Foto John
Registered user
Last weekend together with my girlfriend Inge on her Suzuki Intruder 1400, we returned from a week of touring around the Champagne region of France. In that week we covered almost 3000 kilometres, this is our story:
We set off from our home in Blankenberge, on the northern coast of Belgium to start a week of touring around the Champagne region of France, with a target of purchasing as many different bottles of Champagne from as many different towns/villages as we could fit in our panniers!
We took a relaxed route down, with virtually no motorway included, in fact we managed to use the very smallest twisty D and C roads we and the Garmin GPS V could find (I had actually programmed a good route on the GPS at home, but it just didn't work properly on the day). We started heading out towards the Flemish Ardennes in East Flanders and headed towards Valanciennes, we took only a few kms of motorway to miss out the city and industrial area and picked up some beautifull roads heading in the general direction of Laon.
Bearing in mind we were leaving on a sunday, we could find hardly any petrol stations open that would take our cards or even cash, fuel wasn't a problem for me though, as it's only around 400kms in total from our house to the Gitê in Vindy just south of Sezanne. However Inge's Intruder can only manage 180 kms before it needs re-fuelling again. We only just managed to find a fuel-pump open in the middle of no-where, with only about 15kms left from Inge's fuel tank.
The weather was getting warmer and sunnier the further we travelled south and I was very gratefull to E.J. Cambell Evans for shipping over the excellent Hein Gericke Gore-Tex Tuareg jacket so promptly, (thanks Cambell
) that I bought off him a week earlier from this forum.
After nearly 400 kms (around 240 miles) of travelling on very small roads often stopping to take photos or even just slowing to take a good look of the views around we arrived at our France-Gitê. Tired after 9 hours on the road but happy with the riding we had done and exstatic with the accomodation we unpacked and opened a cooled bottle of Champagne, given to us by our hosts.
We set off from our home in Blankenberge, on the northern coast of Belgium to start a week of touring around the Champagne region of France, with a target of purchasing as many different bottles of Champagne from as many different towns/villages as we could fit in our panniers!
We took a relaxed route down, with virtually no motorway included, in fact we managed to use the very smallest twisty D and C roads we and the Garmin GPS V could find (I had actually programmed a good route on the GPS at home, but it just didn't work properly on the day). We started heading out towards the Flemish Ardennes in East Flanders and headed towards Valanciennes, we took only a few kms of motorway to miss out the city and industrial area and picked up some beautifull roads heading in the general direction of Laon.
Bearing in mind we were leaving on a sunday, we could find hardly any petrol stations open that would take our cards or even cash, fuel wasn't a problem for me though, as it's only around 400kms in total from our house to the Gitê in Vindy just south of Sezanne. However Inge's Intruder can only manage 180 kms before it needs re-fuelling again. We only just managed to find a fuel-pump open in the middle of no-where, with only about 15kms left from Inge's fuel tank.
The weather was getting warmer and sunnier the further we travelled south and I was very gratefull to E.J. Cambell Evans for shipping over the excellent Hein Gericke Gore-Tex Tuareg jacket so promptly, (thanks Cambell
) that I bought off him a week earlier from this forum.After nearly 400 kms (around 240 miles) of travelling on very small roads often stopping to take photos or even just slowing to take a good look of the views around we arrived at our France-Gitê. Tired after 9 hours on the road but happy with the riding we had done and exstatic with the accomodation we unpacked and opened a cooled bottle of Champagne, given to us by our hosts.
!
!
, so unfortunately I've got to get away now.
