8 Days in Sunny June just pishing about

Intro
This trip was organised (or not) over a couple of e-mails/text messages with a yank mate who hired his bike over here. The plan was simple enough, we had 3 destination points my old fella’s, near Sainte, Oradour-sur-Glane, Milau Bridge and that was it, the rest would be made up as we went along. After the first night at the old fella’s we’d camp at a proper site if we found one or on the side of the road if we didn’t. I wouldn’t recommend that you do the same unless the people in the group are very easy going.

Both bikes were loaded to the gunnels with shite we didn’t really need or use, (as biking law dictates).

Friday night

After a few issues with the hire company (no keys for top box/no fuel in bike) we finally get away at around 18:00 and head for the nearest petrol station. Looking in my rear view mirror I have to suffer seeing Steve having all the fun as he lifts the front wheel parallel with my rear window.

We get back to my place and start to pack, un-pack re-pack and do that a few more times. Claire (my wife) takes great delight in asking if I have this or that I reply indignantly “of course I do!” and scurry off to find whatever it was she was asking about.

My Sat-Nav (my phone with tom tom app put on it by a mate) appears to be suffering with tourettes, as it insists on swearing with each new direction …f..f..fooking turn left and at the fooking roundabout take the third exit etc.

We stop packing for a quick Chinese, finally finishing packing around 12:30.


Steve asked if I wanted to sort out the bike to bike radio communication that I had. I replied that I couldn’t be arsed as it was too late and head off to bed. At 01:00 i'm setting my alarm for 03:45

Alarm goes and I struggle to move as my body is still asleep, I hate it when that happens. By 04:00 I have the bikes out on the street. 2 cups of tea later and we’re ready to go. The only sound in the peaceful village of Heybridge Basin is the gentle pinging of rigging on masts but not for long. We rev the bikes and wake the neighbours, it won’t be a problem as most have Alzheimer’s and will have forgotten by next week.


We are soon out of the village and heading down the A12 towards the Dartford crossing. I look in my rear view mirror and see Steve silhouetted against the rising sun it was a great start to the trip.

We cross the bridge and move down to the M20, at this point I realise I do not have as much fuel as I’d thought as my gauge is showing 2 bars, ‘no worries’ I think, ‘I’ll stop at the next service station’, none appear, a few minutes later 1 - 0 the light starts flashing there are 2 trucks in front of me and I gingerly pull out to over-take my sphincter is twittering, all the time I’m waiting for the first cough that denotes that I’m out off fuel. We were both carrying spare fuel Steve 5 ltrs and I had 7 ltrs so it wouldn’t of been a disaster but it would have been fecking embarrassing. Steve was completely unaware of this sitting behind me, (feck I wished I sorted out the bike to bike comms). I saw the sign for the channel tunnel and services and my sphincter started to relax.

We pulled in to re-fuel and head to the channel-tunnel, I was a little concerned that my sat-nav might start swearing as we go through the passport control but I needn’t have worried as it was deserted (I guess French passport control don’t work weekends? (Note to self if I ever need to get out of the country quickly)


Within an hour we are through Calais and heading toward Paris.

We reached Paris around 12:00 my plan was to follow the ring road A26 around until it met up with the M10 (Bordeaux) and Chez Cormick was just off the M10, (unfortunately I hadn’t shared this plan with Steve). Traffic was hideous with the temperature rising to around 28-30ºC and I was sweating like a rapist, we both had camelbacks but this was the first time we’d used them and it was like suckling on a lactating sex doll.

Filtering these bikes packed like they were was a bit tricky in the heavy Parisian traffic, both of us taking it rather sedately. After about an hour my ADD had kicked in and I’d started switching lanes to move a little quicker, shortly after Steve’s lane open up and he disappears past me I do a lifesaver check and see a truck growling at me, I sit where I am thinking ‘feck I wish I’d sorted out the comms!’ (again). When I get out I’m in full chase mode filtering at 60+ I was completely unaware that Steve seeing me stuck had pulled back into the slow lane, when he see me going past at warp speed there is nothing he can do and we get completely split up.

A phone call later I relay my plan to Steve and we resolve that we will stop at the first service station on the M10, as I come back down onto the A26 just in front to the left is the fully loaded KTM so I just rolled along side. (Note to self always make sure both parties are aware of the next waypoint!)

Once we’re on the M10 no further problems except I’d left my Claritin back at home and the inside of my visor looks similar to the state of the bike screen. A little exhaustion around 16:00 resolved by the administration of red bull and a sandwich and we push on finally arriving at Chez Cormick by 19:45.



