Not sure if anyone here is interested, or where to put it but here's a write up of my trip to the Pyrenees and Alps, this year.
8th June
Meet Adam (05 ZX-10R) about 9 miles away and then onwards to Sutton Scotney Services on the A34 to meet Mike (05 GSXR1000K4) Mike and Adam have not met before. Eek!
Then down to Portsmouth to pick up Britanny's St Malo ferry.
Plenty of cider then to our cabin for a few hours shut eye.
9th June
A mainly boring day using the french Motorways (Peage) to get to Biarritz on the border with Spain. 480ish miles cruising at about 110 with 4 fuel stops. We start to wonder why there are millions of trucks spilling out of the Services onto the motorway as we head further south.
It was sunny all but for the last 30 miles where there was light rain, not really enought to get you wet. We pitched camp at the Municipal campsite and retired to the bar for beer and pizza. Thunderstorm during the night with instantaneous thunder and lightening, which was an improvement on last year at this site when there was a full blown hurricane!
10th June
Let the fun commence!
Slight problem, as usual, finding the right road out of the Biarritz area but once on it we all go a bit mad at the sight of perfectly surfaced, twisty, empty road. Ahhhh.....this is why I own a motorbike.
After one particularly mad section we drop down into a little town where we sit on a wall and I have to have words! Mike announces, with a broad grin, that he's never ridden a bike this hard before. He also asks for a cigarette. (He only smokes one cigar a week!)
After a mostly glorious day we arrive in slightly damp Biescas in Spain and head straight for Camping Gavin. (Better than a 5* hotel!) This is right at the start of the awesome N260, a road designed by a man who owns a motorbike. It threads it's way from here for over 500 KMS through the mountains right to the holiday resorts on the Spanish coast just North of Barcelona
We have Bread, cheese, onions, ham etc for tea, washed down with a bottle of wine each and as much beer as we could drink. We know we are on holiday as we munch our way through this rather odd picnic.
I notice snow on the tops of the surrounding mountains which has usually all melted by June.
June 11th
The day starts wet, so we decide to stay for another night in this lovely campsite. We want to ride the 260 in perfectly dry weather which is forecast for the next day. The sun does get his act together and we get perfect blue skies and decide to head to Brotto along the 260 for lunch. This is Adam's favourite section. We continue a bit further along but run into a shower so head back to camp to spend the rest of the evening relaxing in the sunshine by our tents. We learn from a friendly Dutch camper that there is a blockade of the French Spanish border by disgruntled the Spanish lorry drivers, protesting about the price of derv. Cheese wine and beer for tea. We accidently bought a bottle of local red vermouth......it looked like wine in the shop and was rather nice!
June 12th
Fully loaded again, we head along the 260. Adam is v happy. After Brotto there is an awfully bumpy 15 miles which ends abruptly under a bridge to miraculously change into ultra fast racetrack smooth new road for about 40 miles. You can really max your bike out on this section and hold the throttle fully open for ages before swooping, sweeping 150mph corners. Just amazing and one of my favourite bits. We head up one of the passes for a looksee but it's bloody freezing at the top so we just take a couple of pictures and go back down to a little town we passed through and stop for lunch. We end up tired and hot in Sort and stay in a campsite by a fast flowing river. Whilst munching through a fresh selection of cheese Mike announces that he's never ridden a bike like that before.
June 13th
We head out of Sort and continue East. Mike wants some new gloves so we head into Andorra to visit some of the biking gear shops. We have a lovely lunch in the town centre and then head for the shops which are closed for siesta! Time is against us as usual, so we decide to head on. Mike looks slightly glum. At the tops on the way out of Andorra it is so cold we stop for pictures of the snow and to put an extra layer on. Brrrrrr.
We pass back into france briefly before haeding back into Spain and our beloved N260. It starts raining so we put our wet weather gear on hoping it will stop soon. It doesn't. This part of the 260 follows the tops of the mountains for about 50 miles before dropping down into Ripoll.
As we start to climb the rain gets worse and worse, the road is as slippery as hell and we can all feel the bikes sliding, both front and back. This is hell on 2 wheels!
