Mr & Mrs Den do France.

Den

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Videos and photos still brewing nicely. Bubbling away so I dont know when this years vintage will be ready.

Ive got a little sample. A bit young and raw, but palateable ... just.

Nothing very spectacular this year, stayed away from the passes and had a rest ... a 4500 mile rest ... in the lower altitudes.

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Nice :thumb2

You go through french villages at any time of day and you never see a soul - I miss france:thumb2
 
I get such withdrawals when I come back from France , but that aside, in your
Salerno toward Positano vid, who is and what is that beautiful music you have on the vid?
 
Another Soupcon ... or is it soupson. Who cares.

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Le Puy
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Chablis
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Vezalay
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Chablis
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Annecy
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Dijon
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Me in Auxerre
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Way up to Annecy.
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Cool Dude in Vezelay
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Bike at house in Montillot Burgundy
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Louise's leg and healthy snack.
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Its Me again
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La vie en rose! The French know how to live eh! Did you bring the wife back? Could have done a part ex on a 15 year old while you were over!
 
Never saw the middle bit before.

Always, when we've 'done' France, its usually down the east where the bumpy bits are, on the way to somewhere else like Croatia or Corsica, or once down the west which I thought was a bit boring.
Dont mean boring in a nasty way .... just a bit similar to the scenery up here, you know, green stuff like fields and trees.

Trees are bastards when they are living. I like them when they are dead. Trees definately make the best wood, but before that, they just block the scenery, and, have you ever noticed that the buggers steal the heat.
As soon as you ride into the treeyie bits, it gets colder.

Some trees are nice. Like the lines of Poplars? which line some French roads.

Did you know why they are there? Well, this might not be true, but someone, Bloody Steven Fry probably, told me that to pay for the expense of owning daughters, French landowners were allowed to plant trees alongside the road , so by the time the bitches were ready to get married and stuff, the dads could sell the trees to pay for weddings and dresses and things.
Dont know if its true though.

I digress ..... Holidays, yes.

It was sunny in Kirkcaldy when I set-off for Newcastle for the ferry.
God must have been busy doing something else, because it was just south of Edinburgh before he noticed that I was going somewhere.
In his haste to get me wet, he turned the tap on too much .... and it must have got stuck, because it rained biblically till I reached the boat.

Feckin soaked. Stopped under a tree (feckin useless as umbrellas as well) to have a fag, which were not in the waterproof pocket and tried to light one.

The wet lighter weakly sparked despite the frantic efforts of a wet thumb. Failed to produce a flame .... and then a big raindrop fell from a bloody tree leaf, right onto my damp marlboro and the whole white bit fell off and dangled there, on a sliver of fag paper at right angles to the tip.
A flaccid fag. A wet head. Soaked gloves.

I did actually look up and shout at the bastard. 'What have I done to upset you. I'm one of the good-guys. Let me have a bloody decent holiday'.

He obviously couldn't hear me, because he left the tap on until Grenoble, with a slight respite through Belgium.

Some of my favourite benign roads through the champagne region, usually sunbathed and swoopy, were now dull, wet and a bit uninteresting.

F1'd in Charleville Mezieres and Dole. F1's are not as cheap as they used to be and are full of foreigners queueing up at the microwave in reception with their microwaveable pasta bags.
You dont get lost walking into town (they are usually on the fringes of towns) .... but you do get lost trying to find the hotel on the way back, as beer disturbs the coordinates in the head.
Next time, I'm going to walk soberly backwards into town, so I can recognise landmarks for the drunken stagger back.

Where was I ? Bloody hell, I'm just on day 2. Bored yet? Did you look at the photos? I'm currently specialising in night time shots. Thats not strictly true. Its just that night time is normally when drink has been consumed, and I suddenly turn into David Bailey, only to spend hours fumbling with camera controls which Ive no idea how to work.
Next night I lodged in Sisteron where I spent two hours using the stools balanced on top of each other, and the bathroom towel rail on top of them (it was loose. It would have come off eventually) to photograph the thing on the top of the rock.
Here is it.
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I forgot Annecy. Stayed there the night before I got to Sisteron. Lovely as usual. I like Annecy.
And ... how could I forget. Went from Annecy to the Col Du Machine, but it rained all the way and the Zumo seemed to forget that anything wider than a cart track existed.
I traversed mountains with zero visibility because of thick mist and rain .... and, as I discovered, the anti-fog coating on the inside of my visor had all bubbled-up and, what I thought was rain on the inside of the visor was the bubbly coating (which I spent two hours scraping-off with a credit card the next night).
Passed down the Col du Machine without realising I was on it, so had to ride back up it again to have a look.
Bloody impressive though. But hard to get on a photo.

