Before I go on about my inconsequential little trip, I just want to express my solidarity with all those affected by the various violent incidents in France and across the world today. I hope that one day humans will realise that killing each other for any cause is something that deserves to be and should remain in the past.

We rolled out of the hotel in Aigues Mortes spot on ten o’clock, it was already 28 degrees Celcius. Breakfast ended up being more leisurely that I had intended and yes I did get caught by Le Patron, but hey go with the flow and anyway I’d eaten by then, so an extra coffe whilst chewing the fat didn’t matter at all; this is La France after all! The funny thing was that as we talked I remarked that I had never seen the Camargue flamingoes up close, then five minutes down the road I find a massive flock of them, but sorry, no photos as I was on a busy road, still great to see anyway.

We negotiated the city of Montpellier and got on La Méridien, the Sat-Nav told me that this was to be our home for the next 580 kilometres, but I had other plans! Traffic thinned as we headed north and became very pleasant; then we arrived at Pas de L’Escallette where road works put a spanner in everything! Unfortunately the stretch of road was steeply uphill, winding and just into a tunnel = chaos as everyone tried to fight it out and wouldn’t merge in turn, same the world over. From this I learnt that Netherlands drivers hate motorcycles filtering/lane splitting, Belgium drivers hate us even more than the Dutch and actually aim at us, German drivers totally ignore us, Brits don’t like it either but are too embarrassed to say and the French, ah Les Française, they love us because we represent that little bit of La Révolution that is in every one of them and they get out of the way and even help us!

Then we got to le Viaduc de Millau; one of the modern engineering feats of the world. Scribbled on a bit of paper by a Brit, but built by French engineers. The engineers get my vote because I could scribble it, but I ain’t got a clue how to build it, well ok I do, but you can go across it first! The bridge is the tallest in the world with one mast topping out at 343metres above the base of the structure. It is the 12th highest bridge deck in the world, being 270metres between the road deck and the ground below. It cost of approximately €400 million and was formally opened in December 2004,

Then back on the road for another hour and we get to this beauty, Viaduc du Garabit. Built between 1882 and 1884 by Gustave Eiffel, it was opened in 1885. It is 565metres in length and has a principal arch of 165metres span and looks fantastic. We took a little detour off the A75 to see the bridge from this angle, but there is a rest area on the Autoroute from where you can also see it, again,  good French thinking for you! 

 How about from a different angle?  

 What’s even better is that the bridge, at 130 years old, is still doing the job it was designed for, trains run over it daily.

So what was La Méridien like on Baby Harls? 

The short answer is hot, very hot and in more ways than one! We have travelled 380 miles today and whilst I wouldn’t be ready to go do it again now, I’m sitting outside enjoying a late supper and feeling pretty good. In essence it’s the kind of motorcycling that she was designed to do and boy, does she do it well! The cruise control is a real plus, though to be honest I’m still getting used to it, on some of the long straighter sections I certainly was able to relax a bit. We spent most of the day cruising at around 130kph/80mph and if I needed a little extra grunt for an overtake she certainly put a smile on my face! In other words, good fun! 

We did the 320miles from Aigues Mortes to St Amand Montrond in spot on five hours and that included two stops; one for fuel, petrol and coffee and the other was the deviation off to photograph Garabit. So an average speed of 64mph, er, that’s good!

From St Amand we took the back roads along the delightful River Cher. This is the very heart of France, “le centre d’hexagone,” and I love it. It’s a good excuse to not to ride an autoroute all day. The roads were delightfully quiet and the shade from thoughtfully planted trees very welcome, a total contrast from the baking exposure of the Autoroute.

Once we hit La Méridien the temperature never fell below 30degrees and was still up there when we arrived at the Chambres d’Hôtes at 18:30! Hot work indeed.

Now it’s starting to go dark, the last birds are bidding the day farewell and the crickets are chirping to greet the moon. Pierre, the owner of the Chambres has joined me on the patio, we talk of many things; the joy of motorcycling, the tragic stories many corners of France hold and the reasons to enjoy life. We sip small glasses of local wine and gulp larger glasses of Vichy water as the mosquitoes begin to buz around us. Tomorrow, France will wake to a new day we agree, but the sadness of this one will live long; c’est tragique. 

“Sit tight, take hold, Thunder Road.”

Catch you soon.

Dookes

It’s a beautiful morning here in Provence, South West France

I am enjoying my breakfast outside on the hotel patio and the world turns slowly. A few other guests are also beginning the day. Le Patron, the hotel owner is in animated conversation with one poor chap, who is trying to eat but politely waits as Le P. babbles on at him! I pop back inside for a top up of orange juice and interrupt the conversation, the other guest smiles gratefully at me and finally manages to eat as Le P. diverts his attention in my direction, I grab the juice and escape!

Today I’m looking forward to riding a motorway, honestly I am, but not just any ordinary one. This Autoroute is the A75 known also as la Méridienne. 

It was built with the aim of speeding up and reducing the cost of car travel from Paris southwards. Unusually for new French Autoroutes it’s toll free for most of its 210mile length between Clermont-Ferrand and Béziers, except from the short stretch over the famous Millau Viaduct. It opened in December 2010.