After a great meal and a catch up chat with me old fella, it’s time for a shower and a kip.

Sunday

We decide to head for the coast and choose Royan as the place where we can keep an eye on the bikes and the beach. A pretty uneventful ride down except a market that appeared to be enticing every French man and woman from within a 100 mile radius causing major congestion, we pushed on until we hit the sea. On arriving we have both over dressed and are beginning to cook, Steve decides to change in a car park, by now I need a piss and we follow the coast road round until I spot a toilet we run the bikes up onto the path next to the toilets and fortunately right next to one of those outside showers, a fact I was unaware of until Steve tries repositioning his bike almost knocking mine over in the process, you’ve probably guessed it but he had a video camera attached to the bike the resulting footage could see us both sent down for a couple of years but it was bloody good, (those French ladies are very thorough)

Once the French bird had finished her meticulous shower we were both bored and decided to make our way to our next destination.

The route back from the coast was hideously windy and after an hour and a half of having my helmet being torn from my swede I was starting to feel a bit pissed off with it. My sat-nav was also missing new stretches of road and would try sending me in the wrong direction, this really bugged me for a bit until I realised it would come back good eventually, I tried to ignore it but it was still a niggling distraction.

We stop to re-fuel at a little garage when we noticed they sold fresh bread and cold beer, we decide that it must be lunch time, buying a loaf and some cold beer we make ourselves comfortable at a car showroom across the road. It sold antique custom cars beautiful old mercs, one car that looked like it belonged to the ant hill mob an original bubble car and a whole load of others.



more to follow...

…After lunch we push on to Oradour-Sur-Glane, the eerie village left untouched since the 22nd of June 1944 when the 2nd SS Panzer Division destroyed the town and its 642 men, women and children.

On arriving I pulled into the car park with Steve following, I stopped killed the engine and looked behind me, no sign of Steve? A quick 360º shows he’s not there? Confused I get off the bike, as a group of local bikers run over behind a parked car, they lift the KTM as Steve’s head pops up like a meerkat, disappointed that I’d missed it, I took my bike over to park next to him.

There are gates to the village about 20yards from the car park unfortunately these were locked and we had to walk a fair distance to the entrance under the main road through a tunnel.












It was an amazing place and very sobering, it was a fair size and the sun was beating down although our jackets were left on the bikes we still had our bike trousers and boots on and were getting pretty damn hot. The final part of the village that we visited was the spot where the locked gate was, I was knackered at this point and the option of a 20 yard or ½ mile walk back to the bikes was not a hard one as I bowled over the 5ft wall Steve following.
Our next point to visit was the Milau bridge and after a snack of an apple we were on the road again heading in that direction.

At 19:30 the sun was beginning to go down and with it my eyelids I thought it best we find a camp site for the night, we’d made it to Dozenac handing over navigation to Steve to find a campsite he found one within a couple of miles. Arriving at the site the first thing the guy did from the reception was to give us a beer each! I liked this chap. We pitched camp, ate tinned ‘lips and arseholes’ with beans bought from the camp shop and drank ourselves to sleep.
more to follow...

...Monday
We re-packed the bikes fecked about a bit...


...and hit the road again destination Milau bridge (the worlds tallest bridge) we took the twisty route down hitting some awesome long sweeping roads where you could really lay the bikes over. When it was time to get back onto the motorway I was acutely aware that we wanted to find a place where we could take pictures of the bridge with the bikes (I guess it’s a bikers thing?). Just before the bridge (South bound) is a service area where you can get out and view the bridge etc. but there is nowhere you can park and take a picture of your vehicle and bridge. Saying bollocks to it we went to leave when on the exit road I pulled up and onto the dirt as this was the only place we could get our pictures.

As soon as I’d gone over the bridge I was bored with it and Spain had become my next target destination.

The route down to Spain was via the A75 - A9 with huge sweeping declines, 60kph speed limits were in place, I noticed this after several camera flashes in my rear view mirror.

