Thoughts a few days later

Take less stuff! Or make more effort to use it... Trainers for example. Drawing kit. Kindle.

200 miles/day is quite a bit. Another day off somewhere congenial would have been nice. The problem is deciding where until you get there, at which point the trip all slips by a day, which is tricky.

Print two copies of the ferry ticket ;-) - and store them in separate places. Make sure all flaps and zips are done up at all times.

Check your tyres before you go. And possibly the oil level (in my defence, I did do that, but it's not easy to get the engine hot and then check the level in a level spot. There did appear to be oil in the engine, but next time I'll make sure it's at least half way up the sight.).

Bike-to-Bike comms would have been handy, but could either of us handle the other grunting in our ears, or worse, shouting "WTF are you doing?!?!?!"?

The scenery was amazing, travelling so far and through such different land was a great idea. But you do have to look at it. Maybe stopping more would have been handy - see B2B Comms above. The stop above the valley in Liguria was amazing, sunlit, cool air, silence but for birds and insects, plunging valley etc etc.

Best venue - Weissbriach of course!
Best Non-partisan venue - tricky! Liked the Albergo Birra, Hotellerie St Yves nice, Maso La Vecchio Quercia excellent, but the Dutch home-from-home was good too - all of these for very different reasons! So there isn't really a standout, they all stand out in some way, even the jour du jour BnB with the horse training facility.

The Last Day

French Section Only

Another great sleep, at the Auberge De Cheval Blanc - possibly better than we'd have had at the Prancing Pony! And Madame was just as considerate and helpful as yesterday, it would be nice to return.

All packed up for the last time, it's actually sunny! The roads are easy-going northern France style, which is good enough for the time being. There is a lot of traffic and so on going through Le Mans, but before we get there, we get to ride down the (in)famous Mulsanne Straight, so well-known to Le 24 Heures de Le Mans fans. At least neither of us took off and dived into the trees, like one Mercedes did a while back, at 200mph... The armco is stacked 3 sections high, and there are catch fences in  front of what are presumably critical places, although it seems a bit random - many private houses don't seem to have any, which can't be good.

Still waiting for food...

 Lunch was another restaurant stop, we had the menu but skipped dessert and coffee, owing to the fact that we reckoned we needed to keep moving. The place was absolutely packed, it's easy to see why no restauranteur wants to do anything but the menu for lunch, there's no time or resources to do anything different. Good though - pickled herring and potato salad, with steamed haddock in a cream sauce with cauli/broccoli au gratin for John, and smoked ham and beef bourguignon with spuds for Jim.
It wasn't long after we'd got going again that the wind arrived - huge wind, coming from the west, the bikes were really kicking around and it got pretty scary at times, especially with trucks coming in the opposite direction - they provide a very brief shelter and then BANG! the wind comes back in with the added effect of their tailwind - nasty! Needless to say, it rained... Too much to hope for, no rain I suppose.

We did arrive in plenty of time, which was good - it's always good to be relaxed! The guys parked beside us in a Ford had been bivvying beside a carp fishing lake in Normandy all week, and had seen every possible kind of weather over that time, from shorts/t-shirts to freezing cold, with thunderstorms and rain in between. Made us feel like complete wimps...

First on, all tied down safe

The trip itself was easy enough - we sat around for 6 hours, eating and drinking, talking about things, John drew a picture of the view from the window, read Jim some of a novel from his Kindle... the usual kind of stuff!

We finally docked 15 minutes late, but getting off was pretty easy. People do like to talk to one - the guy beside us in a pimped Mercedes van with family had driven the entire way from the S of France and was driving on to Preston, so much easier as he was happy to point out, than doing it on a bike! Thanks mate.

And it was wet all the way home, not raining hard, but enough, zooming through the night on the A34. Finally arrived about 11pm, waving goodbye to Jim at the end of his road, and pleased to see Jen and have a cup of tea at the end of a pretty epic 2500 miles!

Business as usual?

From the mountainy middle to the flat NW

Wow, that was a great sleep! We both woke up about 8, another quiet spot, up in the attic room in the Chambers d'Hote du Pont.

Cool lake view from the room's roof window

Brekkie at 8.30, so we just about made it. All the civil service exam candidates had eaten at 7.30 and left, so all clear. Francois and Carolina, especially Carolina, just carried on where they/she left off - she does like a natter that lady! Great breakfast, excellent scrambled eggs, just the start for another long day.

