Day 3 - No Pain, No Vin, No Boursin, No Petrol, No Glenn, No Pay

After leaving our idyllic French village, nice and early, we headed off towards Tarn Gorge and the Milau Viaduct.
Cool again in the morning, but ok.
Lots of miles to do again, but fuelled by the chewiest bacon sandwhich in the world, we were off.
We ploughed on through the miles and got to Tarn Gorge, what a sight, it was lovely and sunny so we stopped to warm up and have a brew.
Glenn by now was on reserve as his KTM does about 150 -160 , sometimes up to 180 metres before needing fuel, so we headed off down the mountain and up the other side then proceeded to get lost down a dirt road that went on for miles.
Still no fuel stations (when was the last time you saw a Shell garage at the end of a dusty track in the middle of the mountains anyways?)
so facing a forced camping evening in the bush, we pressed on hoping that going slow would make the fuel go further. I reckon it did, as we stopped, asked a Frenchy for directions , then turned back up the dead end to nowhere road that we had wasted mile after mile of fuel on, got on a tarmac'd road and found fuel. and headed to Millau.
After the bridge, which is quite a sight, we beat down the motorway for a few hours. At camp finding time (5:30pm ish) we headed down the motorway to get out of a major town, well that was the plan anyway.At a motorway toll booth, Glenda's machine didn't give him a ticket, and there was a split in the road about 20 metres after the booth. I got pushed out into the traffic and turned left. I always turn left.......dunno why.....
Dunno why, cos I was heading for Switzerland.
Glenn (who didn't have a map at all) headed south for Spain.

So what followed was about an hour or so of blind panic by two f**kwits racing up and down opposite sides of a motorway, one running out of petrol desperately and the other running out of small change. (It was a toll road and when you came off the slip road to turn around, you had to pay euro's)
Luckily and not by planning, we both brought mobiles, they both had credit, they both worked in France and they both still had charge in them.
The road was so confusing as it was being dug up in all directions and had contraflows, diversions and all sorts of confusing shit going on, it is an absolute miracle that our dipshits journey did not end there, with me meeting Glenn 2 weeks later in England.
But I found him.
He promptly ran out of petrol on the motorway and I had to sacrifice my precious SIG bottle to fill it up with petrol to put in his tank.
By now it was 7pm. We found a campsite, time was running out.
It was a nudist camp.
Of course, Monkey nuts was insistent that we spend the night there, but they wouldn't take us.
next time eh?
We beat past Perpignan and found hell.

Only we didn't know it was hell, at the time it was heaven
you know the feeling?

drove in past the barrier as there was no one around - loads of jippo looking types in shady caravans, near to the sea but a salty marshland hundreds of yards before the sea.
Got our lids off, started cooking, then it started.
And it didn't take long to get into full swing.
Mozzies
big as your f***ing car
They bit through my kevlar/carbon fibre motorbike gloves straight into my hand.
They bit me through my hammock and sleeping bag into my toes.
They bit Glenns head so it looked like a relief model of the moon.

I walked up and down the road as fast as I could, swatting and eating my dinner, Glenn decided that putting his tarp on his head was the best thing and sat like in some strange sort of swatting / eating meditation with a blanket on his heed.


The situation was dire, the plan decisive, and action swift.

1) we would get into our respective (crap) shelters quickly.

2) we wouldn't get out till dawn.

3) When we did get up, we were not going to pay to spend a night in this shithole.



The operation that occured at dawn would have put the SAS to shame.



(hell hath no pictures, this being the extremeness of the situation.
Would you get your camera out if I was running round after you with a cordless black and decker stabbing the spinning drill bit into your face when you stopped moving, like a kind of sadists musical chairs but without the option of punching the bastard in the face?)

Day 2 - Du Pain, Du vin, No Boursin

Got up early, quite a cold night, a bit dewy in the morning, but no rain.
We had a crayfish net in the river and were hopeful for brekky, but alas.......nowt.

Set off for Oradure sur la Glane, which is a town in central France which was destroyed after the end of WW2 by retreating Germans apparently as some sort of retreating revenge.
It is a very special place, pretty much left as it was , with only the rubble that lay in the road having been removed. It makes you feel like you're on the set of Saving Private Ryan, it is that haunting.
There are wrecked cars lying under rubble, Sewing machines left on windowsills and all sorts of home implements left where they lay from 65 years ago.

