Day 6 - Orleans to Calais...

woke up not feeling quite as bad as we have on other days...

jib sent out to pick up breakfast, before he gets grumpy. Takes some pictures of Orleans, including nice church

And statue of Joan of Arc (Orleans was her birthplace)

Also finds a protest (those Frenchies love a protest)

Gav now rigged up with iPod, can it get better than this... Sadly Gav's ipod requires much faffing about everytime we set off.

here's Gav faffing:




















and here he is 5 minutes later... faffing

still faffing...

So amazingly the rain has stopped, gav is now super jolie, but jibba is now complaining about something (Gav's faffing mostly)

travel through orleon and on to Paris, cock up the directions and end up on le peripherique, nightmare, jib getting more and more stressed with the tomtom making up strange directions and losing gps at crucial moments

out of Paris head towards Amiens, get off peage and have cracking little spurt on some country lanes, with the sun beating down. big smiles all round.

get to boulogne - get followed by some big gendarmes on motorbikes for a while, eventually mange to shake them off

find coast road from boulogne to calais - awesome. This is the sort of thing that we should have spent the last week doing. winding roads, hugging the coastline with barely a car in sight

Gav is happy. Jib is happy. A very good last hour indeed...

Now time for one last French meal and what better way to finish the trip off that with Steak Tartare followed by Moules et Frites...

Due on the 10am ferry the next morning, we decide Calais hasn't got much to offer and feeling like champions, go for the 11pm ferry and aim to finish the trip tonight. frantic rush, almost got on wrong ferry, get pulled over by customs and jib has his boot checked for PEOPLE!!!!

Ferry: caught
France: done

Family guy on iPad for crossing. Almost there:

Coffee & petrol then on the road again...

Arrive at St Lawrence Terrace at 2am, in time to see who will be running our country...

Quote of the day:
Jib: if it hadn't been for all your faffing we could have made it Cape Town and back
Gav: Fuck off and stop moaning
Tune of the day: Bill Withers 'lovely day'
Gupdate: happy happy happy. not grumpy or moany at all.

Day 5 - St Flour to Orleans

Nice start to the day - weather OK, feeling positive about the drive. grab croissant and coffee and get on our way. Within minutes we regret last night's statement that it can't get any worse

I mean seriously...

Visibility down to 30 meters or so, HEAVY rain. Snow on the ground... Fuck!

Get as far as Clarmont Ferrand and Gav reveals that his fancy biking kit isn't very waterproof, so we go in search of a motorbike shop. We find one:

Gav then gives 200 Euros to one of his gay biker friends for a waterproof "one-sey". problem solved. decide we deserve a proper feed and head for Bufallo Grill, where chicken wings, steak and salad (for Gav) are devoured.

Time to hit the road again and pray for better weather.

Denied!

Turns out that the one-sey isn't designed to withstand the worst weather France has EVER seen. Gav adds another layer...

At this point even Gav would have to admit this isn't exactly 'living the dream'. And spends a moment thinking about the nice big, comfy, warm Range Rover currently parked outside his house in  London...

Jib sets aircon to 22 and tries to decide between Marvin Gaye or Plan B. Goes for Plan B...

Before long, the rain starts to slow, and then even stop. Not long after that, the sun even shines. Joy. Although this does remind us what it would have been like had the sun been shining for the whole trip...

We head to Orleans and Gav's spirits are noticeably higher... he even managed a wave!!

Hotel found, we unpack with very little on Gav's mind other than a nice hot bath. Sadly there's bugger all hot water. Gav moans...

All that's left is dinner and we head out on the advice of the hotel manager. can't find the place he directed us to but instead find a lovely little French restaurant with good wines and lots of meat on the menu. proper, nice, tasty French food - Just what we had been looking for. Langostines/scallops and Puilly Fusse followed by lamb/beef and Pauillac. Dinner: DONE!!!

Quote of the day: Jib - 'Are you alright Gav"
                             Gav - "This is getting ridiculous"

Tune of the day: Gwen McCrae "It keeps raining"
Gupdate: was so very brave pushing through the ridiculous weather, but once the sun came out still managed to moan about being cold and wet.

Day 4 - Montpellier to st flour

Get woken by manager of hotel at 1pm. Shit. She didn't seem that impressed. Head throbbing, still pissed. Not a great start to the day. Get our shit together, head down, apologise and leave...

Find cafe where Gav tucks into to steak for breakfast. Jib has croquet Monsieur, manages two mouthfuls then moans about feeling sick. Bumble about and then get on the road.

Rain: check

Gav does good impression of Michelin man with every item of clothing possible. Jib sets air conditioning to 21. Gav discovers something worse than rain: freezing cold rain. Gav moans...

The roads through the mountains are amazing. Rolling countryside, rocky outcrops, chateauxs perched on hilltops, roads with bends, lots of viaducts. If only the sun had been shining... It's also pretty high up (1100m at points). Which brings with it more cold... Gav moans. Jib sets air conditioning to 23...

Decide that we won't make it all the way to our original target of Clarmont Ferrand and stop at the picturesque st flour.

