Page 3
Europe Bike Tour 2009
Page 3
After the Storm
It's the early hours of Friday morning - our last day at the villa and we're woken from one of our short naps between the ringing bells by the sounds of thunder and flashes of lightning, the start of a storm that would last for about 6 hours. We have breakfast and when the rain eases off enough we venture out for walk down to the local bar on the lakeside to watch the aftermath. I love a good storm and can't resist firing off a few shots of the moody lake - we just hope it clears up for our 200 mile ride to Chamonix tomorrow!
It's spittin'! Sat having a beer watching the rain.
Photo Wesley
Video
Domaso & Lake Como
Day 14 - Domaso to Chamonix Mont Blanc, 196
miles
A good day! The weather has cleared and we leave Domaso under bright skies. The first leg of this run takes us down the Domaso side of Lake Como as far as Menaggio where we turn off and head for Lake Lugano. The border here is quite convoluted and we pass between Switzeralnd and Italy a few times before we reach Lake Maggiore. Here we run down the east side of the lake until we reach Laveno and take the ferry across to Intra..........Well, the idea was to catch the ferry but the VFR had other ideas.........................
Packed up and ready to leave
Domaso
.............Question: how do you turn the world's most reliable bike in a useless heap of crap? Answer: fit a Datatool alarm!
As we pull onto the ferry pier, we notice a boat is in which is just finishing loading, so the girls run over to the ticket office and quickly buy the tickets. Wesley is already on the boat, and Wee Jim has also made her way on board - while I'm on the quay desperately trying to start the VFR. It's been giving trouble for a few days, the Datatool alarm has taken to immobilsing the engine after it's been turned off - and it's getting worse. It usually starts within a minute or so but this time it's decided to totally screw up my day! I'm sat on the quay with a dead bike, and no money or passport - Wee Jim's got everything in her bag. Realising what's happened she's now trying to get off the boat but the guy is reluctant to let her. At the very last possible second the alarm gives a "cheep" and everything springs back to life so I start the engine and just make it on to the boat as the final ropes are let go.
Crossing Lake Maggiore
This guy was besotted by the
bikes, he stood looking at them and walking
around them for the whole 25 min crossing!
Fortunately the VFR starts up ok after the crossing, I was expecting to have push the thing off the boat. We fuel up at the first garage we see at Intra and then head off in the direction of the Simplon Pass.
Lunch stop on the Simplon Pass
After a great ride over the Col de Forclez we arrive at Chamonix in glorious sunshine, go get showered and then go find beer. The plan for tomorrow is get the cable car up the mountain, but once again the weather has other ideas.
Chamonix
Video part 1
Video part 2 (another dead fly on lens!)
Riding from Domaso to Chamonix
Day 15 - Mont Blanc
If the weather was glorious yesterday then today it has to be equally as horrible. We wake to dull grey skies, a big disappointment and a blow to our plans to go up the mountain. We mooch around the town for a couple of hours then head over to the "Telegraphique" (cable car) but it's not running due to gusty winds at higher altitude. We head back to the hotel and play a few games of pool, have a few drinks and go back to the cable car a bit later - no joy though as it's still not running. More mooching and more drinking before heading back again, but this time it's running. We buy tickets on the understanding that we may be told to come back down at a moments notice - there's a storm heading in!
Murky huh? What a change from yesterday.
We eventually make it up the mountain - all 12 thousand feet of it but the weather's closed in so much that we can see very little and it's snowing! Now comes the announcement over the tannoy asking us to make our way down as the cable cars are going to have to stop running soon - the wind is getting up again. It's a bitter disappointment, but there's nothing we can do against the forces of nature and we head back down again. No point taking many photos today, but Mont Blanc can be seen in all its glory here. We went up a few years ago when the weather was marginally better!
Day 16 - Chamonix to Thiers
Another dull cloudy day as we ride east out of Chamonix. We call for fuel on the way out of the town and the VFR alarm is playing up again. It takes several minutes before anything comes back to life. It's raining but never really amounts to anything - we don't see much in the way of sunshine though.
