Brake day

Checked the bikes over in the morning and found that the rear caliper on my bike had blown the piston seal, what about that then! From this point on i knew that whatever trail we went on would be much more difficult, but it wasn't enough to end the trip mi amigo, just makes it a bit more interesting. Obviously the only way to fix it would have been to find a Yamaha dealer and fit a new seal. Top tip of the day - be very careful when buying aftermarket piston seals from ebay.

Had breakfast and headed off towards the next parts of the route, but took a wrong turn and spent an hour getting back on track, must learn to use the GPS better! Hit the first trail and within a few KM we experienced our first real problem. A newly built bridge proved impossible to pass. We quickly backtracked and found another way forward. Carly went off in front leaving me in a cloud of dust, while i limped along on the brakeless XT, always wary, can be buggers them there trails.

The trail, which had been input onto the GPS, was easy to follow most of the time. A bit of common sense, which is a good job because thats all i've got anyway, saw us through to the next bits. Although some of the trails were easy, i found myself struggling with the tricky braking malarky, the front was constantly on the brink of locking up.

Tempers were rather frayed on one section. Too much sun, too many trails, too much hard work being undertaken by a novice rider, too much expectation from an experienced nobber. All of the above saw Carly spitting her dummy out big style. Whilst turning the bike round she threw the old CD down onto a grassy bit. I responded by calling her a ******* ********. We came off the trail and i thought of the options we had from now on. Option 1, get on with it and stop crying, option 2, i could escort her to Santander so she could get the next ferry home. Option 1 was preffered so we carried on regardless. It was while Carly was fetching her dummy from the middle of the field that i noticed a bolt missing from the old CD's crash bars. It had been on its side that many times it must have just undone itself and rolled away. This was soon rectified when we found a garage who kindly refitted another bolt into place free of charge.

Time was passing on and we were finding it diffiult to find any accommodation, there were no camp sites here with log cabins, no hotels either mate. We back tracked quite a few Km to a hotel we passed earlier on in the day. It turned out to be quite expensive, but i checked the bikes over while Carly got the camping stove out and cooked a couple of ration packs in the bathroom of the hotel. While cooking, we got a text from Ian. He was now in Aviedo and suggested we meet up the next day or so.