Since it's getting near the last night of the trip (boo and hurray, depending on the moment!) here's an insight into the sort of room filling capability J&J have with them... This is just John's stuff, Jim has the same again! We are thinking of starting a high-speed rock band touring support company...

Half the gear...

And sticking it on the bike!

Nice spot

Off we go... Nice weather to start with, cool but sunny. The roads are just the right kind of bends, dry and grippy, with very little traffic. We're still in a mountainy area, so it's up and down, and forests and lakes and rushing streams over rocks. Many small villages along the way, who lives in them, and how do they live? So many stories, in fact, that's true everywhere isn't it? Behind every door!

We stop for lunch in Eguzon Chantome - there's a restaurant in the centre which appears open. Do they do sandwiches? Do they heck. Grumpy lady patronne can do fried beefsteak with creamed cheesy potatoes... Yeah ok. The beef is tasty but requires careful surgery to prevent unintentional chewing gum. But it's lunch. She still seems grumpy as we pay - maybe it was just too busy today, there were some local pensioners in, there was a big table celebrating a birthday, and it was near the end of service. Somehow we preferred the sandwiches from yesterday, and therein lies the problem, people want to repeat what they liked, so much so that they keep going to MacDonalds, even when it's utter shite, just because the one thing they lust for is always the same. Hmm. better to enjoy today's thing in some aspect, because, let's face it, if we only had some eggs and some bacon, we could have bacon and eggs, right? (© Elizabeth Anne Pearson 2014)

The afternoon gets wetter and wetter, the roads get straighter and straighter (which is actually good given the conditions), the trucks get larger and more frequent. These aren't N roads, but they do have trucks. Eventually we stop for a fag in a supermarket car park outside Montrichard and plug the hotel into the GPS - another 60 miles! Ouch. Then it's a question of keeping going until we finally arrive.

It's always a surprise to see the place - for Jim of course, because he didn't book them, but for John too. Although there are photos on the web booking site, they never look the same and the perspective and angles are different, optimised in fact. This looks interesting though, a hotel on one side of the sideroad and the restaurant on the other. The Mrs is very friendly, speaks nice slow French, is very helpful, has put us in the bigger room for the same price as it's available and she knows we'll have wet gear, and she books us in for dinner. Lovely. There a lots of people in the restaurant, and I think only us in the hotel on a Thursday night, so it's good. The owner is a proper chef, and has a reputation supported by various books and reviews. The Mrs is most solicitous and helpful, without being obsequious or over the top. It's a very nice place, and they obviously care.

And dinner is lovely - it's the last night, so we splash on the 2nd best menu, with a bottle of local wine. Lovely starters, imaginative main meals, super cheese and good desserts. We may return here in September with the other guys, instead of the traditional Hotel de France, if we dare. 

And so to bed. Last day tomorrow, and a long ferry trip before the ride home. Hope it doesn't rain!

The Longest Day (So Far!)

Today's Route - Note the "Setback and Recovery" at the Beginning 

We both slept well at the country BnB, amid the strong smell of horses owing to them being at the associated riding stables. Nice looking animals...

However, John had spent an hour awake around 4 am fretting about tyres, and how to buy them in French. Basically, owing to not having previously done so many bike trips in a year, he'd not thought to check his tyres, so they, especially the back one, were getting a bit short on tread prior to starting the journey. However, after 1500 miles or so of corners, they're looking pretty knackered, and on a bike, the last thing you need is a knackered tyre, it being the first, and in fact only, thing that contacts the rest of the non-bike world.

Before

Over breakfast, when asked the direct question "If it were your tyres and bike, would you get new ones?", Jim said he would, and we agreed that safety was the first concern, long before cash and schedules. So out with the magic BMW GPS, press the "Find Motorrad Dealer" button, and up comes Sport Moto Thome, in Nimes. John has an interesting experience navigating the phone line menu in French (3 for the service department if you need it...), and a useful conversation with the service lead - sure, they can do a new back tyre, today, turn up about 10.30 and it's sorted. Excellent!

Pitstop team at work

We get there, they take the bike in the workshop, get the back wheel out - lovely. Then Mr Service Lead comes over, and takes John into the holy of holies - front tyre is also knackered (knew that!) and the oil level is, well, a level, but not one that one can actually see in the sight glass (knew that too...). What should he do? Why, fix it, dear Lionel, just fix it!! What tyres would sir like? Whatever you recommend! Marv.