After 80 miles we stop for coffee and cake on a motorway service area and when we come out I tell Wee Jim the bike isn't going to start - I have a gut feeling.........and I'm right. Everything is totally dead - zilch - not a peep - this is an ex parrot! Long story short - we fettle with it for over an hour while Wesley tries to by-pass the alarm but to no avail. God love him he tried, he is without doubt one of the greatest roadside repair bodgers - but this had him beat! We ring my lad in the UK and ask him to get us Datatool's telephone number which he does - but it's no longer in use! By now the alarm unit has been cut away from the frame where it was tied and is hanging like snot down the side of the bike! I want to pour battery acid into it and set it on fire - that'll teach it..... it has seriously pissed me off over the last week or so.
We've not got the tools to take it out of the loom and re-wire it so we decide it's time to call the breakdown people. 5 mins later I'm talking to a very helpful young lass at Carole Nash who is now informing me that they're not allowed to recover vehicles from French motorway service areas! Great! She's very apologetic though and gives me a number to ring to get the bike off the motorway and tells me to ring back when it's done, then she can organise for it to be taken to a Honda dealer.
I'm just about to ring the motorway recovery number when I hear the familiar "cheep cheep" from the alarm. Wesley has decided to give it one more go - and lo and behold the things come back to life! We start the engine, pack everything up and bugger off while we can. The daft thing is that since the alarm's been bouncing around loose under the seat it's not given any more bother!
Theirs - lovely place!! ......and yes there is note of sarcasm in there somewhere! We land at the hotel we booked only to find it all bolted and barred and not a soul to be found anywhere - it looks a right flea pit too. We've noticed a few unsavoury, scummy type youths hanging about as well - each of them eyeing up the bikes, so we get the hell out of there. We find a Campanile Motel on the outskirts of the town and book ourselves in for the night. Cheap 'n cheerful & clean with secure parking. What more can we ask?
No photos today - with the bike probs and the hotel thing we've not had much chance to think about it..........Things can only get better!
Day 17 - Thiers to Sarlat la Caneda, 166 miles
Things are looking up, a lovely clear blue sky greats us this morning as we head further east to Sarlat in the Dordogne. We're riding through the Auvergne region today with it's outstandingly good roads. Long, fast sweeping bends, superb tarmac and beautiful countryside make this probably the most enjoyable riding of the trip so far.
Coffee and cake stop on the way
to Sarlat
Everything's fine until we reach Sarlat - we can't find the way down to the hotel. We know it's in the old medieval part of the city where there's no vehicular access, but I mailed the owners before booking and asked if we could get the bikes down there to drop off our luggage and he assured me access was no prob for a bike. The main outer road is heaving with traffic and it's VERY hot here, the sat nav keeps trying to take us down a steep narrow ally with steps. In the end we send the girls to find the place and find out how we get the bikes there.
A short while later they come back with the news that the steep alley is the way we have to go! So off we ride - it's not as bad as we first thought but it's very narrow to turn left with the loaded up bikes when we reach the bottom. Eventually, very hot and sweaty we reach the hotel and wonder how the hell we're going to get the bikes out of here! After dropping off the luggage we then get the hotel owner to show us the way out. Now we have more narrow cobble stoned alleyways 'til we emerge out of a narrow opening where we have to bounce over a slippery cobbled mound before picking our way through the tables and chairs of a pavement cafe - with some not very delighted diners and drinkers giving us daggers as the vibes from Wesley's Guzzi rattles the filling out of their teeth! Finally, we're out onto the main pedestrianised area - complete with it's marble tiled floor, thank god it's not raining.....and there are no police about! We find the garage, park the bikes up and then go get showered and changed. First port of call after that is a bar for a much earned beer.
Video
Riding to Sarlat
Day 18 - Paddling on the Dordgone
2 nghts in Sarlat mean we have one whole day to kill and what better way to spend most of it than paddling a canoe for 8 miles down the Dordogne river. The bikes are retrieved from the garage so that we can get to Vitrac where we can hire the canoes - no public transport here. We pack the panniers on and we wear our shorts under our bike gear, when we get there the bike gear comes off and gets locked in the panniers. We find a shady tree to leave the bikes under and go off to get the canoes
They have it pretty well sorted here, you get the canoe and paddle the 8 miles to Castelnaud, then they send a bus to fetch you back to where you started - it works well.
