Newbie tourer looking for tips!

[mick_benson]

in spain you must have passport, licence and all bike doc's with you every time you ride,
if you get stopped by the police you pay the fine on the spot they will take you to cash point, or they impound your bike till you do pay,
as said spare bulds are leagal requirement over there,
oh something really silly over there they only stop for red zebra crossings not for the black and white one's we have
they recomend that you ware a HI-VI when riding but they dont enforce it,

have fun, i did ;D ;D

how are you getting from uk to spain???

[Scotty]

A couple of other points about riding in Spain - headlights on at all times is compulsory, you'll be fined if you don't. On new bikes it's less of a problem as the lights illuminate automatically, on older bikes where you can switch them off you could inadvertently leave them off, try to remember.
Another point that isn't widely known is that bikes must have at least one mirror (on the left side ideally if there's only one) - on road bikes this isn't normally a problem, but off-roaders don't tend to have mirrors and Jaa and I got nailed by the Guardia Civil for it three years ago >

[lolliver]

@Jon
That's an interesting link, a couple more bits that I hadn't thought of thanks =)

@Swanny
That's definitely good advice, don't much fancy getting frogmarched to a cashpoint to pay a fine

@Nikki
Cheers for the link! I've basically resigned myself to forgetting at least one thing lol : Gunna be great fun either way!

@Voodoo
Arghh I didn't even think about ringing the insurers! cheers =D And yep, I'll take some coinage with me. Do you have any idea how much the tolls are on average?

@ESSEX
Thanks for that! Couple more things I didn't know about =)
We're getting the ferry from Plymouth to Santander then I think we'll pick a random place on the map and set off. More fun that way Where did you go to?

@Scotty
I didn't know that, I'll make sure that I leave the lights on then. I tend to leave them on over here out of habit so it should be ok.

[mick_benson]

We went from Portsmouth to bilboa, I can say next time I will be doing dover to calais and ride all the way down, the 24hr(32hr) crossing was horrible never again

[Ducatista]

Have you checked that your travel insurance covers you for motorcycling.
Most don't, so you might find you're not covered unless you bought a specialist policy.

[lolliver]

We went from Portsmouth to bilboa, I can say next time I will be doing dover to calais and ride all the way down, the 24hr(32hr) crossing was horrible never again

What was wrong with the crossing? I was hoping to just sleep for most of it to be honest.

Did you tour all over Spain when you were there, or just stick to a certain area?

Have you checked that your travel insurance covers you for motorcycling.
Most don't, so you might find you're not covered unless you bought a specialist policy.

Ahh that's an interesting point. I booked my travel insurance on the ferry website, alongside booking my ferry tickets. I'm hoping they've taken into account that I specified that I'm taking two motorcycles with me?
When the documents arrive in the post I'll take a look at them to make sure.

[RedSoul]

We went from Portsmouth to bilboa, I can say next time I will be doing dover to calais and ride all the way down, the 24hr(32hr) crossing was horrible never again

Totally agree....we did the boat from Portsmouth to Bilboa and decided next time definately ride down.

[Ducatista]

What was wrong with the crossing?

The bay of Biscay is notorious for being rough.
Take precuations e.g. sea sickness tablets.

I was hoping to just sleep for most of it to be honest.

Take something that helps you sleep.
I find the Paul Mckenna recordings work really well for me - the hynoptic trance ones, doesn't matter what the subject is, they seem to work equally well.
I also find Kalms tablets helps, but whatever works for you.

[lolliver]

What was wrong with the crossing?

The bay of Biscay is notorious for being rough.
Take precuations e.g. sea sickness tablets.

I was hoping to just sleep for most of it to be honest.

Take something that helps you sleep.
I find the Paul Mckenna recordings work really well for me - the hynoptic trance ones, doesn't matter what the subject is, they seem to work equally well.
I also find Kalms tablets helps, but whatever works for you.

Didn't realise it was a rough crossing! Never mind.

Thanks for the advice regarding seasickness tablets etc, something else I hadn't considered! This thread's turning out to be quite insightful ;D

[Ducatista]

Oh and presumably you'll have ear plugs anyway, but a lot of folks use these ferrries for a booze cruise.
We had a particularly noisey couple next door one time and the walls are quite thin so we could hear every moan and that's quite difficult to sleep through.

So don't forget to use your ear plugs at night as well.