We made the Spanish border around 20:00 coming off the motorway we had to pass a toll booth the fee was 0.35 Euro cents and handing the attendant a euro told him to let both bikes pass, I went through reaching the next roundabout I noticed Steve was not following I pulled over unable to go back I waited. I saw Steve walking back to toll booth and wondered what the hell was going on. Later I found out that after I’d gone through the chap in the toll booth started waving his arm up and down signify the barrier would come down then up for the second bike, Steve thinking he was waving him through got under barrier just as it came down hitting his head and arms before breaking off (If I’d known I’d have been up there with the camera). Pulling into the border town with its groups of men just standing around on the street we both got the impression this wasn’t the most genteel of places to be. I stayed with the bikes while Steve went to get provisions. One fairly big guy approached me like he was going to say something or walk straight through me and the bikes, I had the feeling that this was going to go bad pretty quickly and prepared myself to punch this guy as hard as I could in the throat. He got within two foot and changed his tack and just walked past, (weird? I thought). Steve arrived with dinner, a bottle of Jack Daniels and a 12 pack not sure what else he had? Can’t say I was sad to leave that place and we headed out of town. That night we could even be bothered to pitch the tent and slept under a tarp...

I say slept but there was a bird that sang all night in tree right next to us so any sleep we got was in very short bursts.

more to follow...

Tuesday

While we were packing ...


a guy came round to charge us for camping, “how much?” I asked I thought he said 40 Euros “What?” I said, about to tell him to feck off for his money 14 Euros, “o …sure” slightly embarrassed at my aggressive tone.

Steve took the lead from here using his GPS. We took some great little roads and wound through some tiny Spanish towns with the high orangey/red stone buildings about 10ft from one another, passing a small ruined castle we stopped for a few pics.


From there we headed for the coast on reaching it we stopped for a cold drink and watched the holiday makers sunning them selves on the beach 2 in particular and the video camera was once again brought into service.

Feeling a little overdressed, we left following the winding coastal road back North. We met up a few other local bikers tearing up the roads, they had smaller lighter sports bikes and though I knew I had no chance I still wanted to chase after them, after 30/45 minutes of that and I was knackered we finally came to a stop on the Spanish French border where we stopped for more pics. It was here we saw a small trail heading off up the cliff, so we decided to follow it, it was a little scary and I noticed that both bikes only used the track furthest away from the cliff drop.

A few pictures later and Steve says “There was another track as we came in that must take you to the top of the cliff, do you think we should try it?” “Sure what’s the worse that can happen?” I reply. The track was steady at first though soon got steeper, my GS fully packed with my fat arse on it soon said bollocks to it and with smell of clutch plate filling my nose I had to lay her down.


What was worse was seeing Steve make it to the top as he has mentioned a few times since.


After our little piss about we went back to the coastal road and just around the corner were a whole group of police officers, trying to look nonchalant we rode past.

Our next playground was to be the Alps and we pushed onto Grenoble.
On arriving in Grenoble we found a camp site at Seyssins, a weird place in the middle of a small city. The middle aged bint who checked us in had the longest pair of tits I’ve ever seen and I imagined them falling out over the desk and onto the floor and out the door like a couple of slinky’s, jesus I needed a drink!

more to follow...

Cracking report - hilarious

Wednesday
We had a routine by now and packing up the bikes was done quickly, however this morning I’d left my socks in my clothing bag and not wanting to delay the off thought I’d sort it out later. We’d picked out some twisty roads on the map from Seyssins we’d head for Albertville – Moutiers then over St Bernards Pass and into Italy.

After a couple of hours we stop at a nice little café for a coffee and I find me socks,



...the sun is shining at it doesn’t get better than this. It was a strange day with every bend holding increasingly spectacular views, it really did take your breath away.

I remember seeing that I had 4 bars of fuel left and thinking that I’d have plenty to go over the alps and down into the nearest Italian fuel station. I hadn’t factored in how much fuel you use going over the alps as you are constantly accelerating-braking-accelerating and the bikes were thirstier than George Best during Oktoberfest. At the top of the pass Steve tells me he’s low on fuel and is getting concerned,

I said there’s bound to be one on the other side and no worries we still had spare fuel anyway. We found a 24 hour fuel station on the other side easy enough, although it wasn’t working so we moved out again. The next fuel station we pull into on fumes and fill up and get an Italian sticker for me bike, after taking the backing off I had to run back inside and ask the woman which way round the colours are on the Italian flag (what a plank!)

A fairly uneventful ride into the mountains to the Swiss border control/tax thieves.

We moved through the bloody cold mountains into Switzerland proper. We arrived at a campsite just as they are closing, paid for the pitch and a 12 pack, thinking we’d go back in a little while and get something to eat. We pitch the tent drink half the beers and headed to the café. The café was shut so we amused ourselves on the kiddies death slide for 30 minutes and went back to the tent. Steve decided to put everything that we had in the pot for tea which was a bag of pasta twirls, a tin of sweet corn, a tin of spam, half a pot of Dijon mustard and half a bottle of tomato ketchup. It was shite with a consistency of mucus, but I ate it all the same.