Twas a nice day so headed off towards the Milau Viaduct but only got as far as Miers.

Came off onto some nice rural roads and picked up some nice chunky (read rock hard) bread from a stall seller, along with the obligatory couple of bottles of red. Since Glenn is a wine snob, we got a 2004 Chateau Paillas and Chateau Bovila 2003 to keep us warm.

The bread was so sharp I cut my mouth.
There were trees though, so hammocking was the order of the day.
Glenn made himself Mcnoodles with his Mcknob hanging out (pic) but all in all it was a lovely peaceful evening, swinging in the trees, with a cockerel squawking it's head off in the distance in the morning.

Glenn discovered that after having covered over 300 miles, that he had put on his chain adjuster upside down, and amazingly his bike managed to start itself .

Day 1, The wrong Marie

So the planning stages have been and gone,
The plan: 2 hapless idiots, 2 motorbikes and 2 countries.
France then Spain.

Its April and the weather hasn't been doing great, we plan to hit ST Malo France on the 3rd, ferry from Portsmouth on the 2nd.
It started out as expected: A most monumental hangover.
10 Pints in the ferry bar with Garry Glitter who proceeded to get his harmonica out and strike up some random tune, despite the fact it was 2 in the morning and we were due to be up and rolling at 8.
We persuaded Shaun (not the real Gary as he would have got a monumental kicking) to come to Spain next year on Stepthru's, which is more of an indication of how pissed we were rather than our forward planning ability.

Got his number, if I do ring, I can't wait to hear the excuse for that one.
Anyway, got to our recliners after I trampled French students on the floor and got practically frog marched to my real seat by security after causing a bit of a stir as the place smelt of old people and piss (I maybe said it a few times and a bit loud)
Good old Glenn rolled me away from the ape found our resting places for the evening and we both hit the floor and snored like our lives depended on it.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Not big or clever, but got off the boat sporting a breath that could have spontaneously combusted, or at least caught fire from a Gendarme's fag, we blagged our way through passport control and I ragged off on the wrong side of the road around a roundabout backwards. Shortly followed by a quick u turn in the middle of said roundabout and a bit of tooting from our snail eating neighbours.
What a knob

We did approx 300 miles in 8 hours (where the hell did we go?) and arrived at a place near ST Romans Melle near Niort, mid France.
Driving on the straightest most boring roads in the whole world through agricultural France.
Just as well we were still pissed really.

Not as planned, all the campsites were shut. Oh crap.
Just as we were parked up at the side of the road in a rural area eyeing up an old ransacked barn and woodland for a spot of stealth camping, a Peugeot estate skidded up right next to us. With English plates as luck would have it.
Out steps a woman who introduces herself as XXXXXXX
How does it feel when you think you've landed on your feet, only to have them swiftly swept away and knock your teeth out on the curb?
she tells us we will be lucky to find an open campsite, then buggers off.
So standing like two dipshits in a dipshit free zone, what do we do?
Nowt.
Sit there and go back to staring at the woodland.
10 minutes later a Peugeot estate comes skidding in.
With English plates as luck would have it.
Oh, she's back.

Brought some salt have you love?

Nope, she says we can stay on a bit of land that she owns, just down the road turn left at the doodah, right at the thing and down the road a bit, then turn right just past the Marie. (being a village hall)

Long Story Short........Glenn took to being Gold Leader bless him, and took us through the same 3 villages (4 or 5 houses in each) 15 or so times, infact we made so much noise hacking through these tiny rural places, I reckon they thought the Paris Dakar had re-routed.
1 hour later and 2 or 3 phone calls to her, we narrowed it all down and we were outside the Marie, and so was she.
She was no where to be seen.

We were at the wrong Marie.

If I told you that even though Glenn described the old school house with the green gates, turn left at the doodah etc, and she said yes to all this, that we were in completely different places, but they all described the same....would you ever believe me?

When we finally did find her after another 30 mins, she led us to a fantastic bit of woodland with a river. Superb. But nowhere to hammock.

So pitching up the tarps to the deck we set about drinking cooking and eating.
Glenn pitching literally TO THE DECK
maybe needs more practice






He later revised his living conditions to more than 3 inches off the floor and we hit the sack.
Slept like logs, then woke up ready for the world!