I left stoke weighed down with FAR too much gear. The bike was beautiful, new oil, filter, lubed up, fuelled and ready to go. Travelling with Stephen we got as far as Warwick services and his visor popped open. One more thing in his life held together with tape. Just before leaving we witnessed someone rear-end his mates car… barely controlled the laughing.
We got to London no problems and Connie had lay on a feast for us. Stephen had his MOT booked before we were to leave for France so we spent the next couple days cleaning and working on the bikes. Dad sprung on us that he had invested in some bike to bike radios!!! So we spent some good times in the sun routing cables and finding mounting points for the handsets.
After Stephen had failed his MOT for inadequate brake pad life, we sourced some new ones from a website. These didn’t turn up in time even though the next day delivery was paid for so we had to bomb along to Halfords and luckily they had some similar ones available advertised at £16.95 they tried to charge me £20…. once shown the error of their ways they sold them to me as advertised. Just to add some more drama we found a rather large hole in stephens exhaust that we quickly filled with some gungum and a tin can held on with bent bicycle spokes.
FINALLY we were ready to depart and with various relatives and neighbours wishing us well and SAFE RIDING we rode off to dover to catch our ferry. Knowing the extortionate petrol prices in france we filled up to the brim in dover before boarding for the 22:15 crossing. Once we landed we headed out of Calais along the small roads to find a suitable “bivvy” spot, though none of us had brought a bivvy bag to speak of and dad hadn’t even brought a sleeping bag! We located a field out of the way and kipped down for what was left of the night.
In the morning, woken by the sun and bleary eyed we headed off to find some breakfast in Abbeville. After some amazing pain au chocolate we found a fast free road to get some miles down. The thought being get as many miles as we can while we are fresh and then take it easy and pitch camp early.
On the way to Rouen about a kilometre from a service station dad crashed his bike. We found out from a car pulling into the service station and telling us, the expectant looking bikers, that there had been a crash. We spent that day and the next calling various insurance companies trying to get dad and the bike repatriated to England while the heavens opened and flooded the streets echoing our dark moods.
Eventually it was all sorted and the three of us cannibalised various useful parts from his bike and gear and set off to find camp just south of Rouen. We turned up quite late at a beautiful village on a hill with a campsite on the river and after dinner went for a wander around. The next day was a long slog through Evreux, Dreux, Chartres, Orleans, Bourges, Montlucon and finally ending up just south of Clermont-Ferrand in a service station camping in a field on the other side of a hedge. It was the perfect campsite as it was free, had water and toilets and food if we needed it! It did require the bikes to do a bit of off-roading though.
In the morning we had the most amazing fried eggs on rapidly staleing bread in the toilets… looking very cool. We were already on a free motorway so we blasted south and came off just before the Millau Bridge as we wanted to save the experience and the expense for when the weather justified it as all we had got so far was rain, torrential rain and drizzle…. the precipitation held off long enough for us to stop in the visitor center for the bridge and meet a Honda CBRR 600 rider called Nick Hazeal who had blown his dipped beam lightbulb. We all helped swap the bulb from his main beam to the dipped and as a reward he bought us all lunch at a local cafe. Here was the first place I tried espresso coffee, with lots of sugar, and enjoyed it. We found out he owned a tree surgery and landscaping business but wanted to follow his wife into podiatry and chiropody so was going to uni in September. This is about the time Stephen decided to lay the mother of all bricks and clear the place out. We left swiftly…
Nick rode with us cross country through some small towns till Lacune along some of the most amazing roads through the forest. Here we parted and went our own way. We came across Brassac where a festival was going on and decided to pitch camp early and go into town that night. We found that the night was a weeklong event that had been going on for 4 days. Tonight there was a gothic band guest in the school sports hall so wandering around all the fairground rides were various levels of the damned in black lacy clothing. We met a group of lads to chat to for a while and who bought us cokes (motorcycle riding has its disadvantages) before the firework display that, for a small town, put the London new-year fireworks to shame! After this we headed over to the sports hall where it looked like a very enthusiastic dad was DJ-ing to a half full hall of bored, drunk people. Happily enough when he struck musical gold, everyone got involved and danced. Some, like David, danced more energetically than others… but, we didn’t know anyone so we dance as freely as we liked and could claim “non parle vous fransais” if anyone got offended by our wild shapes.
