque.
And then dinner: local food cooked to a very high standard. Very much recommended.
And finally, a little bit of footage from on the bike:
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