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300 odd km around the Puisaye and Jovinien ( west and north of me) just put "300km" in the "loop" section of KURVIGER on the puter and let it generate a route. transferred direct to the "me-phone" for use tomorrow when the girls team will have left for a long weekend with mother in law. I then looked at the weather forcast and discovered that the forcast for tomorrow is 40 odd by midday so I dug out my phrase book and found the page marked " sod that for a game of soldiers" and abandoned the children for the afternoon today cos tomorrow I will be mostly lying flat on the tiles of the living room floor with all the windows shuttered! La Puisay, open countryside mostly arable and windfarms untill you get over the other side and start down towards the Loire when it becomes marshy and decidedly medieval something for the religious and for the historians ( s'funny that the french word for a fortified tower is Donjon, wheras the same word in English, "Dungeon" means the exact opposite of a tower...) I even managed to find a cooling splash for the tigers tyres...

the GPS mount on Flames broke a couple of rides ago and i havent gotten around to fixing it. Besides, i dont really like crutches like that, except for maybe following a BDR, or the CDR. So, i let Lu ride, an adventure all on its own. I'm not sure what skill you need to correctly use a GPS, but i'm pretty sure that skill is either missing, inverted, or broken in Lu. But, we usually seem to have the most fun following his lead, anyways. Lu is on the right, GT (from Nashville and now my brother's neighbor) is on the left. This is in front of brother's main garage. some of the brother's acreage, looking west. His shop is just visible on the left side of the pic. The gem of this little 10-acre piece is the shop. The former owner built dragster motors, so he needed some elbow room. (brother has a bike sickness, which is contagious. i'm not sure how many he has now, but it has hovered around 12 for quite some time. he is lucky in that his wife rides and some of these are hers) View looking northeast We had a great meal at the neighbors, lots of laughs and then finally off to bed. I think. I might have been overserved and am mis-remembering details. But, who cares. Next - mother nature tries to remind us that this is the year of whatever can go wrong, will............

Decided to take the 650 out tonight for a stomp around the valleys, ended up on a disused railway line probably for taking the stone from the quarries it passes through. The flat topped mountain in the background is called the Sugar Loaf and stands at a massive 596 m LOL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Loaf,_Monmouthshire I think I've post photos of this place up before but was just passing through with a mate so decided to have a look around tonight. When taking this photo i spotted something i wanted to take a closer look at Cool a cave the old man in me said move on next thing i'm looking down on the bike. A bit disappointing looking around but i'm sure Pete's mate could sell it LOL Stopped to take a photo of the old iron works in Blaenavon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaenavon_Ironworks And a ride up over the British heading home, in the distance is the Bristol Channel and Bob land

I decided to get out for a road ride today as I shall be starting back at work tomorrow after being out for 4 months due to the covid situation. So I was thinking where to go and in the end plumped for a loop around the River Severn, over to Wales, up through the Wye Valley and back down to home via Gloucestershire. So a blast along the M4 and M48 to get to Chepstow and then up the A466 for a stop at Tintern Abbey.............. So I carried on up to Monmouth but the place was shut ? they were diggin up the High St and there were roadworks everywhere so I gave up trying to get to the spot where I was going to stop for a coffee went back over the Wye and up into the Forest of Dean........ I by-passed Ciderford and took a back road through Blakney which took me past Soudley Ponds. This was a new spot to me so I stopped and had a walk along the bank, there were some big Roach cruising in some of the shallower parts...... I carried on down to the A48 and headed north until I got to Newnham where you can get some good views of the upper reaches of the tidal part of the Severn.........

