We stayed at Maison Laudiere for 3 nights on our way down to Spain.
After a long, incredibly hot and eventful first day en-route from Ijmuiden to Maison Laudiere - 500 miles.
Firstly I ran out of petrol
.
Secondly broke my new phone when I laid the bike over onto the right-hand pot to swill the petrol onto the pump side of the tank (I put my jacket under the pot so as not to scrape the recently refurbed head guard - guess where the phone was)
Third the final drive oil seal gave up the ghost weeping oil all over the back tyre and brake plus we had to filter through what felt like the entire length of Belgium.
We arrived at ML at 22:15 to say we were frazzled would be an understatement!! On arrival we were greeted by Nigel and Carol, within moments Carol had disappeared and reappeared with two beers, and then another two and several more over the course of the evening - what a women.
The next day Nigel rang the dealer to check they had the oil seal and reserved it, he then ran us about for oil and stuff to do the repair. It started raining but being made of stern\simple stuff we decided to ride up to Caen to purchase the oil seal within moments of setting off the heavens literally opened plus the satnav went bzzzt and blue screened (turned out that the power supply\GPS holder had shorted out) regardless we thought we'd push on but not for long my bike was twitching all over the place with the oil on the tyre and the sheer amount of water on the roads - we saw sense and returned to ML intending to go the following day.
Seeing the atrocious weather and wanting to help Nigel offered to drive us up to Caen on the afternoon which would have been a 130 mile round trip, I ask you who would do that for a perfect stranger. We declined and had a lazy afternoon lunch with Nigel and Carol. In the evening Nigel dropped us off in a nearby town with plenty of restaurants and bars and later came back and picked us up. On Wednesday it was still raining on and off but we went up to Caen and bought the oil seal planning to do it on Thursday morning, on Wednesday evening Nigel and Carol did a barbecue which in fairness to Carol was one of the best meals of the entire trip.
Thursday saw us up bright and early, oil seal replaced using Nigel’s tools
and us on our way at lunch time with Nigel’s usb power lead to charge the GPS overnight.
Would I recommend Maison Laudiere and Nigel and Carol – absolutely unreservedly, we were treat like long lost friends - both of them simply could not do enough to make our stay comfortable and to help us out with the bike repair and other things.
Nigel I know you probably monitor\read this thread. Many, many thanks to you both for your help and hospitality. I posted the GPS cable back to you today so you should have it soon.
I’d like to be able to report the rest of the trip went smoothly, which it kind of did with the exception of someone running into the back of me at a roundabout near Pau (no damage done), Les getting lost three times and the speedo drive failing somewhere near Bergerac on the way home but apart from that it all went like clockwork……………