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Report of the first new ATiC meeting in Tarifa, Andalucia, Spain

After Andreas opened his homepage for ATiC meetings we soon decided in a poll that a meeting is obviously needed first.Ralph brought in the idea of a meeting in sunny Britain (= Gibraltar) and named Camping Paloma which he knew from a former trip.

This camping he mentioned to be a good place for an ATiC meeting.

The idea of a meeting in the far south of Spain made me smile and I phoned and mailed with Marco, the english speaking guy at the camping. We found a date for a meeting of around 20 bikers and Marco assured to reservate an area, where we could stay together.

Another ATiC meeting was born.

After publishing it on the homepage we soon got registrations from several ATiCs. Seemed to be a good idea ;-)

So on May, 23th Sandrine, Axel, Oph, Grinsch, Bommel, Tonio, Gitta, and me took a train which brought us from Düsseldorf to Narbonne in southern France.From there on we wanted to go to Tarifa in several days.

On the first day we reached Maria's camping in Castellbó near Andorra. It was like a revival meeting, because some of us spend some days there in 2000 and 2001.Of course Maria served paella in the evening ;-) Ingo and Patrizia reached Castellbó one day earlier and joined our group from there on.

Because of a flood in central Spain we furtheron chose our way near the eastern coast.Avoiding the tourist's centers at the coast we also didn't take the curvy coast roads and our way became not always that interesting for motorbikes.Via Peñiscola, Jumilla, Sierra de Baza, Sierra Nevada, and the autopista at the southern coast we reached Tarifa in four days. From the second day on we splitted the group because 9 bikes are too much for such a long trip.

At Camping Paloma some build up there tents, others booked bungalows. All together we used the center of our area for breakfast or dinner.

With Marco's help we got three grills and celebrated two ATiC BBQs.

Another evening we got the ATiC dinner in the camping's restaurant.

All days were filled with tours, sunbathing, relaxing, eating, drinking, changing tyres, changing break pads, and sightseeing. Some visited places near by (Gibraltar, Tarifa) others went to Cadiz or Jerez (this not for sightseeing but needing a KTM garage or a special gas station ;-))

Four of us even took the ferry to Morocco for a daytrip, looking whats different on the other continent.

On June, 1st the most ATiCs joined the meeting including Lee, who came for an afterwork meeting from Cadiz, and Gianluca via mobile, because he couldn't leave Italy with a broken exhaust... Of course we took the opportunity to take a 'Foto di grupo' (ok, I think there were hundrets of photos taken ;-))

But then it was time to leave Tarifa. We decided to take another route back ;-)

Gitta, Tonio, and me took a day to reach Granada via Ronda, worth for sightseeing.

In Granada we spent an extra day visiting the Alhambra, the Generalife, and the city.

Then we took the very small and very curvy roads of the 'Parque Natural de las Sierras de Cazorla, Segura y las Villas' - a wonderful area around an artificial lake - and the 'Sierra de Cuenca'.

After altogether four days we reached the pyreneen mountains and chose a very curvy small road to reach Maria's camping again. But we had still 250 km to go when Gitta's bike got a flat tire and couldn't be repaired with spray.We had to search for a 'neumatico' to help us. We found him just in the moment when he wanted to go to lunch. After his lunch break at 4:00 pm he helped us quickly and friendly, but till then we had to wait two hours. In Spain the 'siesta' is very important ;-(

Nevertheless we reached Maria's camping that evening joining nearly all other meeting participants and spent two wonderful dinners and a relaxing day there.