Some journeys begin when you start the motorcycle. Others begin many years before.

Loren’s journey began, as he told me himself, 48 years before he arrived in Valencia.

For all those years, he had dreamed of taking a great motorcycle trip. When he finally decided to make it happen, he contacted me from the United States to turn that idea into a real journey through Spain and Portugal.

Loren wanted to travel alone, at his own pace, without the commitments that come with being part of a group. So I started designing his experience around the three things I believe should always come together on a Toro Biker journey: great roads, culture and gastronomy.

It wasn't simply about connecting cities on a map or covering miles for the sake of it. Every decision I made while creating his experience had to have a reason behind it.

I picked him up at the airport and took him to his hotel after collecting the motorcycle and riding gear I had prepared for him (I had even bought him a helmet in his size because I didn't have one quite that big at the agency). As it happened, the very next day, Saturday, I had organised a motorcycle experience as a birthday present for one of my friends. When I asked Loren whether he'd prefer to ride with just me or join all my friends, he didn't think twice. He was joining the gang!

I have to admit, having that adventurous spirit at 70 is something I truly admire.

And as if that weren't enough, Manuel, whose experience I've already shared on the website (you can read it here), had returned to Valencia for work. When I asked if he'd like to join us, his answer was another enthusiastic yes.

So there we were on Saturday morning at the Toro Biker agency, handing out riding gear and getting everything organised, with Loren and Manu looking around wide-eyed, probably wondering what on earth they'd got themselves into.

We rode through Gátova, dodging what seemed like thousands of cyclists, and arrived in Alcublas, where we stopped for a traditional mid-morning meal before taking a guided tour of the restored windmills.

Candela, from the Alcublas Tourist Office, with her endless patience and generosity, opened the windmills for us so we could explore them from the inside. She explained their origins, their later decline and their restoration, showing us all the little details and curiosities that made the visit genuinely special.

I can assure you that seeing with your own eyes how 17th-century “technology” could solve the practical challenges of grinding grain using wind power is truly astonishing, both for its ingenuity and for its simplicity and efficiency.

Did you know that the roof of a windmill can rotate to turn the sails towards the prevailing wind? No? Well, now you've got the perfect excuse to visit Alcublas and let Candela explain it all to you!

After visiting the windmills, we headed towards Chulilla, where Restaurante La Rueda was waiting for us. It's one of those restaurants I'll always recommend 100%, mainly for two reasons. First, the wonderful service and the ever-present smile with which Carla C. welcomes and looks after you. I know very few people who enjoy their work as much as she does, and that enthusiasm is contagious! And second, the food, which in Eduardo S.'s hands becomes a real pleasure for the palate.

Don't expect an enormous fancy plate with a ridiculously tiny portion. That's not what La Rueda is about. It's about creating wonderful, simple dishes using local ingredients. Traditional mountain cooking, prepared with love, just as our mothers have always done it. It's like eating at home, except someone serves you and the portions are more than generous. I've never once left that restaurant hungry.

After lunch, my friends went for a walk through the Turia Gorges, another spectacular experience, but Loren and I headed back so he'd have enough time to prepare his luggage for the journey starting the next day and get some rest. Manuel decided to stay with the others. See how quickly you can feel “at home” when you come to Toro Biker? I think he made the right decision because they had an absolute blast, including a fair amount of joking at my expense, but that's another story.

From Valencia to Portugal, heading north

The first part of the route took Loren from Valencia towards Manzanares and Mérida before crossing into Portugal through the Algarve. And here there was an important decision to make: Portugal's Estrada Nacional 2 can be ridden in either direction, but Loren had already told me he wasn't particularly comfortable riding in hot weather. It was September and temperatures were still high, so I specifically designed the N2 route from south to north: starting in Faro and progressing towards Chaves, looking for cooler temperatures with each passing day.

In Faro, he found the famous Km 738 marker. From there, the N2 became the central thread of the Portuguese part of his experience: Évora, Lisbon, Nazaré, Coimbra and finally Chaves, where Km 0 was waiting.

Lisbon also included a full day without the motorcycle. That wasn't a wasted day, quite the opposite. After several days on the road, stopping, walking around the city, discovering its gastronomy and resting were all part of the journey's design.

And as the trip progressed, those little moments began to appear, the ones you end up remembering afterwards.

Loren managed to get through a Portuguese toll booth without causing any chaos, after a rather complicated first attempt to exit a motorway he'd entered by mistake, and reported it to me as a genuine personal victory. In Nazaré, he enjoyed a gelato overlooking the Atlantic, while I tried to convince him to have traditional Portuguese grilled sardines for dinner. No chance. He preferred to stay in his swimming trunks, do some laundry and enjoy the hotel. Your trip, your rules.

