Day four, my final day on the road, began the same as day three, with the promise of improving, but unsettled conditions, meaning “a roll of the dice”. I head north from the lake taking another scenic single track. Somehow, the misty weather in this perfectly conveys the mystical Welsh atmosphere. I found the B4391 and it takes me towards England. Wales lives up to all its accolades and more. From stunning, fast sweeping bends, to narrow single tracks, the Welsh terrain encompasses all types of motorcycling pleasure with its majestic natural beauty added as a bonus. The people are extremely warm and welcoming, especially after they hear an American accent. On the way back to Nottingham, I make a small detour to explore some interesting roads in the Shropshire Hills. Mercifully, I was fortunate and ... read more

This morning it was raining as per the forecast. It’s never good when the weatherman uses words like Biblical and flooding. This was supposed to be fun, so I made a command decision that watching STNG and eating Cornish pastys out of a paper bag was more enjoyable than riding all day in the rain. The rain was supposedly going to taper off late in the afternoon, so I decided to go visit the home of Dylan Thomas nearby. A bit of a bohemian, by many accounts, Thomas was a bum, a filcher and a drunkard. His only redeeming feature was his booming voice and his writing, and boy could he write. He apparently made an impression on the New York beatnic scene, so much so that rock stars appropriated his name. In 1953, after another ... read more

As I make my way south, I re-enter the Rhone-Alpes region dominated by the Massif Central. The wonderful French D roads make me forget the problems encountered near Paris and all seems right with the world. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The French are master road builders although, every now and then you’ll find a harsh surface. It was on the second to last day of the trip that I would stumble upon probably the best road of the trip. The D-518 south of the Col de Rosset. While I normally hate working my way thru switchbacks, this one had a wide assortment of tasty twisties between each switchback making it thoroughly enjoyable. The final day of the trip would be another slab dash from France to Parma. The weather had a ... read more

From this point, I turn south and start making my way back to Italy. After viewing some of Vincent Van Gogh’s work in Amsterdam, I suddenly decide that it would nicely tie up lose ends if I get a picture of his gravesite. Brilliant! The only problem is that the gravesite is in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, within the 100 km of Paris, the so-called “ring of death” around big cities that I usually try to avoid due to their intense traffic. For some reason, this didn’t phase me. I made my way to Auvers and manage to track down the village cemetary. Sure enough, there lies Vincent or “Ici repose Vincent” next to his brother, Theo. Just a few feet away from his grave lies the wheat field he painted in “Wheat Field With Crows”. ... read more

I arrived in Brittany and found a nice, friendly hotel in Vannes along the south coast. Near Vannes is where you’ll find many megalith stone structures similar to Stonehenge, but on a smaller scale. The most famous of these are the Carnac stones, an array of stones whose meaning has been lost to the mists of time. After almost a week of perfect weather, as soon as I reached Brittany, the weather turned cold and damp, as is fitting of a region bordered by the Atlantic Ocean. Brittany lies at the same latitude as Victoria, B.C. and Newfoundland with similar weather patterns, mostly cold and wet. I never had the vents open on my stich the whole time. Brittany is inhabited by descendants of the Celts, who came here from Ireland and Cornwall. Up until the ... read more