Going as fast as FLames can, we actually shaved about 17 miles off the Google Maps distance. (mileage at mom's) The woman what welped me. 89, virus survivor (with NO hospitalization), with her 83 year old boy-toy. He was hospitalized, but as you can see there were no ill side effects. Sample of mom's world famous chocolate cake and off to bed. Part two of the ride north was scheduled for the next day - Boise to Stevensville, MT. See ya, mom! with less than 400 or so miles to do to MT, I didnt have to take off early, but the heat of the day convinced me to eventually get going. The route: Along the way, the overheated buddy from SoCal texted me his location and we decided to meet in Challis for lunch. He got there about 20 minutes ahead of me, but found a good little watering hole, the Challis Roadhouse. With the Covid stuff happening, each area and each state seemed to have different takes on what you could or couldnt do. Pretty much everyone was doing takeout for food, but this place was more along the lines of "we aint dead, so come on in and sit down and have cold one". One of the guys at the bar turned out to be a pro rodeo rider and his very good looking mother was the bartender. Of course, the rider's name was Ruger! (sorry, no pics of mom :() Ruger's been doing this insane stuff since high school and is currently recuperating from hip surgery. I guess we found something even stupider than riding motorcycles.

My 89-year old, covid-surviving mother (yes, i have one, Bruce) lives in Boise. I had plans to ride thru Boise on the way to Montana, and wanting to maximize my riding time, i decided a one day jaunt from SoCal to Boise was the only way to accomplish that. its only 865 miles and i've done it once by motorcycle and three times by car. I think i like motorcycle better, but not by much. An early takeoff (4am) was set and the plan was to meet one of the other idjits about 40 minutes east of home. I woke that morning at O dark 30 to a text saying "I dont think i will be able to have the bike packed in time in order to meet you". No biggie, except this was from a guy who had all week to pack his bike?. As i said, no biggie. For this kind of run, i actually prefer to be solo. I can explore, stop when i want, drive my own pace, etc, etc. Kind of the reason we ride motorcycles to begin with. The upside is that my buddy, leaving later, chose to ride to MT instead of Idaho, which took him out thru Las Vegas, Mesquite and Cedar City. So, why he was wilting from 120 degree weather, i was enjoying better temps that might have maxed out at 92! Score. Lu's opinion on the temperature differences ? while he was still nestled, all snug in his bed, i was experiencing no traffic, cool temps and this kind of scenery Being a mad dash to Boise, pics from this leg of the trip are few and far between. I did find a new route along the way, stopping to take a shot in honor of Ghost Rider - Neil Peart The route from my home to mom's The new section, for those who dont like crowds:

So on up to Gloucester where I used the ring road to escape the traffic and then up Birdlip Hill and into the Cotswolds to find some roads like this...... I liked this bridge over a stream at Cowley because of the deorative railings.............. So I did some more back roads and then stopped to eat my sandwiches here............ Eventually I came out on the A435 near North Cerney and spotted this really old church............. I took some more back roads to bypass Cirencester and then the A433 down to Badminton and back home. I really enjoyed the ride but it wasn't exactly very warm for July but apparently it's going to hit 30c on Friday so we'll probably all die

I think this is about 2014, Corfu hire bike. The bloke let me try a few different bikes around a little test track to see which I preferred, but given a choice I will always go for a Suzuki (No Excuse) DR350. No room for jacket and boots in the old suitcase so it was t-shirt and trainers and keep the arms tucked in when passing between brambles. Riding through the twisty hill villages with a very loud pipe is weird, the old people all wave and smile as you pass them sitting outside. Over here they snarl and ring the council, not that I have loud pipes myself, the quieter the better for me on my own bikes.

Oh me too, i love roads like that, partly the shade of course...?

I think the existence of things like the ticket booth helped to give it that vibe! But nothing so far has been as creepy as the hat in the bar in Gorafe.

