Inward Route and Hotels - Plan A

On the way out I have planned the no toll route that basically is get to Rouen or nearby on the free sections of the motorways and then head across to join the N10 (or whatever it is numbered in each départmente) and head south or south-west. 

What about coming back?  Do I want to tread the same path? Or seek out a new one. First step fire up MyRouteApp and select Google Maps.

I am currently booked into the El Cid Hotel in Morella. It's about 43 miles from the circuit at Motorland Aragón. 

What if I change the El Cid booking and pack my meagre belongings into my panniers on the Sunday morning and head to the track and then use that 43 miles to head off to a new hotel on the way home?  

Something to ponder?

For now I am assuming I will be solo on this trip. If my brother Neill decides to join me then it will halve the cost of the hotels, and I'll have to change the sleeping arrangements at each hotel!!

So what does MyRouteApp come up with. Well. It depends on the map settings.  If I leave the default mapping as OpenStreetMap the route from Morella is via the motorways passing Barcelona, Lyon and Paris back to the Shuttle at Calais. Around 980 miles.

Change that to Here or TomTom mapping and it reverts to the motorway version of the ride down and around 960 miles.

Neill is adverse to paying motorway tolls and although I am also a bit averse it depends on whether I want to go faster and get somewhere more quickly. Coming home I tend to want to click off the miles.

To vary the suggested route I need to locate a first night overnight stop and get the waypoint in and then see what it does. Is there another no tolls route available? We shall see.

First night on the way back I looked along the N20 (and it name variants) as it is a north/south route. I found another Campanile hotel in Cahors that fits the bill. This means leaving the El Cid and heading up past Alcañiz (!) and to Lleida to the border.  The off putting thing about this is the Tunel de Bielsa! This may force a major re-think of the route as it looks a bit nasty from the write-up on that website.

Pause for thought!

Avoiding Bielsa makes it hard work getting to Cahors and so an alternative hotel needs to be booked. Also the mileage for the day would be too high given the conditions riding into the Pyrenees either side of that tunnel on very minor roads. 

I am looking at Montauban as the first overnight stop.  El Cid Hotel to Andorra is 200 miles.

In the end it may be better to scrap all idea of evading the toll roads until we get into France and see what that does to the overall mileage and possible cost implications.

The Pyrenees form a pretty decent barrier to north/south travel. So whatever route is chosen getting across will give limited options.