After

And eventually, when Lionel has come to terms with the new logiciel in l'ordinateur that went live very recently, we are presented with a reasonable bill and a freshly serviceable motorbike.

Moi et Mon Nouveau Ami, Lionel

But now it's 12.00, we've driven 22 miles south of where we started, and we've a Very Long Day already scheduled. The trip from Nimes to near Clermont Ferrand involves crossing lots of major roads radiating from Clermont, with multiple mountainy lumps around those roads. What to do?? Easy.

"Set the controls for the heart of the sun, Mr. Bloor, and engage Warp Factor 5".

Pop in "Motorways, No Tolls", Egletons as a destination, and off we go. Only 5.5 hours away, not accounting for lunch, fags, cold, bends etc. of course.

And what a ride. Took it easy for the first 100 miles or so - can't be too careful scrubbing in a new pair of tyres! But excellent roads, well chosen. Lunch in a roadside bar in a tiny village, lovely ham and cheese sandwiches consisting of ham, cheese, and half a full size baguette - heaven. And only 7€! Total!

But as we left to start the afternoon's work, big black clouds rolled in, and we were riding in a total downpour. As the road rose into the mountains, the rain changed to hail - a full blown hailstorm, with pellets of ice sitting on the road, right beside the still melting snow! Are modern tyres miraculous? Let's hope...

But it eased, the sun came out briefly, and only to introduce very strong and gusty winds. The scenery - amazing, Le Gorge du Tarn, the Auvergne, cleft valleys with rapids, tree-clad mountains with exposed rock faces, villages that look carved from the rock itself, distant (and not so distant!) mist cloaking the summits. We rode on.

And then a 40 mile stint on the A89, a serious motorway, not too rainy, so starting to make up the average speed, lifting for the first time above 10 mph (seriously! A 2 hour tyre stop, and a 1 hour lunch stop make big holes in average speeds). More rain in the last stretch , and the temperature dropping, so much that we were wearing double layers after the last stop. Finally - a sign for Egletons! Only 24 km! Press on, ignoring the inevitable white van closing in behind... Jim signals, we here. Or are we? A quick trek round the lake - no more signs after the first. Ah - immediate right, through the car park! As we park up, Francois and Carolina come out to greet us and help us with our luggage, even helping to move the bikes to the preferred spot. What a welcome!

And the evening is good - great shower, good food, cooked by Francois, great conversation with the hosts and the French guys who are staying, all candidates for the civil service exams being held in Egletons tomorrow. What a lovely place. Maybe explore tomorrow, but after a 10 hour drive, it's again time to sleeeeeeeeep...

p.s. sorry there's no pictures of scenery - too wet, too busy riding, and worrying about tyre/road interface stability! Next time.

p.p.s And yes, John was humming tunes from "Songs of the Auvergne" most of the day.

I Love The Smell Of New Pine In The Morning

It felt like a leisurely start this morning, looking out from the balcony of the Hotel Panorama to see a distant bonfire layering the valley with smoke. In principle, a relatively lightweight day of less than 200 miles awaited us, aiming for Uzes in the Languedoc-Rousillon. Bikes were ok, having been left in the public car park - John woke up about 1 am to hear suspicious noises, and look out of the window, but it was only the road menders hammering away at the buried lid of a circular drain, which of course is mandatory in the small hours (?!).

The first half of the ride was utterly magnificent, beautiful smooth roads in generally good condition, with enough bends and sufficiently little traffic to bring a smile to the face. The most striking thing for the whole trip was the smell of pine, and the occasional drift of woodsmoke. I can see why Provence is so popular, the hills, the pine woods, the houses, the sun and light. Yes, it's sunny today, hurray!!

Today's Lunch Stop

We stopped for lunch in Rians, planning to get a sandwich, but the proprietor talked us into an Escalope Milanoise each, on the basis that he didn't do sandwiches! It was really tasty though, with salad and frites; the frites were a mix of normal fries and alphagetti-style letters, unfortunately we didn't have enough vowels to make any interesting words! One of the old guys (apparently 74) in the square came up and practised his English on us - ex-airforce radar tech, he'd owned a "Commando Norton" in the 60s, and regaled us with tales of a wealthy 89 year old ex-pilot who lived nearby and owns a nice stable of cars including Lambo Miura, Diablo, Countach, a Ferrari Daytona replica, a Lotus 23, and who is apparently a very nice chap.