Find a nice hotel in the square, with lovely lady manager who welcomes us warmly. Bottle of wine later and all is good.

Dinner: Gav opts for Steak Tatare

Jib opts for a salad, possibly the biggest ever known to man. Jib and admits to it being the first time he has ever been intimidated by a non meat based plate of food

Back to the room for movie, some laughing and remarks about how it can't get any worse.

Quote of the day: Jib - "I feel sick"
Tune of the day: Lets get it on - Marvin Gaye
Gupdate: Cold and wet (and moany)

Day 3 - Lyon to Montpellier

Hit the road, then pulled over at services for breakfast, and what a breakfast it was

Walkie talkies not charged so comms was hand signals only. Unfortunately we didn't agree in advance what those hand signals were. The result was gav very nearly running out of petrol

Gav waved at frequently by his gay biker buddies

Rush hour in Montpellier nightmare, park at station and walk to find hotel, first one we come to is fine, have room next door to Porno shoot, unfortunately not invited in

Have bath and glass of red wine, very nearly didn't make it out

Slippiest street ever, choose restaurant based on how fit the waitress was, turns out to be fit but had had her sense of humour removed. They had rack of lamb. Awesome. quite pissed by the time it arrives...

Three bottles of wine and a digestive later we head for Monday night nightlife. For a town with 70,000 students very few were out!

Play pool with random frenchies, drink jd and coke. Confidence high for speaking French. Manage to make some sense, or so we thought anyway. Aren't the French small...

Get kicked out of bar at closing time and head back to hotel royal. Bump into Vanessa Paradis, who invites us back to hers. We decline as it's late and she's not that fit. Back at room, Decide a nightcap is in order, so pile into the whiskey. 2 or so hours, lots of tunes and after too many whiskeys we pass out.

quote of the day - where is everyone?
Tune of the day: ...
Gupdate: Hammered

Day 3 - done

Day 2 - Reims to Lyon

Second meal in France: McDonalds
Followed by torrential (like, ridiculous man) rain. Seriously...
Gav don's second pair of waterproof trousers.
479 km

Make it to Troyes. beautiful old french town.

had our third meal in France. this time we did it proper like...

 The we decide to head for Chatillon-sur-Seine on country roads. The first proper bit of driving, and the sun even shone. A good decision

Chatillon-sur-Seine is another lovely rustic town

Then the weather turned. significantly. Manage to make it to Lyon here we thought, if it ain;t broke, donpt fix it and sought out another Premier Classe hotel. This time the room is even smaller than before. Gav moans about being wet. It went something like this: blah blah blah, rain, blah blah blah, cold, blah blah blah wet, blah blah blah

Medicinal Whiskey later and all is good. except the restaurant is closed. At that precise moment a pizza delivery guy turns up so we decide Pizza is the way forward. do what we felt was a good job of ordering, however when it arrives, our thin pizza is thick... AT this point, well lubricated, it didn;t really matter. What the snooker on tv in French and hit the sack.

day 2: done

tune of the day: Union Jack - Cactus
Gupdate: moan moan moan

Day 1 - London to Reims

Day 1:
280 Miles

average speed 50mph

Driving time approx 5.30 hrs

Car: check.
motorbike: check.
walkytalkies: check.
Everything else: not checked
Ferry: missed
Ferry: missed
Ferry: missed
Ferry: missed
Ferry: missed
Ferry: missed

maybe we should have got an early night...
Ferry full of dutch hells angels: Caught (Gav feeling inferior)
Jib buys a bag, which happens to come with two bottles of Scotch (honestly it was the only bag he could find). Happy co-incidence

So we made it to France, at which point Gav loses microphone for walkie talkies and we immediately lose contact with each other for an hour. back to old school comms: The mobile phone (which is impossible on a bike, bringing added complications).

Two rest stops down the road we meet up and work out that Gav can hear Jib, but Jib can't hear Gav, so we have to use yes no answers, with Gav sticking one leg out for yes and one for no.

Calias to Rimes:
Jib Soundtrack: various soul and funk
Gav soundtrack: nothing

Having intended to go West of Paris we, unsurprisingly were outwitted by the French road signage and ended up passing Paris on the East. If we had a tail (and you never know in France) we lost them...

Payage (our spelling) all the way.
Torrential rain: check
Soaked: check (well not Jib, he was toasty)
Moaning from Gav: check

PANIC: Gav realises he's almost out of Petrol. thus ensues a nervous 50mph crawl down said Payage... fortunately we make it. Phew! First real drama.

We arrive at Reims and fail to check into 3 hotels before finding the incomparable Hotel Premier Classe:

Shortly after which followed our first meal in France:

after which we returned to the hotel, where we thought this was funny:

Then followed twenty minutes trying to get a bottle of water from the vending machine (seriously, how hard can they make it), a whiskey or two and French X factor.

Day 1: Done

Gav update (from now on know as the Gupdate)

sore neck, sore shoulders. moaning

Quote of the day:
Gav responding to Jib's suggestion that they set an alarm that evening:
"No need. I've never not woken up"
Tune of the day: Plan B - She said