One interesting thing about the road is that for many miles it runs at over 3000 feet above sea level as it skirts the edge of the Massif Central. Because it was principally built for cars, some of the gradients are quite interesting as well, the poor lorries struggle in places! 🙂 Im beginning to think that this road was probably built with bikes like Baby Harls in mind as well.

Oh dear Le Patron has returned and is now swooping on another unsuspecting guest, time to make a move!

Let’s ride!
Catch you later.

Dookes

Ok. I think I’d better give a quick update in case anyone out there wants to check on a map to see where we’ve been for the last few days.

After leaving Cuneo in Italy, lovely town as well, we passed over Col de la Lombarde to Isola 2000 in France. Next we rode over Col de la Bonette and the Cime de Bonette to our overnight in Jausiers.

Today we rode over Col de Cayolle, 2326m and then down to the Gorge de Daluis, which was fantastic, so was the Gorge de la Galange, but then they were both overshadowed by the awesome Canyon du Verdon. I’m really looking forward to posting pictures and a better description of the ride for you. Next we crossed across Provence to the Carmargue and our stop for the night.

Hard miles today, wonderful, wonderful, 268 hard miles. The day had everything, hairpins, climbs, descents, tight roads, wide roads, smooth roads and bloody awful roads. I loved every inch of it, or millimetre if you are more modern than me.

We rode from alpine valleys through pine woods to high pastures with mountain flowers. We passed through tight river gorges and tunnels of bare rock to one of the greatest and most beautiful Canyons in Europe, the Canyon du Verdon were we marvelled at the smell of wild tyme and lavender. Finally we chased across Provence, dry and baking in the hot sun, it’s olive groves and Mediterranen oaks giving precious shade, before reaching the flat fertile Camargue. The wheat already harvested and ripening bright green paddy fields of rice, all overseen by the wonderful grey horses and sinister black bulls, whilst storks nest in the power masts and flamingoes feed in the shallow salt marsh lands. Quite a day!

268 miles today; 2150 in total so far!

Catch you soon.

Dookes

I very sorry that I can’t post any pictures at the moment, possibly the internet speed where I’ve been staying, possibly the WordPress App, I don’t know.

I promise that as soon as I can, normal service will be resumed . . . I got some cracking good photos to share with you all!

Dookes

A couple of days ago I wrote that I had thoughts about my new girl not being suited to the mountains. I slept on that and further pondered my words as we rolled along the Autostrada in the Lombardi sunshine; was I right or was there something else that had got inside my head?

Well, nothing gets a free ride inside the Dookes head – nothing, understand!

I came to the conclusion that I was somehow talking myself out of love with this wonderful machine that I was riding. We have a phrase in Britain that sums up what I had convinced myself; it’s called “talking bollocks!” Something so ludicrous that it is beyond mere stupidity! 

I thought about all the places I have ridden her stablemate, Harls; more importantly, how I felt when I first took her into the Alps. The first big Col, or Pass if you like, that we went up was the biggest of them all, Col de la Bonette with it’s wonderfully pointless Cime at 2802m/9193ft and today I had planned to ride it again, but this time from the South, the side I hadn’t done yet.

I seemed to me that basically I needed to rethink the whole process, relearn it if you like, certainly learn how to ride my new bike and forget how I did it on Harls, like any two girls they are different! The problem appeared to be the nut behind the handle bars!

Leaving Cuneo the road to France is pretty much dead straight, “like a Roman road” I mused to myself . . . idiot, of course it’s a Roman road, we were in the land where they invented Roman Roads! The road is a minor trunk route, a bit to tight and slow for most commercial traffic but fairly busy nonetheless. Although it climbs quite high it’s certainly no great challenge over the pass at Col de Larche. We could stay on it. Option two was to go left and over Col de la Lombarde, renowned for being narrow, twisty, bumpy and like climbing the side of a house, a it’s definitely a tougher prospect. I mulled it over as the miles ticked by.

I purposely didn’t fill up with petrol before we began any climbing, I reasoned that if I could keep the top side weight down it might help a bit with the handling. 

Then came the junction and now I had a choice, go easier or turn left and attack Col de la Lombarde, which at 2350m is right up there.

We turned left and I took a deep breath!

The road suddenly narrowed and began to climb sharply, the first hairpins appeared and the scenery looked stunning. Right, down to business. Forget taking photos, forget the scenery, just concentrate on riding. Read the road, feel the road through the bike, feel the bike reacting to the road, get into the zone. Get the speed right, get the right gear; forget what you’d do on Harls, listen to what this girl is telling you and she’ll listen to you!
Gradually we began to get it together. We got sharper through the hairpins, nicer lines and much smoother. I started to feel the brake better, not easy with a 410kg bike plus the luggage and me, call it half a tonne, hell that’s heavy!

Best of all I started to really enjoy her again. We crested the summit in style, very happy with the job we had done and now paused to take in the view; fuel was getting a tad low, but it was downhill for a while now. We took on a splash of petrol in Isola, not much just enough to do the job, and set off towards Bonnette; I had unfinished business . . .