The rest of the way the road was more like a typical French main road - long straights lined with trees, broken up by bends, roundabouts and small villages. We stuck to the speed limits pretty much all the way, it's very pleasant bimbling along looking at the surroundings and stopping for re-direction, fags and "natural breaks". Let's face it, overtake one bunch of cars and 30 seconds later you're either at the back of the next queue or stopped at a traffic light or stop sign with the passed cars' drivers sniggering at Les Motards Anglais (maybe moturds??)! The pleasant ennui was broken for a considerable distance by the presence behind us of a rusty white Peugeot hatchback, which was clearly being driven by a very committed local - it was catching us in the bends and only got lost on the longer straights, very impressive!! We eventually turned off and that was it, didn't get a chance to wave our acknowledgement to the Finnish-standard driver.

Finding the BnB was the only semi-stressful event today - it wasn't in the satnav, so we entered the post code which turned out to be a larger area. John spotted the road as we sailed past, then spent 3 miles trying to alert Jim to the need to turn around! Eventually we got back and parked up, only to find that the local village doesn't have any restaurants, so we ended up riding back into Uzes, John pillion with Jim driving, looking like a right couple of gaylords in matching helmets, casual jackets and jeans. At least we pulled a one-er on the way home in the twilight! A single beer for John and no booze at all for Jim means we are even now conducting an experiment on the survivability of the holiday night without alcohol. See you in the morning...

Between A Rock And A Hard Place

Genova to Grasse... The Hard Way

We slept well at the Albergo Birra, more than 9 hours! And we only had a glass or two... The nice man who greeted us last night, and was there again today allowed me to print out the ferry ticket and the list of hotels - the previous prints from home had flipped out of my tank bag yesterday at 100 kmh when the velcro came undone, fortunately my phone fell in my lap :-s. Hey ho. So he's a top guy.

The Actual Brewery

So, to Genova! Home of that other crazy sod, Christoforo Colombo (or was he the seedy detective? Whatever...), and after a very long drag through the city we finally made it to the sea! Proper docks and cranes, and a very blue Mediterranean.  By this time, Italy was feeling ok for me - relaxing, going with the swing, not stressing about anything - remember, it's not personal! Not sure Jim felt the same though.

We finally hit the SS1 to cruise down the coast in style - wonderful riding, there was no traffic! Our suspicions should have been aroused - the first tunnel was closed for repairs, we'd seen the sign 2 miles back but it only seemed to be telling us that that was going to happen, not that it had! It was a handy drag strip for timetrialling cyclists though, we saw a couple several times, because we turned around and parked up in a bus station to work out what to do.

The Sea!! The Parked Bikes!

Up in the sky, where we'd like to be...

On the subject of cyclists, it's just like being a football fan - you wear your favourite team/rider's strip, from whatever era you like best or matches your eye colour (I made that up), and get out with your mates to celebrate it. In fact, it's better than being a football fan, because you're out on your bike and not on the couch. Now I get it, I shall definitely have to get some team strip to annoy the British cyclists, who are far too up their bottoms to do anything so interesting or colourful. Hurray!

The GPS seemed to have its knickers in a twist - no matter what we did, it wanted to go up the blocked SS1. We decided to bang off a few miles on the pay autostrada, since there didn't seem to be another way that didn't involve heading massively inland and back the way we came. Turned on motorways, tolls... didn't matter. So we headed back into Genova, looking for the autostrada sign, and it was easily found. However, the actual access wasn't easy, hairpin, narrow road, and only in Italy would you take a toll ticket at a booth, then wiggle onto the Nice (not Genova) lane, round a 180 degree turn, and be faced with a toll booth after 200 yards!! The man was nice, I paid for both of us, and we were off on the autostrada.

The Ligurian/Provencal motorway is a great example of "diretissima" (term for an Italian approach to mountaineering based on the use of a rock drill and bolts - hammer your way up the face, bolting in as you go). Basically, the road selects an optimum cost, balancing tunnels and bridges, to blast a way across the valleys and mountains leading down to the coast. An amazing piece of engineering, thank goodness someone invented taxes to pay for it all. Look to the left - incredible, magical terracotta roofed towns, clustered around blue bays; look to the right - green clefts covered in forest, with white houses dotted into the mountainsides. Magic. At least, when you aren't in a tunnel!