We watch as a thunderstorm blasts it's fury around us. It's the first time I've ever seen lightening from above and still been on the ground! Aching, traumatised and wetter than an otters pocket we pull up under some shelter in Ripoll. Mike's gloves have leaked blue dye all over his hands which now look like dodgy Maori tattoos. (Sorry Mike, I wish we had waited for those shops to open in Andorra! )
Not knowing what to do, we find a cheap hotel in the town and check in.
After a nice meal, several beers and a few bottles of wine, things don't seem quite so bad.
June 14th
Fully breakfasted up, for a change and with sunny skies we set course for Lloret de Mar on the coast where we stop for an ice cream and watch the chavs on the beach for a bit. There is some sort of Goldwing gathering going on here, millions of the bloody things.
We then head North up the coast road to Tossa de Mar (quite apt, I thought) where we have the shittest paella in the World and look at some more chavs.
Adam has arranged for us to stay with a friend of his in a little french village just outside Perpignan, so we bid Spain farewell. We park the bikes outside the village bar around the corner from the house and sink a couple of frosty ones before having a very nice meal in the village restaurant.
June 15th
We get on the Peage and go north past Orange to a road I know which leads to the foothills of the Alps, the N94/994 to Serres. This road is brilliant, very very fast with corner after corner and great vision. The ZX10 was made for roads like this and it was one of my highlights. We stop for a smoke in Serres and Mike announces that he's never ridden a bike that hard before!
We head down to Sisteron and people keep flashing coming the other way, so it makes a change to admire the scenery rather than concentrate on the road. We see 2 cops with a laser gun hiding behind a farm house about 30 miles later! Thanks Frenchies!
After pitching (we stay here for 2 nights) we ride into Sisteron and order 3 giant take away pizzas and ride back to the campsite with them on our tanks.
After a couple of bottles of wine we are all so tired we head to bed not touching the beers that Adam and I had spent our next days breakfast allowance on.
Jun 16th
The Route Napoleon or N85 took us about 150 miles down to Nice. I've ridden this road before and not rated it highly for some strange reason but this time I absolutely loved it. It's another made for 1000cc sports bike road, very fast and swoopy. You can never get tired of the howling, growling and snorting of a ZX10. Ace!
We took a more torturous route back to Sisteron arriving back there at dusk. This mountain road was amazing, we all boiled our brake fluid. When we stopped for a smoke, we all said we'd never ridden a bike as hard as that!
Pizza for tea again as everywhere else was closed.
June 17th
Time to start heading back home. We chose the twistiest looking roads going in the general direction of St Malo. You really can do some amazing riding in the French countryside.
We got soked again riding some more high altitude roads and only got as far as Le Puy where it cheered up briefly before hammering it down for several hours. I had to move my tent as it ended up in at least four inches of water. We'd bought our cheese and stuff from the supermarket along with a now traditional bottle of Vermouth, 3 bottles of wine and some beers and munched away and got pissed under cover in the washing up area of the campsite.
June 18th
Dawned sunny and beautiful. We laid stuff out to dry out and had a very late start because we'd drunk too much the night before to drown our sorrows. (Lucky we didn't drown ourselves!)
More twisty roads were chosen and we saw snow on the top of the Massif Central where we stopped with a beautiful view to finish our bread and cheese at lunchtime.
The late start and twisty roads hampered progress and we decided to call it a day at about 1930 but we had trouble finding a campsite, which is unusual in France, generally. When we did find one it was closed so we snook in camped and fucked off again before the opened in the morning.
June 19th
Fast blast back to St Malo, where we spent some time looking at the German fortifications that were blasted to fuck in July 1944 by the Americans. A truly amazing and humbling site.
June 20th
Ferry back to Pompy.
We did a tad under 3000 miles. The Pilot Power 2CT on Mikes GSXR wore very well and much better than the Diablos on the ZX-10Rs. Adams was absolutely bald in the centre and quite a bit worse than mine for some reason.
My chain is totaly knackered now and my 10 is 300 miles short of 20,000 miles.
I took 1000 Euros and came back with 70 but I did buy all my petrol with cash.
Sorry if this is too long and boring to read, by the way.
