RTW on a H.A.T:- The final continent........finally!

Each day and evening brings further festivities, parades and general socialising. Yesterday the prizes were given out after a parade of all the Falle's into the town square of Port de Sagunta. Sadly Joses Falla was not one of them. But that really doesn't matter, it's all about the socialising and bringing everyone together. The social cohesion that abounds here in Spain is quite something, at least to our eye. Something that I think is missing in many parts of the world.

We visited a number of the prize winning Falle's, generally disagreed with the judges choices of course. After which we returned to Jose and Pilars Falla's marque for more eats, drinks and general good times. Oh of course this being Spain the action doesn't really start to 11pm and it goes on in to the wee hours. This little vegemite usually turns into a pumkin by midnight. Ahh the things your gotta do on the road!


Two pretty girls, thats got to score me some browny points.


No mistaking where we are.


A bit of fun on stage, the Port de Sagunta synchronised swimming team no less.


I wasn't about to miss out on all the fun. First time in pantaloons!


We think Katrina gets frocked up tomorrow. But it's all such a blur we are not too sure.


Time for a little noise.














Got to love the kid front and centre.



Tonight the party moves to Pilar & Jose's garage under their house. We could be in for a big one.

Here's an unedited clip of the final minutes of the fire works that are set off every day in Valencia at 2pm during the celebration of the Falle's. (Pronounced La-fiyairs) The experience is extraordinary and one i'll never forget as your body is assaulted with countless explosions complete with pressure waves.

Great shots! Happy to have you back on the road!

Hi ya @gperkins , great to see you back on the road. It certainly is nice to see my alerts page come up saying I need to get my eyes into here to read some updates

Thanks SOLOKLR, it's great to be back in Spain, we sure have started this leg with a bang. Come Friday we start to move once more, but lets not get in front of ourselves, we've still got 3 full days of fun here in Port de Sagunta.

Cheers MrKiwi, there's so much going on here I just knew that I had to get my arse into gear and start updating or else I was going to fall way behind. Once we start moving this Friday, we will be time poor, for we want to get to Turkey fairly quickly without being stupid about it.

Some might remember me changing over the rear right 6204 wheel bearing for a double row 4204, because of the inherent early failure of that bearing. Well whilst fitting a near rear Mitas E-07+ tyre to the bike today I double checked these bearings and although I could be a tad premature, I didn't entirely like the feel of this bearing when turning it insitu with my fingers. So I bit the bullet and replaced both the left 6204 and the right 4204. It's been 47,000 klms since I last did this. At $45 Aus a pop for the 4204 as opposed to about $8 for the original 6204 it doesn't make economic sense to replace. But the confidence it gives me to keep on riding without the worry of premeture failure at the most inconvenient of times, makes it worth while for me. Perhaps for most it's not worth the switch, just simply swap out that bearing every second rear tyre change. But for myself I'll keep using the 4204.

Here's the difference, original on the left, modified 4204 on the right, with a narrower 5mm wide seal as opposed to the cheap shitty wiper supplied as original.

Who needs a full palet of colours when two will do.





Graeme and Katrina

How is it I’m so far behind?

Sincerest apologies

Sending you greetings from Christchurch.

Cheers

Shane

Hey guys I have no idea how this works but I'd be interested in any thoughts/advice on your trip from Dili up through South East Asia....I'm based in Darwin and want to ride and island hop.....not sure if this is how I should contact you.

PD

Not a problem at all PDD, it's all a learning curve. If this digitally challenged muppet can get a basic grasp of the on-line world I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'll send you a private message giving you a good run down. Being based in Darwin you are already ahead of the pack for the hop across to Dili and beyond. Hope you make it across, if like us you'll love it. Just check your inbox Pete.

No need to apologise Shaggie, life has more important things to deal with than our little tome. I've got to say though, it's good being back on the road.

Cheers from sunny Valencia.

