Motorcycle Tour On Our BMW R1250 GSA - The Road To Ronda And City Guide

Sadly it's time to leave Gibraltar and the Rock Hotel. We've got our bags brought down ready to go on the bike and we're just going to load that up now. We've had a great time here in Gibraltar and it's certainly a place that we'll come back to, isn't that right? Absolutely, next time we're down in this region and we're heading over to Morocco we'll definitely be coming. Spending a few days with the apes and at the Rock Hotel it's been great. Well we're going to head on now to Ronda and also follow the coast of Spain up north. So we'll take you for one last ride around the Rock. Welcome to Ronda. We just arrived in this beautiful city in southern Spain. We left Gibraltar about an hour and a half to two hours ago and we had an awesome ride. It was a great ride. The sun was just going down so it was perfect conditions. It was the A369 if you need to check that one out that was a great route to go. It was winding and through all of these white building villages that were like perfectly kept. It was a beautiful ride through. Anyway we're going to have a quick look around the city tonight and we're going up early tomorrow to see it in a greater detail. Yeah we picked a hotel as soon as we arrived spontaneously as we always do and we have a struck luck with this one as it's such an incredible room so I'm going to show you that now. Yeah we've got a good feeling about Ronda. It's going to be a special place. As ever we arrived in the city on the bike and I quickly jumped on my phone onto hotels.com and found basically the first hotel that I could and it turns out we have got another absolute gem but you're probably thinking this doesn't look like a gem it's just another hotel room. Well we've got a bathroom standard very nice and then kind of an old-fashioned bedroom standard bed not so much furniture big tv you know just your standard hostel hotel stuff but wait for it. Are you ready? This is our balcony look at that view it is incredible here we're a little bit shocked about how beautiful that is and the sun is just setting and the whole reason you come really to Ronda is to see this and we've got it in the view from our balcony so I think we're going to get a couple drinks a few snacks and sit out on this balcony and enjoy that view for a while. It's about 9 30 so I think M has found us a little restaurant we're going to eat at it's quite convenient it's just around the corner from where we're staying. There's lots of little back alleys here and plenty of restaurants to choose from. I think the main dishes here are pasta and pizza based but they all seem to have wood-fired pizza ovens inside the restaurant so that's good. Oh here she is now she's found a place on the high street. Food has arrived we have a fresh baked pizza they got a pizza oven just there so I'm expecting this to be great. We have a penne pasta as well as a big old salad which looks super scrummy with cabbage and carrot so we're going to tuck into this now and then have one last walk through Ronda but we want to get up quite early in the morning to really explore the city. Good morning from Ronda we've woken up bright and early to a beautiful blue sky day here in Ronda. There is the bridge there looking all magnificent under the sunlight and today we're going to be taking a little walking tour of the city of Ronda. It's not such a big place and there's three or four things that we have to see here and then later on this afternoon we're going to be taking a lovely ride through the countryside down to the coast towards Malaga. First up is obviously coffee I'm in the square right by the very famous bridge. It's a place called Black Coffee that serves 100% organic coffee and it also offers plant milk. So we're going to get two of these to go and then head and see the bullring. Just behind me here's the Puento Nuvo which means new bridge. It's the newest and largest of the three bridges here in Ronda. It sits over 120 meter chasm and was completed in 1793 taking 34 years to build and it's a very impressive structure sitting over this wonderful gorge here. It's beautiful it's a great spot and I don't know if you can see but there's a tiny door inside the bridge as well which is I think you mentioned before a lookout right? I read somewhere there was a little guard house or lookout. It looks more like a place where a princess would be trapped in my opinion. It would make a great apartment there wouldn't it? That would be a prime spot. But it's a great view all the way into the gorge as well as you can also see into the Spanish countryside on this side which would be great for a little hike or a little walk but we're going to walk through the city now right? Yeah definitely in fact there's a little bridge over there this is one of the smaller ones should we go that direction? Yeah sounds good. So we're here inside the bull ring here in Ronda even though we personally don't agree with this but it was important to come here to understand the history and the culture of Ronda as this is the first bull ring ever built for the sole purpose of bull fighting in the entire world. This is considered one of the grandest rings in Spain with 136 pillars making up 68 arches. It was completed in 1785 and just behind me there is the It's very unique standing in the middle of an arena like this and you get a feeling of the emotions that must be going through both the fighter and the bull. Yeah it's eight euros entry which includes the museum and all of the grounds so it's nice to spend a little bit of time walking around here. Yeah there has been other more wholesome uses of the arena. Fun fact Madonna once filmed take a bow in her music video. Yeah apparently she did. Entrance to the ring also includes the equestrian museum which houses old saddles and bridles from all of the coach horses from the past. Also a lot of uniforms of the guys that would ride those coaches as well. Quite an interesting museum lots of fine detail and great craftsmanship on display here. Something I found really interesting about this museum here is seeing all of the incredible costumes that date back to the 1889 and 1887. The intricacy and the detail on some of these outfits are stunning. Really beautiful to look at. We are just walking on the cobbled streets outside the church here in Ronda. Yeah interestingly the church was a former mosque converted into a church and if you want to go inside and go up the tower it's four euros fifty. So we're going to now walk through the little side streets behind the church here so come along. Ronda is known as being one of the most romantic places in the world. In fact they have a festival dedicated to romance here and hundreds of couples have fallen in love including my favourite writer Ernest Hemingway who fell in love here in the 50s during the bullfighting season. Behind me is a tiled painting or a picture of the city of Ronda and also aptly named above it is Verandos Romantikos. So maybe come here come to Ronda and you might fall in love too. So we're on the other side of the gorge that we were this morning. You can see the viewpoint just in the distance where we were at but from this side you can really see deep into the gorge and to the second bridge. We've really enjoyed our time in Ronda. We're just heading back to the bike now. Yeah for me Ronda has been a highlight of our time here in Spain. It's definitely got a romance in the air especially in the evenings and early mornings before the coaches arrive. When it was lit up last night it was a really special place. Yeah it was just the sun was setting and you had that that magic light. Yeah it was. I would highly recommend anybody to spend, if you can do a day trip from Malaga it's only an hour and a half or if you're doing a road trip make sure you put this in the GPS and come to Ronda. Yeah it's really good to stay a night because then at least you get to enjoy the place when it's a little bit quieter in the evenings and you can get up early in the morning to just have a little stroll around yourself. I can really see why not only people fall in love here in Ronda but people fall in love with Ronda. But for us now we're heading to Malaga we're going to go north up the coast. It's going to be a good ride there's some excellent roads up there. Yeah I'm really looking forward to seeing a bit more of this hilly southern Spanish roads. So join us in the next episode and watch us as we journey towards Malaga.