Even sleeping can be part of the experience

The choice of hotels followed exactly the same philosophy as the route. I wasn't simply looking for a bed at the end of each day.

Whenever possible, I chose places that could add another memory to the journey.

In Manzanares, for example, Loren stayed at Castillo de Pilas Bonas. As soon as he arrived, he messaged me: “This place is awesome!! Good catch!”. After a hot day's riding, the swimming pool took care of the rest.

In Faro, he stayed at Sunlight House, and in Nazaré at Miramar Hotel & Spa, another hotel he absolutely loved. Each was different and chosen for a reason: location, character, comfort or simply because it matched what I wanted him to experience when he got off the motorcycle.

An experience doesn't end when you park the bike in the afternoon. It continues until you start it again the following morning.

Alone on the motorcycle, but never alone on the journey

As Loren made his way north, an unexpected character also appeared in this story: Google Maps. His relationship with technology wasn't exactly perfect, and his phrase “Technology is kicking my ass” became something of a running joke between us. A few wrong turns, a waypoint Google insisted on sending him back to, and the occasional “Preview” screen that refused to disappear tested both his patience and our on-the-road support service.

That's when our VIP You Never Ride Alone (YNRA) service stopped being something I'd explained to him before the journey and became something very real.

We spoke every morning. I'd tell him the most important things to look out for that day and, whenever a problem came up, all it took was a WhatsApp message. I taught him how to share his location, we'd check where he was and, if necessary, I'd rebuild the route from that exact point to get him back on track. Loren was still travelling alone, deciding when to stop, what to visit and how long to stay anywhere. He simply knew I was there if he needed me.

After reaching Km 0 in Chaves, the route returned to Spain through Gredos, Cuenca and Morella.

And it was precisely in Cuenca that something happened which no one could ever plan from an office.

Loren arrived right in the middle of the San Mateo festivities and found the old town packed with local festival groups and the traditional rope-guided young bulls running through its streets.

He sent me a video showing a crowd of people running through the entrance to Cuenca's Cathedral Square ahead of a bull controlled by ropes, and his explanation was pretty clear: “They're all crazy!”. That wasn't on any itinerary. And perhaps that's exactly why it became one of the memories of his trip.

The final stretch took him through Morella and back to Valencia. After so many days of following my instructions through a screen, we spent the last riding day together again, exploring Benagéber, the rice fields of the Albufera and El Palmar. This time Loren didn't need to open a single route. All he had to do was follow me.

The motorcycle journey ended. The story didn't.

Loren returned the motorcycle, but he still had more days to spend in Spain and continued travelling by car. In theory, my work was finished. In practice, we kept talking almost every day. He'd ask me where to go, what to visit or where it was worth staying, and I'd keep sending him recommendations, just as I'd done throughout the motorcycle journey. It was no longer about guiding a client, but about advising a friend on what to see and do during different moments of his road trip.

One of those recommendations was Hotel Rural Los Caracoles, in Frigiliana. Walking into its rooms feels like stepping into the Hobbits' Shire from The Lord of the Rings. It's another recommendation I always make, and one that never disappoints.

He loved it so much that he decided to stay an extra night and sent me a message that made me smile: “This is one place that would be great on a moto!”. Yes, Loren. I know. That's why I sent you there.

For me, there's something important in all of this. You can design a route, book hotels and prepare every day of a journey, but you know an experience has left something more behind when it's already over and the person on the other end keeps messaging you simply because they want to share what they're experiencing.

And to put the finishing touch on this story, no, not the ending, the perfect finishing touch, when Loren returned to Valencia after another two weeks travelling by car, we arranged to have dinner together so he could tell me everything he'd experienced and we could say our proper “until next time”. Naturally, that meant a good ribeye steak and a magnificent charcoal-grilled fillet steak at 7 de Julio, another restaurant I return to whenever I can.

And as if that weren't enough, Zoe and Nicola joined us for that “until next time” dinner. Two more riders who were enjoying their Toro Biker experiences at the time: Zoe on a self-guided experience and Nicola on a combination of guided and self-guided riding. But those are two other stories I'll tell when the time comes.

In the end, whenever more than one rider or group of riders happens to be here at the same time, we somehow all end up having dinner together at least once, often more. But I won't say anything else for now. Zoe's story and Nicola's story will have their moment.

And what did Loren have to say?

I'd rather let him tell that part himself. Before he'd even returned home, he'd already written about his experience with Toro Biker. I'll give away just one sentence: “I would do another trip in a heartbeat!!!”.

Below this article, you'll find links to both of his full reviews. What you've read above is my version of the story. There, you can read his.

Loren waited 48 years to make this journey a reality. For the next one, I hope we won't have to wait quite so long. Whenever you're ready, let's keep dreaming together.

This is what Loren wrote before he even got home

Read Loren's review on Trustpilot ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Read Loren's review on Google ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