Before the big climb really got going, we paused. I needed to take on some water and sugar. The way ahead didn’t look daunting now, it was calling us on and Baby and I were ready. 

“Come on with me, tramps like us, baby we were born to run.”

Dookes
PS Still suffering from either poor WiFi or poor WordPress App and I can’t post pictures! Pictures will follow soon, I promise!

Right let’s try to get this bloggy thing back on track.

Tonight I’m staying on a farm just outside Pavia in Lombardi, Italy. What it lacks in five star luxury it certainly makes up for in the warmth of the welcome and the lovelyness of its owners. My Italian language skills are not brilliant, but we are rubbing along just fine! In a way that’s the problem with Europe, so many bloomin’ languages in a small area; I  do ok in German, get by in Spanish, am pretty fluent in French, but I really want to learn more Italian because I just love this crazy country and it’s wonderful people; even the guy I gave the finger to on the Autostrada outside Milan, they are all wonderfully bonkers. Well actually he was bloody dangerous and I would have pulled his arms off for the way he cut me up, but I think he got the message!

Oh yes, I was going to tell you about the Großglockner. Well this is the view at the start. 

This internet connection ain’t to hot either; so I’m going to leave you with only this picture as a further teaser. What I will say is that the road is very special, to save me giving a blow for blow history, go check out their own site, http://www.grossglockner.at/en.

I promise I’ll do a proper post as soon as I get a decent WiFi connection, might have to go to a McDo’s! Sorry!

Today we should have ridden the Stelvio Pass, but poor weather at Bolzano, low cloud and rain put paid to that idea. In addition I have come to the conclusion that Baby Harls just ain’t the girl for that type of road, she’s too heavy and her long wheelbase makes it “interesting” on the tight hairpins. What she is good at though is “mile munching” and today she did that just fine. 

I chose a different route over Passo del Tonale, which at 1884metres still sticks up over a mile into the sky, but was a lot easier to ride than 73 hairpins. The pass is these days famous as a ski station in the winter, but today was largely closed; actually there were mountain goats everywhere and the place stank of them! Something else happened on Tonale, something that I found deeply moving and I’ll tell you more about that soon; it was the second such thing this trip and I need to get my head around how I write about it, so bear with me please.

Later in the day we called into Monza, well we were passing through Milan and it seemed crazy not to drop in. If you need me to explain about the Autodromo Nationale Monza, you need to go google! If not, welcome true petrol head!

Ok three moving experiences. . .  but this one so amazingly happy! It’s an amazing place, so much history and memories everywhere! I was very lucky, basically the guy in the gate let me in and said, “Enjoy, but don’t go on the track!” . . . But he didn’t mention the old track!!!!!! 

I’ll post pictures of Monza as well, but be happy for me, very happy, because I can’t stop smiling.

Then came the Milan traffic at rush hour, in 34degree Celcius heat. Now I have cousins who live in Chicago and last time we visited I hired a car, I know that they were worried for us in their traffic, but hey Peter, you ain’t seen nothin’! It was the most amazing, dangerous, crazy, yet exhilarating thing anyone can do! Think you are an ok driver? Come here and let’s see what you’ve got. The speed limit is purely a minimum I’m sure, because when the limit was 120kph most vehicles were doing over 150, I know because the was what I was doing and still people were passing me, lots of people! I loved it so much I might come back to do it again!

From Milan we slipped into Lombardi, the land is flat now, but the mountains frame the views North and East and I rather like that. There are fruit trees, grape vines and nut orchards everywhere, such a fertile land in the flood plain of the River Po, the largest river in Italy. 280 miles today, not bad. Tomorrow we head back in the Mountains, West to the French Alps.

“There’s a feeling I get when I look to the West and my spirit is calling for leaving.”

Catch you soon.

Dookes

With yesterday’s’ weather being so c%#p and a not too brilliant forecast I was getting a bit resigned to not being able to ride the famous Großglockner High Alpine Road, it was closed by snow yesterday!

This morning dawned bright and sunny in Jenbach, but the forecast worried me. 

“Go do it, it’ll be ok,” was the advice of the lady who owned the hotel and who also cooked me a fantastic omelette for breakfast. “Trust me it’ll be fine, I was born here I know the mountains, now go ride it!”

I got Baby Harls ready, put a Plan B in the back of my mind and set off. I wasn’t being pessimistic, but I know, understand and most of all respect mountains; things can go wrong very quickly if you are not careful.

We had a splendid cruise to Zell am See, except that most of the Austrian roads were being resurfaced, traffic ground to a halt at St Johann but hey, we got through.

At theGroßglockner toll booth I was pleased to see that the road had reopened. After parting with my fee, a rather hefty €24.50, I prepared Baby Harls and set off. The view from the start looked pretty good, but I’m going to have to tease you with that thought! Although tonight’s stop is very comfortable and halfway up an Italian mountain, the internet connection seems to be powered by a snail on a treadmill and I can’t load any pictures!

Sorry to leave you all hanging, but I’ll continue tomorrow when, hopefully, I get better internet access; trust me it will be worth it!

Anyway I’m knackered now!

Goodnight everyone and yep, we collected another country

“It’s better to burn out than to fade away!”

Dookes