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Spanish holiday

The great Guzzi run

November 2025 – Phillip White

You’re on a 50-year-old Moto Guzzi and happen to have landed on the wrong side of not one but two mountain ranges. It’s getting late and there is a roadside warning depicting bears. Young Phillip White unwraps the joys of motorcycle touring

Spain’s Colombres Rally has a mysterious hold on classic enthusiasts. Initially, I thought it would be a one-hit-wonder but this was my third and I’m already pondering a fourth.

My friend George from Melbourne had accompanied me on the 2022 trip and was keen to relive the experience. Our good friend Neil in France, who had supplied bikes previously, had sadly passed earlier in the year. That meant we had to buy and insure motorcycles ourselves – no easy task as the UK is no longer part of the EU.

George purchased a bike in Somerset. I needed to buy two, one for me and another Aussie mate, Adam. I chose early Moto Guzzis because I think they look cool. They were bought from a shop in Northern England.

My bike (at right, above) is a 1974 American police model which has had the same owner for 35 years. They had a second bike in stock, also a 1974 model but very ratty with an unknown history. The vendor said that the machine came from Switzerland near the Italian border, that the ignition switch was so worn that the key had to be tied in. It has a bar on the tool boxes that have the Italian flag colours so I suspect it started life with the Italian Carabinieri. I asked the vendor if he thought it would make it to Spain? He said he had ridden in up and down the alley in back of his shop and the gears seemed to work okay. Good enough. Well, Three old bikes, three old geezers all with a combined age of around three hundred and fifty years. What could possibly go wrong across England to France to Spain…

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Ed's note: Phillip’s bike is coming up for auction – see it here.

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I have done this trip twice before, but always from Southern France, with generally pleasant scenery and quiet roads. Not this time. Imagine tooling down a very busy English freeway in the pissing rain on an unknown old clunker with a large truck on each knee and one would get the impression that this part of the journey was difficult verging on horrendous – and you would be right.

First night across the channel was in the French City of Bayonne. We had rooms over a bar in the old town. I am sure the building predated the black death. It had five rooms for rent, one on each floor of this tottering ruin. The staircase was vertiginous and could have been rented out as a setting for a horror movie all by itself. It was a struggle to get luggage up the stairs but getting the stuff down was dead easy – put the boot in and let gravity be your friend.

One day we overnighted at a wee seaside town, the name of which has passed into history. Our overnight was a 1960s hotel straight out of an old James Bond movie. I tried to take a shower there but could not navigate the Baroque complexities of French plumbing. I could not get the shower to work but the bath faucet was okay. I have not had a bath for decades but I thought I would give it a go. The tub was both deep and narrow and wonderfully relaxing until it was time to get out. I reached for the hand rail only to discover there wasn’t one, just acres of tiny little tiles. This was a problem as I now require a hand hold to get vertical. I tried everything to get out of that damned tub. I saw a David Attenborough show once that featured a distressed Beluga whale wallowing about, a creature I now empathise with. Eventually I hooked my legs over the edge of the tub and levered myself out in somewhat undignified fashion. The point being that life does not necessarily get easier as one gets older!

We had various forms of rain accompany us virtually the whole way, everything got damp. However spirits lifted when we finally arrived in the town of Colombres where we had an overnight stop prior to heading off to the first of two rallies. It was North of Spain Rally which is based in a Parador, a renovated monastery of a modest 365 rooms, one for each day of the year. The scenery around this area is spectacular. The colours of the vegetation are vivid beyond belief. 

Day two looked promising so I took a punt on riding minus rain gear. Of course this is mountain country and I went from young and care free riding in bright sunshine to soaked to the skin. So back to the Parador to dry out. And meet some of the riders.

Motorcycle enthusiasts are a diverse bunch. So far I have met a bee keeper who lives on a farm so remote that they have to generate their own electricity. I also struck up a conversation with a chap riding a Sunbeam S7 Deluxe, exactly the same mashed pea colour as my own back in Oz. He is a merchant banker and inherited this machine from his dad, but with some intervening drama. His dad was forced to sell this bike back in the sixties. My new acquaintance tracked it down and gifted it back to his dad, who rode it into his eighties.