Our time here in Port de Sagunto, Valencia is drawing to a close, Katrina and I will miss this place a lot. The festivities the food & wine the social events and especially the people. How we came to spend so much time here is because of a chance meeting or not as it turned out with Jose nearly two years ago. We were trying to get a group together to cross China so as to lower the cost. Jose responded to that posting on the HUBB, unfortunately he couldn't make the crossing because of visa issues in Pakistan. But of course we stayed in touch and here we are two years later having just about the best time imaginable. How the love of travel and motorbikes crosses all boundry's, regardless of language, nationality religion or anything else for that matter.

Ok, enough waffle, the 5 day event of the Valencian Falles was drawing to it's inevitable close. That of course meant more food, drink, lighting of fireworks at all hours of the day and then the final and inevitable burning of the Falles.


Loading up on crackers for the morings wake up call. Boys love their crackers, I kow I did!


They get carried around in one of these slung over the shoulder.


Oooh so much fun hides within. Apologies for the cigarette butt.


Time to make merry and wake the town up.


Later that day each Falla would set off their own fireworks. The little town of Port de Sagunta has 30 Falles (clubs). Here is the Xurruca Falle to which Jose and Pilar belong. That makes for a lot of noise. Valencia has 390!


Then as night closes in preparations are made to burn and sacrafice all the art work. First the small ones go up in smoke.


The fuse is lit.


And up she goes.


Now to the main event.




This is what happens when fireworks meets 9000 Euros of art work. The big instalations are 40,000 euros remeber and there are literal hundreds of them in and around Valencia, both crazy and fantastic at the same time.




Members of the Xurruca Falla all come together for a final photo, just as the heavens open up. In 2 weeks time the organising committee come together to start preparing for next years event.


In the centre of Valencia the girls adorned in traditional costume have presented flowers to the virgin. This tower of flowers has to be about 8 metres high at a guess.





By tomorrow night we'll be on a ferry out of Barcelona and saturday arrive in Italy.

Hi Graeme.....Funny I use email all day everyday but I never use websites like this and I'm not on bookface so this stuff challenges me.....so yep I got your private message on my private email to which I sent a lengthy reply to only to have it bounce back saying I had to log onto the ADV website.....obviously didn't read the fine print.....so if I cut and paste my reply to here does everyone get see it?.....not that I really care but is there another way I can reply to you?

PD

@PDD you'll want to log on to the ADV website and look for the Inbox link. You can reply directly from there. Hope this helps!

I reckon your've got it now, it's all a learning curve. I need to crank up my video editing skills.

It just made a lot more sence to bypass the French & Italian Med region, we've done these areas before. It's super built up, expensive tolls on the fast roads or go super slow on the secondary roads, in any case it's actually cheaper to take the ferry from Barcelona to Civitavecchia when you consider adding up petrol at 1.6 euro a litre, accomodation for a couple of nights and a bit of food. What we neglected to figure out is that it is currently school holidays and the ferry was chokka full of hundreds of kids.


The ferry stops off in the north of Sardinia, here we have a lone bike waiting to board, he's on a Ducati, I bet he had fun carving up the curves of Sardina.


Katrina walking the promanade deck I guess.


View out of our window in Zungoli, typical medieval village. Pretty neat eh. We would ride that curvey little country lane and another 150 klms like it once we left.


Looking back to Zungoli from that road. Now heres a thought, you can buy an abandoned house in Zungoli for the princely sum of 1 euro, yep ONE Euro. Of course there is a catch to it. You must spend at least 15,000 Euro's within the first 3 years of ownership to rebuild or else the council will take it back. This progamme and many like it are common in a lot of small Italian villages, where locals have left for the city's to gain work and fortune. Thus there are a lot of abandoned houses left to decay. Not good for the village, so if you are up for it here's your chance for some Italian sunshine and I've got to say, Zungoli and surrounding country side isn't half bad.

That makes me think about early retirement. Susi also speaks fluent Italian

MrsKiwi and I discussed buying one, doing it up and living in it for several months of the year. We still might, but the logistics of buying and then managing the paperwork, repair and other building work from afar hurt our heads too much. I'm too busy with work to make it happen, but my goodness it is not entirely off the table.

I've just had a look around the website - Case a 1 Euro - the Italian page has a bigger list under the menu than the one in English.
I does make you wonder about the possibilities.