Day 19 - Sarlat to Limoges, 80 miles.
A short run today as we start our run north for home, we actually do more like 120 miles but we land at Limoges nice and early and then set off to look around the town. Not much here really from what we can see - pretty much a typical mid France town. There's an old medieval part of the town we find which is a fair walk from the hotel, but again no photos today - having a day off snapping
Day 20 - Limoges to Orleans, 166 miles
A decent run up to Orleans today, we take it easy and keep off the motorways, no point getting to our hotel early as we can't check in 'til 3 o'clock. Orleans is a magnificent city though - bigger than I thought and the Joan of Arc - "Maid of Orleans" connection is quite strong here seeing as it was her home for a while. The Loire river runs past our hotel - is there a more boring river in the world than the Loire? ......Well ok - apart from most of the Rhine!
Orleans Cathedral
We 're fancying a curry so we're on the hunt to find an Indian restaurant and eventually come across about a dozen of them all snugled together in the seedier end of town - the French version of Rusholm! We choose one and walk in, sit down and order 4 much needed cold Kronenburgs from the menu. It all goes downhill from there. A few moments later the wee girl (the daughter) comes back to tell us they're out of Kronenburg and asks would Indian beer be ok - we say yes, no problem! A young lad ( the son) was then dispatched somewhere only to return a few minutes later with 4 bottles of beer which he brought straight to our table. He'd obviously been sent to the bar along the road for them! He tried to open one but it was so warm and shaken up that it just fizzed all over the place. He panics & runs off to the kitchen with it and returns with a more settled but half empty bottle of beer wrapped in a very damp tea towel. He then tries again with another bottle but suffers the same fate, so in the end he just dumps the remaining two bottles on the table, leaves us the bottle opener and buggers off!
It gets worse when the girl's starter order for samosas arrives - what actually materialises are two Cornish pasties! Wesley and me have chosen Lamb Tikka for our starter, the lamb bit is debateable but Tikka it definitely isn't! Later the main courses arrive and they're really quite disturbing. The girl's have ordered Chicken Jalfrezi - not sure what it is that's turned up here, but if you were to take a guess at what meat it is then chicken would be at the very bottom of the list.........It's grey.....and stringy, we'd noticed on the way in that there seemed to be a scarcity of cats in the area. Wesley and me have something called Lamb Curry. The meat looks suspiciously like horse meat to me and the curry is .......erm ......gravy we think, it tastes of nothing. The only saving grace is that the portions are miniscule. We leave most of it, pay up - €74 - and get out of there as fast as we can. The French obviously have lower standards than us Brits when it comes to curry houses - we're probably best off sticking to coffee and cake!
Day 21 - Orleans to Zeebrugge, 300 miles
Well, we're almost done. Just the long haul back to Zeebrugge to get out of the way now. We ride the first 100 miles mainly on non motorway roads. We have to get around Paris and if we let the sat nav take us on the m/ways then it'ill take us on the Paris Peripherique - not a place you want to ride a motorbike! The run around Paris adds a few miles to the journey but it's worth it not to get snarled up in Paris traffic on a Saturday afternoon. We make it to the ferry in plenty of time and we're soon loaded on the boat and in the bar having a few drinks, Scotch for me - I'm sick of drinking bloody lager. A good calm crossing and we're back in Hull by 9-00 am on Sunday morning and soon winging our way home on the M62. It's been a great trip with lots of laughs along the way - you cant help but laugh when you're with Wesley and Morticia - they are totally nuts but are excellent company and they always look after us older guys. Although I planned most of this trip while Wesley was working his spuds off earlier this year, he did the routing for the sat nav and he did it superbly so big thanks to him for that. Even with a broken on-bike charger we never had any probs finding our way anywhere.
The bikes performed perfectly, and apart from the troublesome DATATOOL shitty alarm (remember the name) they never gave a moments trouble. We never did work out why the guy who owned the VFR before me had an immobiliser fitted to a bike that already has Honda's own HISS as standard!
Next year's trip? Who knows - it may well be done on "Me Shopmobilty Scooter" (but where am I gonna put Jean?)
Leaving Zeebrugge