Another interesting fellow is Catalonian. He noticed me rubbing my arthritic knee and gave me a pint of his home brewed massage oil. It is marijuana based and I am wondering if that would be legal to take back to Oz? I hope so, it’s still in the panniers of the Guzzi!

At last the first day of guaranteed good weather. I was determined to make it to the start on time and I very nearly did. The main rider group had gone but the back-up vehicles were still there. It was warm in the hotel but freezing outside. I realised I did not have my pullover. As mentioned there are 352 rooms in this building, my room being 351. By the time I got back down, the courtyard was deserted. Fortunately Club Moto Indianos thoughtfully sticks cardboard arrows at strategic locations to help the geographically challenged, like Moi. So I rolled out of the entrance to see not one but two arrows pointing 180 degrees apart. I chose to go left up and through spectacular mountain country which unfortunately is also spectacularly cold. I had only thin summer gloves on and when I couldn’t feel my extremities any longer the idea of a hot bath was appealing.

Monday was the official start day for Rally number two: XIII Rally de Colombres, where the bikes gather in the square of the town the event is named after. It’s pretty tightly organised and all entrants have to display a crécete on their machines to gain entry to the starting point.

The riders were dispatched in groups and it was a pleasant and undemanding canter from coffee to coffee. Lunch was held in the remote village of Sardella. The twist to this one is that the entry road runs through a cave.

Now the idea of a cave is quite charming. It conjures visions of lit up interesting rock formations, reflective cats eyes on the road and safe guard rails. Well, that ain’t this cave. The road twists and turns and it is absolutely pitch-black inside. The Stygian darkness is unrelieved by so much as a shiny bottle cap in the road. Without road markings the rocks seem to just soak up headlight beams.

Adam was riding the mighty Rat Bike. He is a minimalist, which is just as well his machine minimal braking, minimal muffling, and no lights whatsoever! He had set up his phone to take a video and this is what saved the day. The phone was able to present a faint and ghostly image of the road where the human eye could not, so Adam was able to ride by looking at his phone!


The next day it was supposed to rain; however, the morning weather was beautiful and Adam announced he was going on a serious pastry hunt somewhere up in the hills less than an hour away. I did not bother to set my GPS as he was leading.  After satisfying our morning sweet tooth, Adam thought he would like to ride a little further so we parted company.

On my own, I punched in the hotel destination of La Franca and off I went. It did seem to be a lot longer return ride but Adam had used his phone so I presumed it had a different route map. At one point I actually encountered the rally coming towards me – that should have triggered a warning but I have a child like faith in GPS and, as I was born with no sense of direction, I kept plugging on.

The GPS showed distance to destination but that seemed to fluctuate up and down but always further away. A couple of times I stopped, put my glasses on and reprogrammed the route. By this time my 50-minute return journey had stretched to three hours-plus and at this point I ran out of petrol. The correct position of the fuel return taps on old Guzzis is a closely guarded secret known only to true cognoscenti.

I had to go and retrieve the GPS from the bushes where I had hurled it. Then I found a gas station and tried to figure out the problem. Bingo! I had chosen the pre-programmed route and the zero artificial intelligence GPS unit was trying to take me back to the last starting point – hundreds of kilometres away at the old monastery! Now I could have looked at the instruction booklet but one of my saddle bags leaked in the interminable rain on the way down. When I opened it all my tools were a couple of inches under water, obscured by what appeared to be gracefully waving seaweed but was actually the disintegrated remains of my GPS manual

Having figured out my mistake I finally re-programmed the unit and figured I would soon be on a nice well-lit motorway, not realising where I really was in relation to the hotel bar. Los Montanas de Cantabria have two major ranges. I was on the wrong side of these mountains and would have to cross both ranges on interminable slimy little roads, in the dark – all by myself.

Cheerfully I set off and soon the road began to climb. This area is all national park. Do you know who visits such places that late in the day? The answer is absolutely nobody. The first range climbed above the tree line and I started to notice warning signs to motorists and hikers. All in Spanish but the translations are ‘Beware of Cattle’; ‘Beware of Horses’; ‘Beware of Deer’ and my personal favorite ‘Peligroso Osos’: ‘Danger Bears’. Great. I’m going to run over some stupid bear cub and have to deal with its irate mum.