We left quite early as unfortunately no-one pulled (which I’m not surprised at given the wide circle around where we were dancing) although I was sure one girl was looking Stephen up and down…
The morning greeted us with yet more rain and the wet clothes we had hung up the night before were once again wet. We packed up and enjoyed the rest of the road leading out of the forest towards Carrcassonne. We stopped in a town for lunch that I had been to before called Alet les Bains. This town was on the river in a gorge and sat upon a natural spring which provided free freshwater to all the houses and a business bottling it to sell to expensive restaurants in London and Paris. Here we were drinking it for free and splashing our sweaty faces as for once the sun had made an appearance.
We pushed south and started climbing up into the Pyrenees and noticed the temperature dropping significantly the higher we got. Heading towards the border with Andorra on the switch back roads we hit cloud cover and found ourselves slowing down to a crawl in the mist, moving at no more than 15mph. At the top of the mountain we went through customs and were just waved through no probs. It was now Andorra’s turn to shock us with fuel prices. Whereas France had been expensive, Andorra showed us just how cheap fuel really was and we struggled to find a pump offering petroleum for more than 1.13 Euros per litre!!! With our tanks brimmed we coasted down the never ending hill that makes up Andorra’s main road feeling the weather getting hotter as we descended. We entered Spain shortly afterwards to glorious sunshine leaving the rain trapped by the mountains behind us. Being late in the day we started searching for a campsite. The first one we came across wanted 30+ Euros for one night. This gave me the perfect opportunity to exercise my Spanish linguistic skills explaining how that was ridiculous and we were going elsewhere! We carried on down the main road and found a sign saying “camping 6km” and tentitivly we took it leading off into the hills. The signs soon disappeared but left behind the most magnificent biking road I think I have ever travelled. It was flat and smooth and twisty, full of 2nd and 3rd gear corners along a beautiful valley. We didn’t really care that the signs had run out but some luck produced a campsite tucked away in a small collection of houses around a steep, flag-topped, hill. The landlady who greeted us was so welcoming, inviting us to go and find a pitch, get showered and relax. She gave us some free beers, and said we could deal with the money later, which made us nervous as to the cost, based on the last campsite we stopped at but we didn’t care what the price was as the journey to the place was worth it. It was great to finally be able to speak and understand the people we met. In France, Stephen was doing most of the talking, having lived there for a year, he was pretty good. Now it was my turn to have basic yet interesting conversations with the other campers about where they had come from and motorbikes they owned etc. We got chatting to a couple of Netherlandians who were spending 2 months or so I think, travelling around in their tent and towing a big BMW bike. Later that night after we had had some more pasta for dinner, we went for a beer in the cafe and they bought our drinks for us and wouldn’t allow us to return the favour! They were really nice to chat to and laughed when we tried the traditional way of drinking wine. Catalynians use a long thin necked, what looks like cartoon chemical, bottle and pour the drink straight from the glass down their throats. Ideally there is no gulping involved! It was a hard skill to master and we poured alot of it down our selves.
The next day we knew it was a short hop across to Barcelona so we enjoyed the sun for once and went for a walk around the small town and up to the flag on top of the hill. We may have gone through someone’s back garden but no one shouted at us so I think we were ok! We refreshed ourselves with a dip in the freezing cold pool before retracing our ride in back to the main road.
It was beautiful ride to Barcelona along wide, sweeping roads that were dry and sticky and fast with the occasional hooker touting on the kerbs. We stopped for a great lunch in a town called Solsona and spent a long time working out the translation from Catalonian to Spanish to English so we could order. I had a salad.
