Road closed to motorcyclists east of Bouillon - N865 between Douhan and Mortehan

Sneldog said:
Your replies of this nature are baffling. I’ve met you and you seem to be a decent chap, so these sardonic posts are either some sort of in-joke or a recurring misjudgment perhaps? It could be me of course - maybe I just don’t grasp the funny side of these smug, sarcastic, thinly veiled jibes?

You’re very helpful when it comes to route planning and local knowledge, invaluable even, so why do you insist on regularly crafting posts like this one that make you seem like a bit of a twat?
Click to expand...
I agree with you.

I have to say that I am also baffled, he is on a motorcycle forum, yet belittles motorcyclists at every opportunity....As though he envisages himself as being in some way superior or having more understanding of how the World operates, most peculiar.

Perhaps he is God and it is us who do not readily understand?

I notice he has not responded to your comments, probably because he feels to respond is beneath him, who knows....God moves in mysterious ways. :D
 
Wapping said:
I assume that the twattery (some of it itself illegal) that the locals have endured, has enabled the authorities to (legally) close the roads to the vehicles they take to be the most troublesome.

Yes, it’s maybe unfair to single out motorcycles (and the support for such an action is understandably thin on the ground on a motorcycle centric forum) but the impracticality of banning more / all vehicles is obvious, it is after all a major road.

:beerjug:
Click to expand...
Or, and entirely more likely, a local dignitary who doesn’t like motorbikes lives on that road. In either case, to ban a class of vehicles from a road is clearly wrong and I fail to understand why, as you always do, you seek to justify it.
 
\
Berin said:
Or, and entirely more likely, a local dignitary who doesn’t like motorbikes lives on that road. In either case, to ban a class of vehicles from a road is clearly wrong and I fail to understand why, as you always do, you seek to justify it.
Click to expand...

The justification or otherwise is down to the local administration, not me or you. It’s not something we have any meaningful influence over, beyond, “I’m never going there again”. Presumably something has been going on over a long enough period of time - on that particular road - to require such a drastic form of drastic action. Whether it will stick, be removed, be ignored or enforced / policed thoroughly remains to be seen. In the meantime, it’s reasonably easy to circumvent, the two local roads looking OK.

Policing it is, I guess relatively simply. Put up a camera at either end and snap pictures of the vehicles, just as they do for the London Congestion Charge. Ride into or along that five mile section on a motorcycle?…. Kerpow, one ticket.

Europe is at a crossroads. The environmental lobby is powerful and some citizens are demanding change. That aside, maybe it’s just as simple as the local Belgian plod becoming fed up with complaints of motorcycles cutting too many corners, along with scraping up the debris when the corner cutting didn’t quite go to plan? Who knows? Almost certainly nobody here knows and the linked article gave no concrete explanation.

Noise and crashes are an easy target, as the rise in areas of Germany that are closed to vehicles - often motorcycles alone - between certain times and dates prove. These have been common through some rural villages for years and are now being extended to embrace some mountain passes. None of us can roll back the clock to the 80’s and 90’s when we blitzed the B500, leading to its all but inevitable emasculation. It’s time to get smart and not take the piss too often, particularly not down a major road such as the N865, yellow and green lined as it is. That advice is not unique to the N865, it’s regularly set out on these pages.

:beerjug:
 
Last edited:
Berin said:
Good work! It will be very interesting to see if they reply
Click to expand...

Thank you. I’ll give the tourist office five working days to respond. If nothing comes back, I’ll send them a reminder. Their UK office is not far away, on the Isle of Dogs; perhaps they’ll invite me round for tea?
 
Wapping said:
Thank you. I’ll give the tourist office five working days to respond. If nothing comes back, I’ll send them a reminder. Their UK office is not far away, on the Isle of Dogs; perhaps they’ll invite me round for tea?
Click to expand...
Stop advertising our routes we have enough with our own fuckin deadheads without yours adding their noise and speed; we don't want you;; love Belgium. :D
 
This process is called "The Overton Window". Described thus and copied from AI because it does abetter job of preçising it than I can:

The Overton Window is the range of ideas, policies, and discourse that the public finds acceptable at any given time. Ideas inside this "window" are politically viable, while those outside are considered too radical or unthinkable. The window shifts as societal values and norms evolve.
Advocates often shift the window by aggressively pushing ideas in the radical or unthinkable categories. By promoting extreme ideas, they make previously fringe or moderate ideas seem sensible and mainstream by comparison.

