Mugello 2013

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

So it's finally arrived. After much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth the start of our ride through middle Europe was finally upon us.

Up at 0600 and away at 0730 in a cool but promising sunshine.

A quick hop was the order of the day with a coffee stop at Birchanger Services near Stanstead airport before Sunday Lunch that I'd pre-booked through Google.

We had no idea what we were going to or what the food would be like, but they started serving at 12 noon and, as our train was booked for 1340 it all fitted nicely.

Being the OCD type I rang them last night just to double check that we'd be able to eat at 12 explaining our tight schedule. 'No problem came the reply, we'll be good to go.'.

Having made steady progress we got to The Kennington, just off J9 of the M20, 20 minutes from The Chunnel, at 1150.

Not with the expected 'Sorry mate we don't start till 12.30' but a big friendly smile and 'You guys have a Chunnel to catch don't you? We got everything started 15 minutes earlier so we'd definitely be ready for you, can't have you being late can we?'.
What a pleasant surprise.
So carvery was had at £8.95, feel free to go back for a second plate full if you wish.

And due to their excellent customer service there was even time for a cheeky pudding followed by coffee.

Hats off to them at The Kennington in Kennington. Top grub, excellent customer service and great value. Highly recommended.

From there it was a short bimble down to the tunnel which was swarming with BVB and Munich fans, some happier than others of course and onto the train. As usual bikes were held at the back until all the cars had boarded.

But we not on eventually.

There were 8 bikes in total including 3 Germans and a Dutch guy on a V Max who'd been to London for the Saturday night to watch 2 blokes playing Tubular Bells. He reckoned he had a 300km ride from Calais back to wherever he lived. He did tell me where that was but like the ignoramus I am I hadn't heard of it.

From Calais to Bethune was taken along RN's rather than Peages but the constant 50/70 speed limits made for a pretty mind numbing hour and a half.

We've just had a quick look at Bethune town centre. It looks as if we've missed some sort of fete so we've probably not seen it at it's best - litter, fencing and cardboard boxes abound, but it's not somewhere I'll be hurrying back to. Next time I'm in this area I'll go back to Arras.

Tomorrow Luxembourg is calling, then on to Metz. We've decided to hit the Motorways early on to get some miles in, and take it from there depending on the weather.

 

[The smudger]

Nice, keep it coming...

 

[tenyamman]

we'll be watching with great interest ....the meal looked nice by the way.
looking forward to the next episode and you need to get the other bloke to take some pictures.....

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

Day 2 (yesterday).

Due to the relatively poor Wi-Fi I couldn't get the photos to upload onto Photobucket so here we go, 1 day late.

Despite the miserable weather forecast I woke to beautiful sunshine after an excellent night's sleep. Well, excellent untl 6.30 when Hannibal, who was obviously intent on heading back across the Alps with his elephants, and clearly decided to follow us and unfortunately for me was in the room above mine, decided he needed to herd Dumbo and family down the stairs right outside my room.

But, as I say it was a beautiful day so I let him off. The bike was still there and still relatively shiny and I was a la Continent. Why wouldn't I be in a good mood?

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

I nipped out to get some breakfast and when I got back to the hotel had a bit of a chinwag with another guy who was staying at the hotel and was also on a bike. He was an interesting sort of chap, we had a natter about the bikes and he explained that he comes down to Northern France every year to pay respect to his father who died in the war along with many of his comrades at a place called, ironically, Paradise.
He'd done the 500 mile trip from Castle Douglas in 24 hours and told me that the hotel was a bit of a luxury. He'd only booked in as he was feeling under the weather and didn't want his trip ruined by a stinking cold. His preferred method was wild camping. Well, his actual preference is to 'sleep under a hedge in a bivi bag'. He reckons he can manage about 3 hours kip, then he's up and away to get a few more miles under his belt.

As if that wasn't impressive enough, to me anyway, he'd done the trip with all of his kit packed into the Rickman top box you can see in the photo, which was attached to this

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

As the weather was so nice we decided to minimise the use of Peages and use RN's where possible. Simon's Tom Tom set the route, 35 miles of Motorway to Arras then across country to Sedan, slightly north towards Bastogne and into Luxembourg.

We did stop for a quick brew and a doughnut just outside Charleville Meziers and very welcome it was too.

As luck would have, and it really was quite by chance we headed through/skirted (I'm not quite sure which) The Ardennes.
What a surprise, a delight and a joy that was. Fast sweeping bends, hills, valleys - really good biking roads. Note to self: Definitely worth a long weekend/week if you don't have time to go to The Alps.
I regret that I didn't get any photos of this area but I was just having to much fun to stop.

