Sacha is looking a bit windswept ...

I'm currently stopped at the France / Spain border, and will cross tomorrow.

Since I live on an island, I have little experience of land borders. The first time I crossed a real land border was last year, en route to Malta, when I crossed from France to Switzerland. It was that much of a novelty that I rode back and forward across the border 3 times - the customs guys must've thought I was having a laugh.

I've always wondered just how they decide where to draw a border between two countries. In the case of an island, its easy, but a land border is different. A lot of the time, it's done on physical features - like a big river, and more often than not the border is drawn where two opposing armies met and one couldn't get advantage over the other.

As I approached the France / Spain border, I had no need to wonder how this border was drawn. Nature decided where the line should be, and stuck a couple of thousand feet of mountains in the way as a hint to future cartographers.

If you've never seen the Pyrenees up close, they truly are spectacular. They are even more so because they start at the coast, and rise to several thousand metres over a very short distance. They are absolutely huge. You can picture the wars going on hundreds of years ago, all these troops marching to war, and then they turned a corner and saw these monsters just sitting there saying "tell you what guys, how about you just draw the border right here".

I lost Andorra today, just didn't have enough time to comfortably do it and make sure I got the boat on time tomorrow. My heart sank as the road forked - left hand fork was Barcelona, 155km. Right hand fork was Andorra, 140km. I had to fight the urge to go right, but missing the boat would have made The Missus rather cross with me, and I wated to avoid this.

I had worked out my distances and timings based on looking at my map but there was a fatal flaw in my plan - I hadn't accounted for mountain roads properly, and my average speed was about half what I expected it to be. When you add this to the couple of hours I lost yesterday on the Peripherique, that was my Andorra window.

One good thing about the mountain roads was the relatively slow speeds - 60mph or less - which menat I could do the whole lot on my pegs. Not only was this a hoot, it also alleviated the monkey butt that I was starting to get. For those of you who do not ride a bike, monkey butt is a condition caused by sitting down for a long time, and all of the rubbing and chafing that goes on as you ride. If you picture one of those moneys with the bright red arses then you'll have a good idea of the symptoms.

The Millau Viaduct was spectacular. As I approached from the north, I could see the tops of the piers with the cables hanging down in the distance - they looked like a row of shark teeth, glistening white in the sunshine. I tried to stop on the bridge to take a picture, and loudspeakers started barking something about "ADVANCE LE MOTO!" which I took to be some kind of subtle hint not to stop on the bridge. On hindsight, the big notices instructing vehicles not to stop was also something of a giveaway.

As I wound through the mountains, the people I met became more relaxed. There was an awful lot more "ne rien" (no problem) in the conversations, and even my poor french could detect the changing accents, and the slightly slower way of talking - in the same way that you imagine the slow drawl of a typical country bumpkin compared to the machine-gun rapid fire of somebody in London.

Travelling on a motorcycle is the only way to see a country, to get to know it. When you travel in a car, you're stuck in this hermetically sealed bubble of your own world looking out through windows like it was just more television. When you travel by motorcycle, you share the air, you share the weather - you're there. You are a participant, not an observer. It's not like going on holiday in an aeroplane - a cigar tube blasting through the air at 30,000 feet - where you get off the plane and comment on how warm it is. You feel the air temperature changing as you climb the mountains, getting warmer as you descend into the valleys. You understand why villages and towns are located where they are - this one because it's on a bend in the river (which will flood and irrigate the soil) or another one because it's right on a mountain pass and people would stop there in days gone by to rest their horses after a long climb up the mountain.

I spoke to my ageing friend today (the one whose birthday we are going to Ibiza for) on the telephone. He was at the airport, and I could hear the announcements in the background, an it reminded me of a prank that was played at Heathrow many years ago. You'll need to turn up the sound for this, but it really is worth a listen. It is as ingenious as it is hilarious - a welcome bit of harmless mischief in an increasingly uptight world. Two guys gave the airport announcers some names to call to the information desk. The names were foreign-looking, and harmless enough on paper, but sounded quite different over the tannoy. The link is here.

I now have about 80 miles to ride to get to Barcelona, where I catch the boat. I am still in great shape physically and mentally, but I have highlighted a number of areas where I need work - navigation being the key one. I almost turned to the dark side today and bought a GPS system, but I was put off for a couple of reasons:

1. The GPS for a motorcycle (which has to be waterproof for obvious reasons) cost the same amount as The Missus' shoe budget for a year;
2. I'd have had to cut and splice wires on my bike, at the side of the road, to get the thing powered-up and working. This would have taken time, which was already scarce;
3. I was rather enjoying the adventure of doing it hardcore, instead of just having some computer barking orders at me;

I spent the last 100 miles or so on the motorway. Motorways are ugly. They were designed to be ugly. Their sole purpose on life is to get people from point A to point B as quickly as possible, whilst the people at point C wonder what it is about point B that makes everybody wants to go there.

Shame about Andorra. Still, it gives me a reason to do it again. Trying to get in Andorra and Millau was always going to be pushing it, unless I rode so hard that I wasn't really enjoying it. I ended up passing through some beautiful places, some of which have probably been the same for a thousand years.

My French has improved the further south I got. I started by thinking in English, then translating. After two days in France I am doing it the right way, thinking in French. Actually listening to what people are saying, instead of calculating what my next sentence is going to be. There's a useful lesson for normal life there - how often do you actually listen to what somebody is saying, and how often are you simply waiting on your turn to speak?

In the last 7 days, I have ridden nearly 2,000 miles (300 of those off-road) and driven 400 or so in a car to Wales and back. My body is reminding me that I have done these things, but it's holding up well and my levels of stamina are still high.

I didn't hit all of the waypoints that I wanted to, but that's not really a bad thing I don't think. It's another one of those biking things that are great metaphors for life. If things aren't working out exactly according to the detail of your plan, let it drift for a while and see where it takes you. Even if you don't end up exactly where you wanted to be, you'll at least enjoy the journey.

Looking forward to seeing The Missus and the Wee Yin tomorrow.

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