After its first year of ownership, I booked my BMW R1200 GSA into Fersan BMW in Alicante for its annual service and some new tyres.  This didn’t go entirely to plan as no tyres were available, I think they forgot to order them, however they did find my bike had missed 2 recalls so a second appointment was necessary.

A week later arriving at the dealership I had about 2hrs to wait so wandered into the showroom to have a nose about before heading to a café for breakfast.  After looking at the R Nine T Urban GS 40th anniversary edition, rather nice I might add, I spotted a new GSA with plates on and remembered they had a demonstrator.

On my birthday my wife suggested I took the bike away for a couple of days. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, the following morning I set off, for a weekend in the Valencian mountains. Unfortunately, the then-current Covid restrictions meant I couldn't leave the Communidad de Valenciana and cafe, bars etc closed early causing a few issues, more of that later.

After the initial euphoria of the purchase, I now had to get my new-to-me BMW R1200 GSA from J & S Accessories in Doncaster back to my home in Spain.  This would in normal circumstances be achievable in several ways, however, the Covid-19 pandemic, with associated lockdowns & quarantine was an issue.  My first thoughts were to transport the bike back using a delivery service, but where was the fun in that.  I opted to fly over and ride back, how bad could it be?

Ordering new bike gear over the internet can be fraught with problems, have you picked the right size, is the colour shown accurate, will it be comfortable?  All of these issues and more were floating around my head as I looked at various websites to choose my next pair of biking jeans. I needn't have worried though, as one call to Julie from Hood Jeans, put my mind at ease.

At the start of 2020, I had all sorts of ideas for bike trips and possible tours but we all know how that went.  Sitting at home in Spain with little to do apart from thinking about what could have been, got the better of me at times and I, along with many others, just wanted to get out and ride.  As lockdown started to ease and we were allowed to get back to some sense of normality work took over from thoughts of bike riding and everything was put on the back burned for possibly the whole year.

However due to an unfortunate family issue, I had to return to the UK for a short trip, luckily the quarantine situation in the UK was removed for EU citizens and plans could be made.