I did see these Tossers though.

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

As we headed into Luxembourg on the very busy motorway I was struck, and somewhat bemused by the number of lorries and cars from Lithuania. I knew they weren't from Latvia because their plates are marked LV and most of the vehicles just had the letter 'L'' on their plates. And there were more and more and more of them the closer we got to Luxembourg.

Doh!

It did dawn on me in the end. Honestly.

So we arrived in Luxembourg after a very pleasant morning's ride. We did skirt around the city for longer than we needed to as Simon had set the Grand Duchy of, rather than the city as a way point. But we got there in the end.
Luxembourg was my idea. I've had a yearning to go since I was a wee small boy and I absolutely blame 208, The Emperor Roscoe and the Power Play for this. As an impressionable youth A 'Grand Duchy' sounded exotic.
It was only when we were sitting at traffic lights that Simon told me he'd been through Luxembourg a few years ago and 'wasn't impressed'. Oh.

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

Well Luxembourg certainly didn't let me down.
Although only small it is clearly very proud of itself. And rightly so.
I found it to be pretty, clean and very engaging. And everybody had a smile on their faces.
It's possible the gorgeous sunshine and 22c temperature helped but I was simply charmed by the place.
We'd only planned on staying for half an hour or so but ended up taking 2 and a half hours to soak it, the beautiful people and the heat up.

I'm not sure the pictures do it justice, I took plenty more but don't wat to bore you's all. You'll just have to take my word for it.
Certainly the warmth and location had given these 3 blokes the horn.

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

Clearly a deeply religious city I also learnt something about The Almighty whilst I was here.
And I have a new found respect for his music choice.
God is clearly down with the kids .
God is clearly a happening kind of guy/girl.

We weren't the only bikers(?) I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that word tbh, in town.
A contingent of Dutch Gold wing owners had nipped across the border as well.

But the undoubted star of the show was this guy.

He was all on his own (for very good reason, let me assure you) in a small park just below the old city walls. And he was having the time of his life. Singing, skipping, dancing even Irish dancing at one point (which I took as a personal honour). There was some debate as to whether he was genuinely rehearsing for something or was just the local Nutter.
Either way he was in a happy, happy place and bloody good for him too. If the world had more people like him it would be a better place. Take a bow sir.

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

And from here it was a quick blast down the very busy A31 to Metz.
We stayed at the Metz Nord Mr. Whippy Ibis which appears to have some sort of internal Ibis awards and I'm not surprised. It was excellent value for money and is most definitely recommended.
We had planned on going into Metz for a look round but tbh we were just too tired. A good excuse to come back methinks.
Today (yesterday) was one of those days that will live long in my memory.
Given the weather forecast and my ignorance of where I was heading I had expected very little other than a 5 hour slog through wind rain and spray.
What I got was sunshine, stunning scenery, a beautiful city, good company, great coffee, humour and wonderful motorcycling.
If no other day on this trip is as good as today (yesterday) it won't matter. Today (yesterday) will have made the whole thing worthwhile anyway.

Total miles 265.5
MPG 55.4

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

we'll be watching with great interest ....the meal looked nice by the way.
looking forward to the next episode and you need to get the other bloke to take some pictures.....

Cheers for the feedback both.

I'm sure he'll offer sooner rather than later.

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

So, on to today, Tuesday. Let me know if I'm boring you won't you?

Today was the day the weather was definitely going to be against us. The long term forecast had warned us, Le Meteo had warned us and the lady at reception warned us when we checked in last night. It was going to pour down on us for the whole day. Non stop, constantly. And not just a bit of drizzle either. It was going to be an absolute downpour, a deluge and we were going to get a thorough, thorough drenching from start to finish.
So I thought I'd pop down to the bike, make sure she was still in one piece and had had a good night's rest, and gauge what the weather Gods had in store for us today.

Well what a lovely surprise. Beautiful sunshine once again.

But we weren't alone in the car park. There were. 6 of these beggars on their way from Monaco to Spa.

I was chatting to one of the drivers and he told me how they don't like Monaco. I have no interest in F1 at all but Monaco is the one place I'd like to watch it. The Renault bloke agreed, it's fine for watching but no good to work at. Because it's obviously cramped for space all of the support team crews, drivers and equipment are housed over a km away from the pit area and everything has to be hauled over by hand. I did offer to ease him of the burden next year but was rejected at the interview stage.

As the weather forecast had been so crap we'd decided to eat in the hotel before setting off and decided to go ahead anyway, despite the sunshine.
When you check in to an Ibis/Campanile they always/ask if you want breakfast. I've never said yes before but it was reasonable enough-ish.
9 Euros for all you can eat/drink. 3 croissants, a bowl of corn flakes, half a baguette, jam, 2 coffees and 2 glasses of orange juice. Is that decent vfm? I'm not so sure it isn't.