Ok, ok, i can see you are all chomping at the bit by the way you voted from my most excellent bike picture at the Continental Divide sign, so here goes: We (AGALOS - see above) try to get together once a year and do something that either ends up epic, or EPIC. After doing this for 14 years, it was bound to happen. And, in this year of the kung fu virus, i guess this is a better time than any other. I should have known by the number of illustrious idjits backing out of the ride (planning of which started back in March) that something would be amiss. But, since i've never been accused of being too intelligent, i went ahead and set up this year's ride. Originally, the plan was to head to just north of Elk City, ID to sort of finish the IDBDR (Idaho Backcountry Discovery Route - dirt roads thru a state) that we started a couple of years ago. But, as the start day approached, mama nature started sending signs, which in hindsight should have been a clue. This was our road into northern Idaho: Undeterred (another word for "stupid") we pressed on with Option 2. We decided to ride the Continental Divide Route, a series of mostly dirt roads that run from Canada (eh) to Mexico (si). As my brother lives in Montana, that was our pre-arranged meetup point. Of course, as it turns out, since the only riders who actually went were all from SoCal, we could have just started anywhere.

Looks like a nice ride, the road through the forest is my favourite, go figure.... ?

Well, you see, there are Bi Bars, and then...

Great pics Bob, that church looks like middle ages, though possibly post renaissance ( 13th -14th century) or something like that. There's plenty older churches around in eastern england but don't know your area at all from that point of view. Thanks for the pics.

When you ride tour bike around the front of the station were you making 'whoo whoo' noises in your helmet ?

Guy up the street from me left his garage door open last night and had a visitor open up his garage refrigerator for a snack. His bikes were okay though

ohhhh....boots, love me some boots, good shit kickers with a bit of sole. ? I'm a fan of Alpinestars, mostly because I can afford them.

Yes that's what i like about living here the hills hide allot and can give you a feeling of remoteness even though its not. Your never far from a road and all the dumped rubbish reminds you of that

Nice one Fred, the Dog is looking as cool as ever There was a XR650L on ebay last week, it was fairly low mileage , had lots of spares but was using a bit of oil and smoking on start up. I'm gutted as it went for £1900 , trouble was it was up near Glasgow, that's why I didn't bid

After moto-touring for 14 years, something had to have gone wrong...eventually. These will help set the stage. Little tribute to Neil Peart

Despite scorching temperatures I went to check out the abandoned railway station in Gor. And even though I'm 66, I don't let little things like heatstroke, dehydration and physical exhaustion interfere with rugged individualism. Like all the other stations, Gor was closed on 31st December 1984! No restoration done on this one......so it was the real deal! I really liked this one because I could get inside to do a walkthrough.......real Twilight Zone feel to it. Watch the vid to get the vibe! First.....here's the updated map! A green spot denotes that it's been visited!

Beautiful countryside, I wish we had old buildings where I live. Eastern Canada is better then the West for interesting old buildings, but nothing compared to what you see. ?

This station seems slightly more creepy then the rest, must be so fun to explore. ?

Great ride report, that cave was fun ? Beautiful countryside as well.

Cool stuff!

That's cool, I only asked because offroad pictures from Wales always seem so remote.

Cool stuff, how many miles did you do offroad?

Great shots Fred......Blaenavon Works looks pretty impressive still.

Great stuff Chris.......the water is a bit disturbing though. I'd have had to turn round and go home! And I think English gets Tower from the Spanish word Torre. Spanish for Dungeon is Mazmorra........so they went with your Donjon for Dungeon cos the Spanish one was too hard to say.

Backrest to complete your new bike

I know that area well......I lived in Chepstow from 1997 to 2001. And most of that time I commuted to Gloucester and Cheltenham every day because I was managing Computer superstores there. The Foresters are the truly the thickest fuckers in the UK. Some used to come into the store looking to buy computers and they couldn't read. I actually had to read out the product description on the display card for them. No....I'm not joking.

It even looks hot in the pictures.

We have a bobcat that hangs out in our front yard from time to time, he's a fat bastard, too. Haven't got a lot fo good pics of him as he's always here during low light times; early morning, late evening. Don't see them much in daylight.

The problem is they let the white bears go free with just a warning, while they drop the ban hammer on the black ones...

Frequently. When we get home at night from dinner or whatever, the wife doesn't waste a lot of time between the car and the front door. I won't call her a chickenshit to her face though.