Good Friday seemed like the perfect day to kick off the road riding season so we arranged a ride with some locals to La Bassella. This excellent motorcycle museum is a couple of hours or so north of us, heading towards the Pyrenees. We met up at 7.30 when it was still pretty fresh, and, in fact, only just light! Once everyone had pitched up we set off towards Flix and stopped for a Catalan breakfast after about an hour. Throwing myself in at the deep end, I went for octopus, a bit of a diversion from the normal British fry up. Delicious though.
Once refreshed we headed north, skirting Lleida, and met up with our pal Mark, who had gone ahead to get his Covid jab. It was getting nicely warm now and the Spanish sun combined with the excellent, traffic-free roads, made for a lovely ride. It was even more appreciated after a long winter of restrictions. There was an interesting mix of motorbikes, Harleys to my own Suzuki DR350 trail bike.
We arrived at La Bassella around noon. As you hit the approach roads to the Pyrenees, the scenery starts to become more and more spectacular. We spent an hour and a half wandering around the museum, which has a large selection of machinery from the last century or so of motorcycling. It also has a large cafe and so is a good place to pick up some refreshments.
From here the group took a different route back towards Móra d’Ebre, taking in some more spectacular scenery and roads. There are plenty of places to stop and take some photos as well as have a coffee. The advantage of having clear roads is that there is not so much pressure to overtake and ‘keep up” with the group. With the absence of hedges etc, you can see for a long way so the riders in front can simply slow down a bit to allow for everyone to regroup. Alternatively, if a couple of riders fancy a ‘blat’ then they can take off and the rest will catch up sooner or later. It worked well and we are planning some more road trips to other interesting venues in the future.
If you are staying with us and fancy some day trips out, we can sort something out that will suit all tastes. We can arrange road bike hire as well at good rates.
More information about the museum is available here