Lift by Dainese.

 

[GS TRV]

I'm on my way to Mugello too but am now at the nurburgring. Tomorrow just the small matter of 600 miles to bologna

Off to bed now then!

Trev

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

Once again Tom Tom was going to lead the way. I'd looked at the route planned by my shitty Garmin and it didn't look too clever going via Saarbrucken, Strasbourg, Basel and Bern and on dual carriageway all the way.
I had spent some time before we set off downloading Mapsource, planning a smashing route for today, downloading the hotels and uploading everything into the Navi III. I'd checked it and double checked it before leaving the UK but when I asked it last night to navigate the route it had accepted it told me the planned route wasn't covered by the maps I have on my Navi III. Fecking useless fecking shitty thing.
Bloody good job for Tom Tom.
Rant over.
So today was another voyage of discovery. I've looked at my map tonight and still can't quite figure out which way we came. We headed south on the A31 to Nancy, didn't see RobertG though, then the A23 to Epinal and the N27 to Luxeil les Bains.
Ironically these were also mainly dual carriageways but largely traffic free and skirting The Vosges mountains made for a very pleasant morning's ride. Once again France has surprised me. The Vosges mountains look well worth a return trip. I've always been keen to head straight down to The Alps but I've had my eyes well and truly opened on this trip. Isn't that part of the joys of these sort of holidays, discovering new and interesting places you'd never considered before?
Anyway, I digress.
So we meandered along without a care in the world. Until Simon realised he was running low on petrol. Not his fault, to be fair. We'd confidently passed a petrol station when he had half a tank full left, not realizing it would be the last one for 65 miles or so. By now he was below a quarter left and slight concern was turning slowly but surely into grave concern. So we took a minor detour and found a supplier of sans plomb within a few kms..

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

Whilst we were at the garage I noticed this

I've no idea what the equipment was for and I certainly wasn't about to ask for a demonstration.

We nipped back to the local village for a coffee where I was greeted like a long lost buddy by a very friendly local. Half an hour was had drinking in the scenery, coffee and ambience and doing something I so rarely do - enjoying the moment.
Coffee (again)

Long lost buddy taking a stroll,

Scenery but not a great photo, sorry.

And then onto the border with Switzerland. I had concerns about this part of the trip. Obviously I'd be expected to show my passport, bike insurance, V5, empty my panniers etc etc etc but I hadn't quite figured out this Vignette malarkey. Could I buy it in France? I'd been told I could buy it in Switzerland but was worried that plod might nick me before I'd had chance to do so. Where on the bike should it go? If I stick it on will it get stolen? I know I can't just take it in my pocket as this is instant imprisonment. You can imagine for an OCD-er like me how troubling all this was. Worries, worries, worries.

But we were here now and I had to face my demons. Customs was eventually negotiated having taken our place in the lengthy queues

and the vignette was bought at the petrol station 10 yards from the border. Surprisingly I was allowed to pay for it in Euros,, so I did - 32 of them.

As I faffed and fiddled about to make sure it was stuck on centrally (in creeps the OCD again) we heard the roar of a sports bike and scutching round the corner came a Fireblade and rider, with no crash helmet. 'Well I barely came any distance' she said

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

Before I knew it The Alps were looming in on us, we stopped at Bern for a 10 minute break and some snap and I had my1st meeting with the legendary surly and arrogant Swiss personality. I had been warned in advance of the trip and the guy in the services did his best to enhance their international reputation. But never mind, he was the Ying to The King of Luxembourg's Yang.
Grainy picture of The Alps. I know it's a crap photo but I was so excited I had to stop and take it anyway.

The monsoon we'd been promised was right on our tails now. Although we'd been lucky again all day there was no doubt it was there, as clear as day and it didn't half look like a monster of a storm so we decided to crack on.

As we were heading back to the bikes I realised I'd quite inadvertently parked under a poster advertising a forthcoming Festival in Interlaken, where we were heading for. Check out the support act, spooky eh? I don't even like Slayer. Maybe God's trying to tell me something.

We got parked up at the hotel, and before we'd checked in the heavens opened. But we'd escaped it for today.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

 

[Ex-Call Centre Chimp]

I'm on my way to Mugello too but am now at the nurburgring. Tomorrow just the small matter of 600 miles to bologna

Off to bed now then!

Trev

Nice one. Hope you had a good day at the 'ring. Have a good day tomorrow,
be safe. See you at the weekend.