Now I would like to introduce faeces. I can’t be bothered typing that again so from here on it will be referred to as plain old shit of which there was a veritable smorgasbord on these roads. This is an important subject if one is on two wheels. I guess favourite was horse shit: easily spotted mounds and relatively solid. My least favourite was cattle. These creatures seem to have permanent gastric problems and I had a few slides on the product.

The worst hazard of all was vegetable-based. There is a common tree on the lower slopes which produces a fruit nobody wants and it is left to rot in vast quantities. Mashed by traffic and mixed with rainwater it is an exceptional lubricant. These trees seem to be particularly fond of growing on hairpin bends and I had to tippy toe through hundreds of yards of the damn things.

One thing I had in my favour was that the Cantabrian twilight seems to last a very long time. I only hit complete darkness in the last hour. By now I was in the high country and the road was often blocked by meandering cows in the mist. These animals have long razor-sharp horns but fortunately seemed unfazed by the chugging Guzzi.

Eventually the road headed down and opened up a little so up went the speed a tad. I kept looking for a cozy Freeway but the road once again started to climb up into the clouds. That’s when I realised there were two ranges. The second was perhaps a little easier except at this point the light was totally gone and it started to piss pick handles.

All good things must come to an end and, eventually, I recognised where I was. Hotel Miramar, the destination, is a half a kilometre off the highway and has this murderously steep and curving access road. I was so exhausted that I jammed on the brake, put my feet out and just waddled around the corner. I arrived at 8.30pm – having been treated to an extra four-and-a-half hours of unnecessary and solid ‘fun’. Why would one want any other hobby? It just feels so good when you stop!

Despite the challenges, it was great riding and spectacular scenery. The Guzzis performed remarkably well – even the scrofulous Rat Bike.

See Moto Club Indianos for (Spain) for a fascinating menu of events

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Phillip’s bike

I needed to buy a bike in the UK for the Colombres tour. Since we were going to ride down through France it needed to be a machine that was absolutely bullet proof but cool as well.

I have owned an early Guzzi twin before. They are known as loop lrame bikes because, unlike the later Tonti-framed machines the motor does not form a stressed member

These early twins were the brainchild of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), in the early sixties the police desperately wanted an alternative to the Harley-Davidson machines they had traditionally used, and the requirement was for a v-twin.

Aware that Moto Guzzi had just such a power unit, they approached the factory to develop a motorcycle to department specs. To this end they seconded an experienced LAPD Senior Sergeant to oversee the development of this very specific use motorcycle.

For the new machine to to be acceptable to American eyes it was important that it not depart too far from the familiar look. To this end they fitted Deitz pursuit lights and indicators as fitted to Harleys, while the seating position and Police Specification handle bars give a riding position straight out of the US Army Cavalry manual! A sports bike this ain’t.

The new model was an instant hit with the police, especially among the younger cops. Here was a 120mph motorcycle that was virtually indestructible, smooth and handled freeways with ease. Other American police forces, including the Californian Highway Patrol, soon followed suit and Moto Guzzi was on a roll.

Braking was up to the standards of the day, in other words crap. In the last year of production the factory fitted a double sided twin leading shoe hub from their sport model. It was in the last six months of production they finally installed a front disc.

So this particular bike is as good as it gets and the same model that Ewan McGregor rode in his The Long Way Home series.

The loop frame bikes were built to a very high spec as, after all, the government was paying. Electrics are straight out of a Fiat Bambino so the wiring is childishly simple. These early motors had a full gear train in the timing chest as opposed to the el cheapo chain fitted to the later T3s. Electronic ignition is a good idea and this bike is so fitted.

It is superbly comfortable, especially since I removed the incorrect civilian dual seat fitted and replaced it with an horrendously expensive gel replica of the police solo saddle from Cycle Garden in the US who are the go to guys for loop frame Guzzis.

I did 5000 km on my European adventureand  these Guzzis are not nick named Mándelo de Lario Tractors for nothing! It proved to be a very tough machine.

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Ed's note: Phillip’s bike is coming up for auction – see it here.

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