 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
We were, so off we sped to our annual winter retreat in Fuertaventura, the nearest Canary Island to the African continent.
Like most motorcyclists on a beach holiday with their family my mind quickly wandered to imagining myself exploring the island on a bike, so it was with this in mind that I booked myself up on an organised off road tour with Backtrax, who offer a comprehensive range of off-road riding, from experienced enduro proffesionals to the complete off road begginer (me)I chose the shipwreck tour, a 4 hour trek, from the eastern coast, across the interior and ending on beach on the west coast the is dominated by the wreck of the cruise ship American Star.
The first thing that struck me about Backtrax was how proffesional it all looked, with fleet of superbly prepared Husqvarna TE250's lined up outside and a good range of riding equipment that included all the body armour and clothing, helmets you will ever need, all clean and in good condition.
Their was 5 riders of limited off road experience in my tour, which meant 2 guides were needed to make sure we were all riding safely and could see our guides hand signals through all the dust.
Then after a short road section to get used to the bikes, it was off into the interior of the dusty sun soaked isle, and it did not take long for me to realise that standing up on the footrests riding a bike over this bumpy terrain was harder than it looks!
I was second rider behind my guide, but he soon decided that as I was the slowest rider (well I was looking at the views!) I should go first behind him. As it happened this was great for me as after this I just followed his lines and speed as much as I could, figuring if I did the same as him and he didn't fall off, I'd be just fine, and as it happens this worked just fine and by the end of the tour we were bowling along at quite a reasonable rate of knots.
As a holiday maker on this island you might think the whole place is all the same- how wrong you could be. Our tour took us along a barren, stony bumpy track, into hilly areas, over an old lava flow, along dried up river beds, through a desert area where the sand is bright red, where Camels were wandering about, past a spectacular volcano where the whole top of the mountain had been blown off down to the beach where the shipwreck was, then back the same way, finishing with a quick ride along the side of a beach.
Well worth the money, which worked out at £101 at the exchange rate of the day.
Much reccomended, contact Dave or Jo at...
http://www.backtrax1.com/Links.html
Me, looking like a true Paris Dakar veteran-not!
Also, while I was enjoying riding the trails of the Island, I treated the rest of the family to a "Coolrunnings" tour, which is a tour of the Island on a VW trike, apparently it was "Awsome", highly reccomended and in our opinion, excellent value for money....
http://www.coolrunningstours.com/