Thus, the window, which starts as a certain size, is pushed out until it becomes "too ahead of its time" (or backward) and then shrinks again, but it never shrinks down to its original size. Sometimes all it takes is the mere raising of a subject to start the Overton ball rolling. In Merton (and other councils) the subject of patio/front-of-house parking was raised and the idea was mooted of charging owners to park their cars on them. Obviously, the idea did not get off the ground...... this time. The next time someone raises the idea, the abhorrent nature of it will seem less to most ,and resistance to it will likely be less also, and so on..... This is how the Overton WIndow works. Other instances are abound; gay marriages are one such very clear example.

I do agree, though, that some local authorities go well beyond what their powers allow them, and increasingly more without any consultation, taking as read that having being voted for alone gives them a mandate for their own agenda.
 
er-minio said:
Nevertheless, (average) Belgians are far from the most skilled drivers (to put it politely) that you can encounter on, say, French roads. So maybe we have to consider that too. Maybe it's not only the bikes... :D
Click to expand...
Now that is a very true statement. Having driven through Belgium yesterday and the day before I can confirm the standard of driving is terrible. Not high speed or anything like that. It’s just as if Belgian drivers have no idea of hat they’re doing. The standard to pass a driving test if there actually is one must be very low. We passed a lady driving her Merc with presumably her grandchild in the car. The car was moving very erratically and when I eventually passed her she was knitting for fecks sake. With a child in the car too.
 
Asturcon said:
This process is called "The Overton Window". Described thus and copied from AI because it does abetter job of preçising it than I can:

The Overton Window is the range of ideas, policies, and discourse that the public finds acceptable at any given time. Ideas inside this "window" are politically viable, while those outside are considered too radical or unthinkable. The window shifts as societal values and norms evolve.
Advocates often shift the window by aggressively pushing ideas in the radical or unthinkable categories. By promoting extreme ideas, they make previously fringe or moderate ideas seem sensible and mainstream by comparison.

Thus, the window, which starts as a certain size, is pushed out until it becomes "too ahead of its time" (or backward) and then shrinks again, but it never shrinks down to its original size. Sometimes all it takes is the mere raising of a subject to start the Overton ball rolling. In Merton (and other councils) the subject of patio/front-of-house parking was raised and the idea was mooted of charging owners to park their cars on them. Obviously, the idea did not get off the ground...... this time. The next time someone raises the idea, the abhorrent nature of it will seem less to most ,and resistance to it will likely be less also, and so on..... This is how the Overton WIndow works. Other instances are abound; gay marriages are one such very clear example.

I do agree, though, that some local authorities go well beyond what their powers allow them, and increasingly more without any consultation, taking as read that having being voted for alone gives them a mandate for their own agenda.
Click to expand...
So……..

If you thought that was shite, wait til you see this !
 
Wapping said:
\


The justification or otherwise is down to the local administration, not me or you. It’s not something we have any meaningful influence over, beyond, “I’m never going there again”. Presumably something has been going on over a long enough period of time - on that particular road - to require such a drastic form of drastic action. Whether it will stick, be removed, be ignored or enforced / policed thoroughly remains to be seen. In the meantime, it’s reasonably easy to circumvent, the two local roads looking OK.

Policing it is, I guess relatively simply. Put up a camera at either end and snap pictures of the vehicles, just as they do for the London Congestion Charge. Ride into or along that five mile section on a motorcycle?…. Kerpow, one ticket.

Europe is at a crossroads. The environmental lobby is powerful and some citizens are demanding change. That aside, maybe it’s just as simple as the local Belgian plod becoming fed up with complaints of motorcycles cutting too many corners, along with scraping up the debris when the corner cutting didn’t quite go to plan? Who knows? Almost certainly nobody here knows and the linked article gave no concrete explanation.

