Introduction
What's contained in these pages
Stories, that's what, combined with photographs, telltales from our travels
on a Triumph Tiger in Spain. The stories are divided in eight main chapters,
called
Long Trip..... They tell about places and experiences we had.
In addition there are stories covering different topics, like buying a bike
in Spain, going to a bar or describing the region close to Nerja.
The travels took us into all the differents parts of Andalusía, from
the coastal region to the high plains, up to Sierra Nevada, east to the
deserts and into the national parks of cabo De Gata, Sierra Cazorla and
Parque Doñana. We visited towns like Carmen's Sevilla, Granada with Alhambra,
Toledo - old capital of Castilla, Madrid, the three conquistador towns
of Mérida, Cáseres and Trujillo, Jerez de la Frontera with the sherry
wine, Ronda on the hilltop, Tarifa on the southern most point of Europe,
Almería, Guadix with the caves and on and on. We also brought the bike
over to Mallorca and drove on nearly every drivable road on the island.
The last story is about the trip back home to Norway, done in a few days
in April 1999. Rocinante had 18000 km on the clock when she was back in
Norway.
Who should this interrest
Well, that is a difficult question. Hopefully, the pictures and stories
should interrest a lot of people, but the groups below are our main targets;
- Travellers going to southern Spain or thinking/dreaming about going there
- Motorcyclists, especially those who travel as well and maybe dream about
or consider going to Spain to do something similar to what we have done
- Hobby photographers, people generally interrested in Spain
Who are we
We are a Norwegian couple named Bente Bråthen and Dag Jenssen. She(Bente),
born in 1968, has worked in Spain as a tourist guide many years ago and
is now working as secretary, project secretary and from time to time as
a dowhatever in her father's business. Dag, born in 1964, works as a engineer
in the offshore seismic industry and has photography as a small hobby. Together
we have been traveling in Australia, Greece and Mexico, but always on a
tight schedule. Dag has driven a motorcycle since 1990. Both speak spanish,
she speaks it very well and he gets by!
What brought us here
In October 1997 we decided to sell our appartment and started looking for
a house in Porsgrunn, Norway. But after seeing three houses we questioned
our motives and re-decided to rather do something we had wanted all the
three years we had been together, to go to Spain and improve our Spanish.
And so we did, just like that! I(Dag) applied for a two months leave of
absence, which gave me a total of three months off in one go(My schedule
is one month on a vessel, one month off). Bente had a very free working
contract in her father's business, and simply told him she was going away
for six months. Accepted! We sold the appartment and left between christmas
and new year 1997-1998. We stayed for seven months in southern Spain, but
due to a slow registration process, the bike wasn't in use more than three
months in 1998. We returned in January 1999 for four more weeks. Finally,
I returned alone in April and drove the bike to Norway.
Why did we create this homepage
The page wasn't even thought of when we left for Spain. A bit of luck left
us with a borrowed laptop with Frontpage Express installed. We were already
writing the stories, but as a private diary only. I played around for a
while with Frontpage and soon found this so interesting that the next step
was to learn basic HTML. After a while I quit using Frontpage and started
using Notepad to make a simple homepage. Next step was to include the stories
we had written and link them to a main page as a advanced diary, a neat
way of keeping track of the different pieces. When we had gotten this far,
why not pretend to create a page for other people to read. So I scanned
in some pictures and played with the layout for a while, reread the stories
and made some changes to try to make them somewhat useful to others. Later
things were redone a few times, more photos were scanned and here we are.
(Feedback is the only way for us to know what you think. Don't feel obliged
to give it, but it would be appreciated.)
The bike
I bought the bike in Malaga, Spain on tourist license plates. She's a Triumph
Tiger 900, 1998 model, an dual sports bike which is the perfect tool for
getting around in this part of the world. Spains backroads was probably
created with this bike in mind. We baptized her Rocinante, the namesake
of Don Quixote's horse. There is no connection between the two as our Rocinante
has done the job she was set to do without as much as a hiccup. She covered
18.000km in a about four months.
The base camp
We got ourself an appartment in the little and lively town of Nerja, 50km
east of Malaga. The place was used as a base camp for our travelling, a
place to come back to after a week on the road, meet some new friends and
recharge for a new trip. The town is lively and,
or but, filled up
with retired northern Europeans throughout the winter, a fact that made
me name it the Nerja Centro Geriatrico when we arrived. But when you get
on the inside after a while, it proves to have a lot to offer a couple of
relatively young norwegians who manages the Spanish language.
So go back to the home page, scan through
the menu and choose where to start, or just start at the top. Have a nice
journey!