Featured Just Zipping Off To The European Multistrada Meeting 2026

Ice Cold in Ubeda

Slightly stressful couple of days leading to departure. The tyre fitter mullered the rear tyre valve. No replacement available.




The box supporting the bike collapsed depositing the front end on the floor. Impossible to lift to refit the front wheel.



The wife sat on my varifocal glasses which I need for the tour. 10 days to get replacement. No photo available.


Other than that it’s all gone swimmingly.

Basically I lost 2 days prepping for departure, so instead of being a nice casual early departure on Thursday it got delayed until 10.15 which in turn meant we were still on the bikes in 38 degrees of afternoon heat.

Then the sat nav’s decided to get PMT and refuse to cooperate. We’re cursed.

I knew it, I just bloody knew it. The temporary valve stem is so short it’s a huge risk trying to get air into the rear tyre. In fact it let a few psi out when I tried to top up. So that’s it. That’s the pressure that’s in there and that’s the way it’s going to stay. The tyre fitter said it was 2.5 bar but the miraculously still working TPMS says it’s 2.1 bar. I don’t know which is right, it feels ok.

I’m n o t messing with it. Besides it goes up to 2.2 bar with heat.

The front is 2.5 bar apparently. No counter steer, feels like it could run better at a lower pressure. I might mess with that instead. After all I can let air in or out as I pease. How novel.

Off we went from the filling station down by the coast and the battery on my phone was 50% ish. I couldn’t see the red display on the Hella/din to USB plug in the sunshine. Mainly because it wasn’t working and bang on when I needed the shatnav north of Alhama de Granada the phone battery went down. I bloody knew it.

Perdro the Cruel had decided to come with us for the first day so he fired up his phone sat nav and took over the lead. It was 38 degrees, we were doing twisties so not moving very fast then we got diverted because of road works. At this point the 2nd sat nav/ phone got PMT, threw a hissy fit, refused to cooperate, overheated and switched off. We cursed.

No, we didn’t have a map, no we don’t do them anymore but we could curse some more.

I tried my DIN plug in the rear socket, dead! Then Pedro the Cruel remembered he had a battery pack. Happy days, I plugged it into my phone and we were back in business.

In the meantime his phone cooled a little and came back on. So off he went. We fired up our bikes, went around the bend and he’d gone! There was a Y junction and my sat nav said left, so we went left. After a mile or so we figured he couldn’t have gone that way so we did a U-ey. Off I went and there was no laughing boy in the mirrors. I stopped, I waited. Then did another U-ey and went back. There he was, he’d stalled it, couldn’t hold it and down it went. Oh ffs.

The only time he’s ever dropped a bike and both times on a tour with me. It was a struggle to pick it up but at least it had two wheels on it and a handlebar for leverage. Nothing broken and nothing a sticker couldn’t cover. We were sweating buckets.

Pedro messaged us and we caught up on the main road. We stopped and had a zero alcohol cold beer. However in no more than half an hour we had to stop again and buy bottles of cold water. I was amazed we needed fluids so quickly after the previous stop.

As we headed into Úbeda we were hanging in rags but we got there. More water followed by a shower, kwick kip and out for tapas and ice cold proper beers. Fantastic.

Have you ever seen the old war film Ice Cold in Alex? John Mills and Anthony Quayle. Well it was like that.