Noise and crashes are an easy target, as the rise in areas of Germany that are closed to vehicles - often motorcycles alone - between certain times and dates prove. These have been common through some rural villages for years and are now being extended to embrace some mountain passes. None of us can roll back the clock to the 80’s and 90’s when we blitzed the B500, leading to its all but inevitable emasculation. It’s time to get smart and not take the piss too often, particularly not down a major road such as the N865, yellow and green lined as it is. That advice is not unique to the N865, it’s regularly set out on these pages.

:beerjug:
Click to expand...
😴😴😴
 
Asturcon said:
This process is called "The Overton Window". Described thus and copied from AI because it does abetter job of preçising it than I can:

The Overton Window is the range of ideas, policies, and discourse that the public finds acceptable at any given time. Ideas inside this "window" are politically viable, while those outside are considered too radical or unthinkable. The window shifts as societal values and norms evolve.
Advocates often shift the window by aggressively pushing ideas in the radical or unthinkable categories. By promoting extreme ideas, they make previously fringe or moderate ideas seem sensible and mainstream by comparison.

Thus, the window, which starts as a certain size, is pushed out until it becomes "too ahead of its time" (or backward) and then shrinks again, but it never shrinks down to its original size. Sometimes all it takes is the mere raising of a subject to start the Overton ball rolling. In Merton (and other councils) the subject of patio/front-of-house parking was raised and the idea was mooted of charging owners to park their cars on them. Obviously, the idea did not get off the ground...... this time. The next time someone raises the idea, the abhorrent nature of it will seem less to most ,and resistance to it will likely be less also, and so on..... This is how the Overton WIndow works. Other instances are abound; gay marriages are one such very clear example.

I do agree, though, that some local authorities go well beyond what their powers allow them, and increasingly more without any consultation, taking as read that having being voted for alone gives them a mandate for their own agenda.
Click to expand...
Like fuel prices .
 
Play shit games……

Win shit prizes……
 
The good, the bad and the Belgian. Fuck Belgium. Fuck mayonnaise on your chips.
 
Choose diversions

Choose GPS Re routing

Choose a map

Choose not caring because you’re on holiday.

25abd058d83ebc95f1f66636589d5802.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
A Google translation of a statement by the local police, explains the decision to close the road to motorcycles:
"It really feels like a circuit," explains Vincent Léonard, chief corps of the Semois and Lesse police area, to the microphone of Bel RTL this Monday morning. According to this graduate, "from morning to night", groups of motorcyclists take this road "with speeds that can reach 200 km/h", which is a source of danger. In addition, with the valley, the noise of motorcycles resonates strongly, which is a major nuisance for local residents.

“Not an anti-motorcyclist measure”​

However, Vincent Léonard refutes the terms of "anti-motorcyclist measure". He also denies that the latter was taken after the death of a 23-year-old motorcyclist on this road. The petition was posted online by the young man's mother.
"It's to avoid excesses," argues the police officer. Any motorcyclist who takes the section is exposed to a report "which will be drawn up and processed by the national prosecutor's office at the rolling level," the police officer also promises.
Click to expand...

In other news, there’s a petition to protest the closure:

www.petitionenligne.be

Non à l’interdiction des motos sur la route de Dohan !

🛑 Interdiction des motos à Dohan : une décision injuste et incohérente Aujourd’hui, la commune de Bouillon envisage d’interdire la circulation des motos sur une route touristique, très fréquentée, notamment entre Mortehan et Dohan. Une décision qui soulève de nombreuses incompréhensions. 👉 Cette...
www.petitionenligne.be

Along with a statement, again translated by Google:

“This road is not only a place of passage. It is a lively road, known and used by many motorcyclists, who actively participate in local life," defend the bikers in their petition, who deplore a "lack of coherence" and a decision made in an emergency. The ban applies between the villages of Dohan and Mortehan, except for local trips.

On Saturday, a hundred enthusiasts gathered in Dohan, in the Bouillon entity, to express their dissatisfaction. It should be noted that this typical Ardennes road, winding, but which also offers a long straight line, has recently benefited from a new coating.
Click to expand...
 
Everyone who's put a loud exhaust on their bike plays a part in these closures. You can't blame the locals for kicking up a fuss.

The road west of Bouillon towards Montherme along the Semoy/Semois valley is one of my favourites ever.
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top Bottom