Leaderboard

been planning this trip for a while but with no definite parameters for a number of reasons. The idea was that, I've wanted to do the "gorges du Tarn" for a long time and that ties in nicely with Millau and the suspenders bridge. Once I'm that far south I'm only a mornings ride from our Base at Capestang on the Canal du Midi. That could tie in with invading @Tango's personnal space and drinking his coffee ( well it'd be rude not to...) as he's not far from there. Once that far south I'm too far for me to ride home in a single stage so back home via the Gevaudan and the Auvergne with an overnight stop somewhere in the Puy de Dome. I still don't know wether I am physically capable of the distance (using very little autoroute) and I haven't done 8 or 10 hour days for a loooooong time, That and the weather forcast is mainly why i'm keeping theplans fluid cos if I find it's just fucking miserable and / or painful then I shall stop and re adjust the plans accordingly ( the Joys of riding alone) Plan A is this ( ish). wednesday morning to Clermont Ferrand ( I know I can do this, cos I'e done it before in a small group. about 4 hours afternoon: millau via les Gorges du Tarn. spend the night in Millau and then an easy ride down to Capestang where I'll stay on one of our boats and, if they've let him back in the country, say hello to @Tango ( can you PM me a phone number mate? that way I can let you know if i've copped out, or call you on thursday afternoon to meet up.) Friday, still a bit vague and will depend on motivation and weather but something basically hesding north with with the autoroute as the escape route if needed overnight stop around Ambert or Thiers. Then more North and home on the saturday which will just be a slog cos from Vichy North I know the roads having ridden them many times already. Unfortunately no real escape route here as returning into Burgundy and the land that time forgot and the world passes by. I'll try and take some pics if the weather's not too bad. about 1500km in all.

So right now I have a claw hammer, spare set of gloves, can of coke, my tabs, wallet, phone, hi vis vest, wispa bites....... You asked i told

There is a fly in the ointment , I've just gone in the loft and realised that I sold the tank a couple of years ago On the bright side, the o/e plastics are still like new.

Nice fields, buying booze is a nice theme for a ride, I do it often

I stayed there in 2012 , it was run by some Dutch people when we went there. We pulled into the coutryard on our bikes and as soon as we got off we were handed a beer They had a good band on as well on one evening .

An online reference to a local legend of dancing witches being turned into stone trees got me searching out more information. Sure enough the place existed and only about 18 miles away from where I live. A bit of a search on GSV showed that you could drive as far as a small medieval church and then walk through the grave yard and around a small moat to see the trees. Also mentioned online was that the trees were on private property and you had to walk around them on public footpaths. I found the road leading into a farm and the church. Straight away I saw signs forbidding vehicles to pass a certain point on the road, not to turn around there, not to park on the verge, not to park on the road, keep all dogs on leads, walk only on the footpath, keep out of the fenced areas etc, I have never seen so many signs in one place. I suspect the ruined trees are all that survived from a once lush wood, all the trees being turned into wooden and paper signs. I parked a metre off the road in an area that was once grassed verge but had been scrubbed out by vehicles leaving the farm yard and cutting the corner, just next to a sign saying No Parking. I figured if the verge was private they would have put their fence around it so it was part of the road and there were no properly legal No Parking signs, they were just bluff and bluster. Leaving my bike I walked through the church path gates. This was heavily signed, forbidding everything you could think of, plus a few things I hadn't. I made a note to try these things later on. The path turned a sharp corner and there was the abandoned church, fencing surrounded it with, you've guessed it, plenty of signs warning me to be good. The church looked fantastic, I will be returning when it is open again, the sign people look to be doing a good job fixing it up so I shouldn't really have a dig about the signs. I walked through one of the smallest graveyards I have ever seen and in front of me was a gate (multi-signed of course) and a short path to a second gate, also signed. I could see the tops of a few creepy looking trees the other side of a hedge. A quick loop around the moat and I was on a grass path next to the trees. I took a few pictures and carried on to a ploughed areal with a cross field path and took a few pictures from the side. It is a bizarre site, the trees are obviously dead but haven't rotted away like I'd expect. There are lots of new trees which looked recently planted. When I returned to my bike I was just getting ready to leave when an old man came cycling up and we had a chat. 45 minutes later he was still chatting. He had the uncanny knack of never finishing any sentence before starting the next one which made him quite hard to follow. Subjects he covered included, the Battle of Maldon, Viking raids, the manufacture of pressed house doors in the 1970s, shift and night working, Anglo Saxon coinage and the cost of cycle inner tubes. In the end I told him I had to leave for an urgent appointment and he rode off to look at the church I had just left.