Lunch stop cafe and bar

Pizza, coffee, water - marv

The original plan had been to turn off SS1 onto a detour through some small roads, just to keep it interesting. We still did this, and thank goodness we did. We'd written down the name of an intermediate village that would get us onto the right road, and after a lunch stop, headed for it, having forgotten that's what it was meant to do. However, this turned into a major exploration of the Ligurian hills, perfect empty, windy roads, beautiful woods, olive trees, sleepy villages, forgotten stone buildings, an entire dream-like universe. We stopped just to savour the silence and view - we've said "magic" too often already, but we agree that this was one of the best rides ever. It's hard to understand how the villages function - the only way to get to them is via these tiny, bendy roads with precipitous verges, so everything has to go up there in a lorry, right? Anyway, we headed onto what we thought would be the last of the roads, and turned out to be very lucky - it was actually marked "do not enter" as we left it (!), having passed various fallen rocks and trees, and several groups of workmen along it working clear it. Wow, a dodged bullet! Let us moan no more...

Ligurian Shangri La

Emerging from the green maze, the choice was now to join the SS1 again, and cruise through Monaco, Nice and Cannes, en route to Grasse (apparently the capital of French perfume production, according to the Swiss couple we chatted with this morning), or to pop onto the autostrada/autoroute and pay our way for an easy ride. Tired after so much bend-swinging, and not fancying negotiating rush hour on the Cote D'Azur, we opted for the latter...

• The Rock - driving through endless traffic lights and roundabouts, buzzed by motos, albeit with pretty sea views.
• The Hard Place - struggling with tollbooths and mad bastards driving a yard apart, at a traffic density that would shame the M25!

We chose the latter, not realising it was the latter. We even lost one another after a particularly hard tollbooth episode (John had to call the operator in two separate booths when no payment alternative was offered!), where Jim turned out to be ahead of John but thought he was behind, and John had no idea... Amazingly, John ended up in the booth beside Jim's at the same time, after 20 miles of driving alone, so we were able to manage the rest of the route to the hotel together. Hurray!!

Jim excavating his onion soup...

Dinner, beer - always helps. Apparently one of Jim's top meals of the trip - carpaccio. Sleeeeeeeeeeep...

night night bikes

Bends, Beer, Busalla

Today started off at the excellent Maso La Vecchia Quercia, up in the hills in the Dolomites. We did actually find the old oak, it's not very big and out the front. It could be very old, but stunted, maybe it smokes too much. Anyway, lovely place, lovely location, nice people. Food wasn't special, too salty for our taste, but the house wine was good.

And it's sunny. This is good because we can now see the mountains, which are pretty cool. In fact, I'm a bit glad we couldn't see them yesterday when going through some of those passes, because it would have been pretty scary!

The view from the balcony - not scary

Anyway, lots of beautiful scenery to start the day off. Things got even better as we went around the side of Lake Garda, from a scenery point of view. From a traffic point of view, this was the most crowded place we've been in all trip - it's Sunday, in Italy, and the the sun's out. So are all the total nutters that inhabit Italy - that's Italians then! The road down the west of Garda is on the edge of the mountains, so the road goes in and out of tunnels all the way, with a view across the lake between them. And surely every single motorcycle currently functional in this part of Italy - huge swathes (??) of them, dodging and weaving and overtaking and waving and roaring and generally being a pain in the arse. Early lunch at roadside resto was a nice break in the sun.

And then the roundabout zone - a very long stretch between Garda and Piacenza, with single lane highways surrounded by fields and a roundabout every 400 yards. Really. Glad when that was over...

Except be careful what you wish for! The road after that is through the hills of Liguria, and is nothing but bends, like hairpins. There are NO straight bits. And they're all on the edge of a mountain, so one side is always a drop. And the road is pretty bad, lots of broken bits, tyre-tricking cracks, road works. At the risk of sounding like we're moaning... and of course motorbikes, lots of them. These guys are mad. They overtake in eat face of oncoming traffic, on blind bends, whenever they can. Insane. And very tiring for us.

After a GPS-led side trip through a village (what is going on with that device? Did it save us a mile? No! The road was even worse and even more crowded!), we stick in the final destination - it's the best part of 2 hours away, and this has been going on a long time. Low point. Keep going guys.

But then Jim parks up and says we'll have to have a look for the place, because the GPS says we're here. I look across the road - Albergo Birra, in the old Busalla brewery, so pretty groovy really. And the micro-brewery opposite sells beer... and enormous portions! Check out the starter - we should have had one between us really.