Thursday
Today our goal was to get to Nancy for one reason, a good friend of ours has a wife called Nancy and we wanted to text him that we’d both just slipped into Nancy for the night and hoped we had his blessing. (He found this funnier than she did, women are odd like that)

On route we go by lake Lausanne and a number of affluent villages that flank its shores, I drank in the wondrous MILFy visions that seemed to be everywhere. (I really needed to get some by now!)

Advice to anyone planning of visiting Nancy (the place in France not Kyle’s misses) don’t bother.

Not much happened here but when we arrived at the site there were a young German couple pitching their tent after meticulously staking out every guy line (something I’d only do if its gale force) then they disappeared.

I get up during the night as I needed a shit so i headed off to the shower block, half way through my chore the lights go out (fecking timers) and I end up finishing off the paperwork by torchlight.
The next morning the krauts return and take their tent down again? I hope it wasn’t something I said?

more to follow...

nice 1

And these video clips we keep hearing about?
Mark

Friday
Batting through Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium (just for stickers) was a bit boring and wasteful but sitting on the bikes was still a nice place to be, so neither of us complained. I was now on the look out for a present for the wife whenever we stopped, something ridiculous was my only criteria, I found it in the form of 2 pink flamingos necks wrapped around each other, I think Steve summed it up well with “…they look f*cking queer dude” statement, they did but I didn’t much care (unless we ran into a group of gay bikers?? …I decided to keep me eye out for ‘Bandits’ just in case)

By the end of the day we wanted to be as close to Calais as possible and we used Mons as the next target destination. We arrived in Mons city and I pulled over to locate a potential site while i'm pissing about with the sat-nav Steve disappears. I turned around to see him in the bar talking to the locals! We set the technical wizardry to takes us to something called ‘campanile’ what we thought was a camp site, it turned out to be a hotel with around 20 shiny Harleys outside, seeing a couple of bikers I park up and jump off to ask them about camping (Me flamingos perched on the back of the bike) I noticed Steve sat on his bike engine running. They turned out to be some UK hells angels chapter all between 40-60 and whinging about their co-riders “It’s like 20 blokes have come away together on separate holidays” one of them said. I chuckled at the way hell angels have deteriorated, no guns, no drugs, no whores, all sensible shoes and prostrate problems, fecking sad and no use to us what-so-ever, we decided to push on into France where the municipal camp sites have always come good.

We make a quick stop at a hypermarket for some more tinned flesh and some drink but decided to give the shark a miss...


We finally locate a woodland site, and drooled over the receptionist, “No fires” she scorned “No” I reply, “I said I’ve got wood” the joke is wasted on her and we pissed off to set up camp before the gendarme were called, b@stard mosquitoes were everywhere.


That night we had 2 courses some beany thing and a chilli thing both out of tins and both shite, fortunately it was now dark so we couldn’t see half the bugs that had landed in it (but you could feel their legs tickling your lips as you ate them), we ate it and drank whisky mixed in with coffee as we didn't have anything else, then crashed out.

Saturday
The last day and I’m feeling a bit sad that it’s almost over.

We strike camp and head to Calais. Steve wants to get his girlfriend a gift from Europe and he doesn’t know what. She ended up with some mustard and a tin of snails. “who said romance is dead?” I ask, “What does it matter she’ll be on the rag by the time I get back anyway!” he responds. (fair point really)

We make it back to the euro tunnel and there are a few other bikers in front of us 2 German GS riders I think they must have been brothers both with little round fat faces with piggy eyes and very camp voices like the little pigs out of shrek. I regretted relaying to Steve a time when a a mincing German waiter had asked me one morning “vould you like zee Pig und Egzz” for breakfast as that’s all I could now hear from behind me as I attempted to engage in polite conversation with my fellow travellers.


An hour and a half later we’re back at mine on our second beer and absolutely knackered. So that was it 2600 miles and not so much as a whinge or crossed word, we could of done things better found better roads etc but we could of done a lot worse too. I had a blast and next year I plan to organize the 4B’s Tour by taking the Portsmouth to Santander ferry and then travel around Spain & Portugal taking in search of B-Roads, Breasts, Beaches & Beer, not the most conventional of tours but a fine way while away the hours.

Will post video when I get it sent back from the US

Cheers Cormick

keep it coming...... I am chuckling away to myself here