I wouldn’t trust him in a pig trough.

I think billy's waiting for his turn.

That's me out of the picture! Thank fuck!

I took a run out to bed the new rear brake pads in. Headed south to check out an abandoned building. It's actually called Soutra Aisle and was founded as a hospital 862 years ago. That was 616 years before the USA existed. It occupied a large site but this building is all that remains. After that I headed cross country and explored a few single tracks until I saw this in a village called Bolton. I'm guessing it was an old mill bit it has been converted into a house now. nice crypt in the churchyard. After that I headed back through Haddington and on to East Linton then Dunbar. I noticed both East Linton and Dunbar had quite a lot of electric vehicle charging stations which seems out of place. I headed to the harbour in Dunbar which is overlooked on one side by the castle ruins and the Battery on the other. I went up into the battery and enjoyed the outlook into the North Sea. then headed home.

This is most of you Twats....

Short but interesting. https://www.advrider.com/is-hydrogen-power-a-possible-future-for-motorcycles/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter-04–19-2022

The underslung exhaust is hideous, the tail light is a thing of beauty.

Stock DR650s with new plastics look great, if the plastics are nice it might help it sell better?

Someone got a discount at the health and safety shop when buying signs!

Who the fuck would be stupid enough to buy this POS? Oh, hold on, here he comes now…….

@Mawsley front room

Ive only been through Clermont Ferrand once but what a shithole, quite surprising for France .

yeah I'll only be stopping for lunch at Clermont, pshing on to millau for the night if I can make it.

well according to meteo France, it looks like I'll be riding into rain tomorrow and will be playing dodge the thunderstorm by the evening. Thursday doesn't look too bad, showers but nowt worse. Friday I'll be running north trying to keep in front of a storm front coming in from the south west, which I hope will go through during the night otherwise I'm going to have a really shitty day on saturday. Still, it's better than they were forcasting a week ago so maybe it'll not happen... OH, @XTreme,

.......I opened this place.....expecting it to last a couple of months till the lockdown ended! But we're still here! Incredible! I've usually fucked it all up by now! Yes.....the standards are low! And yes, just like all the others It's become a hangout for losers, perverts, and twats who just happen to have bikes! Most of whom have now reached the geriatric stage! But the way I look at it is that losers, perverts, and twats who just happen to have bikes should have a forum where they can feel at home. The deadly serious professional motorcyclists don't think much of this place as you know......but we can't be every thing to every man. But at least we're real! Which is a rare commodity in the world we live in now! Can we stumble through another year? Well you can't bet against it can you?

Its alot better than being stuck indoors all day

I heard it’s summink about Stu n Six covering themselves in marmite, wrapping each other in clinglfilm and being paddle boarded by a dwarf.

Hey at least I've found my calling in life instead of wandering through the mortal coil wondering why I'm here

I like to see our granddaughters ( nice when they bugger off home too ) on regular basis, the elder ones (16 & 18 years) are a joy, the 7 & 11 year are a bit of a handful, but could not imagine not seeing them...........so @XTreme do what you have to do.

He still won't say why his ban was rescinded and the other guy's wasn't! I reckon he threw some cash at Stu to get out the sin bin! What you say @Slowlycatchymonkey?

all your good at is hitting a prostitute on the head.

Is that all you got.....think I've hit the nail on the head What you think @XTreme

twat

I'd say we should make a subscription here that way he can feel at home with paying for this shit and he may flounce from here too

there's another place?! why wasn't I told?

you mean its two years since you spat your dummy out and flounced from the other place .

Some dirty bastard hung his underwear up to dry on them I suppose, done for them all.

Because you are a ginger twat.

That Triumph is a real minter!

i was on face ache for a very short time just recently and i wasnt that impressed i binned it and i dont think i will be bothering again i would sooner be on ordinary forums

Here’s mine … with a grom ..

behold we are the unwanted rejects

Interacting with @Buckster till the end of my days wasn't really a dream of mine Tym. And now we've got @Six30 and @Mawsley to add to the mix! Why do I end up with all the people that no other forum wants?