Tuesday 21st July - Mt Canigou There was another way to make it up Canigou. There was a dirt track Col that ran up towards a refuge at Marailles that shaved a couple of hours off the hike to a more manageable 8 hours. But the track was not suitable for non 4x4 cars or for road bikes. Well the beemer should be fine - but I was unsure of my abilities. Actually it was quite good fun - it was basically a sandy track, deeper at the edges on the hairpin corners, with a mixture of rutted track (but dry) and large boulder like stones sticking out. OK if you picked your route. I am not going to pretend I was anything like fast up it and never got out of second gear, but I ... read more

Monday 20th July - Carcassonne - Vernet-Les-Bains Rather than take the autoroute via Perpignan, I elected to take a direct route folllowing La route de Carthars and over the Col de Jeu. Brilliant ride, although after yesterdays excursion the M25 would have seemed interesting so I may not be at my most objective. Once on the move the weight doesn't bother me too much and as long as it is dry you can still have fun. With the wind noise under control there is little to complain about the bike, save for a switch like throttle at low openings (necessitating over use of the clutch) and the most ridiculously inaccurate fuel gauge in the automotive world. You'd get a more accurate reading sticking your tadger in there. Would that make it a dickstip? (as opposed to ... read more

Saturday 18th July - Salon La Tour to Carcassonne Spent a couple of hours this morning in Uzerche, initially at some auto-retro jumble before ambling around the rather pleasant town. Not really into car boot sales myself, but some of the stuff on sale was amazing. The town deserved more pictures than are posted up on the blog, but uploading photos is slooow and as pretty as Uzerche was it was never going to compete with La Cite of Carcassonne for photographic brilliance. I set off late from Salon La Tour, 3 pm, but it had been nice to chill out for a while. The journey to Carcassonne was about 300km (I think), so not too far. I had to be at the camp site before 8 pm. Easy-peasy, till you figure in the summer Saturday ... read more

Thursday 16th - Somerset - Portsmouth - Caen (France) It had been an inauspicious start. Actually forget that it had been utter pants. Yesterday I dropped the bike. The old “forgot the disc lock was on” chestnut. Helpfully the lock was at its furthest travel from the brake caliper and with big ole 21” rims by the time it clanked into the calipers I was unable to control the thing and down she went. Right in the surgery car park. What a numpty! That was closely followed by some ridiculous last minute self adjustment of my glasses which saw me shear the arms off my spectacles. So I am without glasses for the trip. Don't ask me why I chose today to experiment with my optometrist skills, having successfully avoided doing so the last 20 years ... read more

Saturday 20th September Motorcycle boots, ski boots and I should imagine women's boots. You take your right boot off with your left hand and left one off with your right hand. So here's a riddle, how the f*ck do you get your left boot off when the ankle is broken and heavily swollen if your right wrist is similarly broken and completely useless? It would seem that the days that ended best were those that started badly. If the converse was to prove true then I was always going to end today calamitously. I had a simply magical motorcycling day planned. Head south to the Italian border along the Brenner pass, cut over the Giovo pass to Merano over to the famous Stelvio pass towards Bormio, then cut back up through Switzerland over some lesser passes ... read more