Getting to Barcelona was not a problem, but getting INTO Barcelona, turned into one. I got us very lost and after asking a driver in a petrol station how to do it and following him to the motorways and giving me very specific instructions, I still managed to get us lost! So he caught up with us and tried to put us on track again! This time I understood his mouth words and got us going along the right road. We pulled up on the beach in central Barcelona to see the beach and relax as we had been going for about 4 hours by this point. We headed out of Barcelona center towards Badelona where I knew there was a good cheap hostal, that turned out to no longer be so cheap. It was 150 euros for 3 people for 2 nights which was mad but we swallowed hard and it was a nice place to stay and was exactly what we needed after a week of sleeping on the hard ground in a tent. That evening we wandered to Badalona beach and got some grub and relaxed.
The next day had a simple plan, to just relax on the beach and tan. It was to be our only full rest day on the trip. We biked in and found a nice area that was busy and full of topless women and decided this would suit us nicely for a day. About 2 we got hungry and got some really nice pizzas on the beach. We then walked towards the harbour… for some reason I can’t remember and ended up meeting two very nice girls from Italy on a mini holiday between studies. They only had a few hours before their bus left and wanted to see the beach. We went back to almost the same area as earlier and then they didn’t go in the water which was a bit disappointing as we were getting on quite nicely, fumbling along with Spanish, French and English they understood the jokes we were making. After they made a departure I took us to see the outside of the Sagrada Familia, the oldest running construction in history and the most famous of Gaudi’s architecture. After a quick circuit I went and found out what time the fountains were on up at the palace. The lady in the gift shop said they were on every night during the summer so we headed up to see. When we arrived we found a sign that said they didn’t run that night but every other night was fine… we were not impressed however we did meet a short blond girl called Nina who after telling us she now had no “plan B” for the evening was convinced to dine with us by davids cheesy line “we can be your plan B.” It seemed to work on her and we headed off to find some munch and let her translate for us as she had studied Spanish in Barcelona for two years. After that we decided against better judgement to meet her in a different part of the city for drinks and she would let us stay over that night. She took us to the most tucked out of the way pub I have ever been too, down various dark, stabby allys, I did for a moment think she was leading us to her big butch boyfriend and his henchmen’s lair to rape and pillage us. But no there was a hold in the ally wall we went through and inside was the best, most basic pub I have ever been too, and it was made even better by 3 pitchers of sangria. The game she wanted to play was confessions, which she was remarkably good at and had us unable to leave our seats with both disgust and rod-ons on several occasions. After this we decided to head back to hers and were inevitably turned away by the door men to the hotel. So we spent some time in subway chugging water and eating to try and sober up. It was a great night and the cool wind on our faces once we did get on the bikes woke us and sobered us up just enough to get home in one piece.
In the morning we allowed us as much lay in as we could before getting ready to leave and make the long return journey up into France. We got onto the coast road and heading north got stuck in town after town going far too slowly so we hit a toll road for a while which, after 3 Euros and about 3 miles ended and we were back on the coast road. We eventually found the right way to go and got on a fast road towards the border. So we wouldn’t be charged too much we came off before the bored and crossed over on the small roads through a very busy little town. Soon after we were back on motorways and got back to Millau as the sun started to set. We stopped in a service station before the bridge and saw signs for a campsite which when followed just disappeared so we went back the 5 or so km we had followed them faithfully to find another campsite about 500m from the service station over a hill in the other direction. We had great fun with this campsite as there was no-one in attendance and the sign on the entrance said to call a number to ask for assistance. I found a button that opened the electronic gate and we joked that we would have had to call someone up and pay them just to press a readily available button on a post!!! Once inside we wandered around and called the number and eventually got someone to come and show us where we could pitch our tents. It was such an awesome campsite because it had a big boulder next to our pitch which I did a bit of bouldering on and set a route. I’ve no idea if it’s been climbed before but I was onsighting so it counts. I really wanted to go up the main overhang but without a boulder pad and with over 1000km still to ride I thought I would keep things simple.
The next day we got up early and headed out up the motorway to the Millau Bridge. It was glorious sunshine and we were so glad we had left it for the return journey. The view from the bridge is spectacular, but it is a motorway so there is no stopping allowed so you don’t get long on it. We pulled into the visitor centre just after crossing and took photos and said good bye to each other as David and Stephen were heading back to Calais and I was staying in France for another two and half weeks.