Managed to find Route Napoleon on the way to Sisteron .... and the sun came out.
It ... and the road to sisteron were magical. I felt for the first time that I was on holiday.

Next day I had to pick-up Louise in Nice.
 
Another Vid. Up a dirt track.

Situated in the middle of the Cevennes national park (amongst the feckin trees) is a horse riding school with a Gite (a holiday rental house .. if you dont know), owned and run by a strange guy called Odilon Jemma. Google him if you want to stay there anytime.

Never got a shot on a horse though. Dangerous things anyway. No brakes or proper steering or throttle.
Spoke to a few though. They have really brown teeth.

Watch in HD if you can. Its a bit blurry otherwise.

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Prior to our week at the horsey place, and after I'd hooked up with 'she who flew to Nice' ......
..... incidently, unless you have to, Cannes and Nice are big nasty places full of Russians.
Our hotel had hundreds, yes hundreds of Russian teenage girls in it. Most gorgeous and very scantily dressed. The lift was a bit of a squeeze, My hard-on taking up most of the room and Russian teens sharing the rest.

Ive suddenly changed my mind. Go to Nice.

Reflections of a holidaymaker in Nice
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A lovely alternative if your in the area is St Paul. A wee village north of Nice with lots of pretty arty things in classy shops. None of yer tourist rubbish. A genuinely nice place.

St Paul
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After St Paul, we headed west to Buis-Les-Baronnies to spend a couple of nights with Mr John Thornley from this forum.
He has an amazing house there where he lets GS'ers lodge at very reasonable rates.
He keeps on finding new bits of the house which he didnt know were there.
In fact, he found out a while ago that the deralict house next door belonged to him!!
I think that the towns Mayor, when he finds a ruin, just tells John that he owns it, so that he will fix it up and make the town look better.

John will supply you with a secure garage for the bike and will supply you with as much beer as you can drink for free dont tell him I told you
And the walls are so thick, you can have really noisy shags and no one will hear you.
The downside is that, with him being on this site, you have to be extra careful not to leave skidmarks on the bed linen.

A good host who, along with wife Marge, will take you to good restaurants and give you tips on how not to spend like a tourist.

That constitutes an advert John .... remember that for next time.

From Johns, we mosied west to our first Gite north of Montpellier which we had booked for a week.
Nice roads and we found a handy drinking thing to take pics at.

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Gite for a week

This is it.

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We played exciting games such as, 'how much things can you pile onto a sleeping cat'.
Unfortunately, by the time I got my camera ready, the coke tin, the lighter and the barbeque fork had fallen-off, but I still claimed a win.

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Done some emergency welding on the Go Pro case, because one of the brackets snapped.

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Visited the Onion festival in St Andres, up the road, went up to the Tarn Gorge and explored the entire area on roads which were more like footpaths with tight hairpins. I never want to see another hairpin bend!!

After our week here, we headed North to 'a time long ago' in Le Puy en Velay. This place was incredible!!
 
Great report Den...and it's good to see your wife's getting her own back:D
 

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Le-Puy-en-Velay

Now ... on the 2nd or third week of September every year, Le-Puy has a Renaissance Festival.
Most folk in the town dress up in costume, even to go shopping or to the office.
Its incredible. The whole centre is heaving with performers and pig roasts and old stuff.
Even the young folk join-in.
Coming out of the hotel, 7am in the morning you see people dressed in period costume speaking on mobile phones and carrying laptop cases.

Restaurants with big benches outside where you all have to squeeze-in together. You are not allowed to sit on your own. Drinking out of horns is normal.
Later in the evening it get a bit wild, but good wild.
You will have to see it to appreciate the spectacle.

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Lovely pics of the folks dressed for the Renaissance Festival. Looks worth a visit to see it. Is it held at the same time every year? Oops, just read your first line of said post.:blast
 


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