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.

 

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: