MooN

If you go to Jax shack in the dordogne, gimme a shout...

the problem with getting to Brittany from here is that the autoroute adds so many miles that any time benefit is completely lost. I go via autoroute in the car cos its just so easy, cruise control etc etc but its still around 7 hours. The non autoroute way by bike will be around the same time frame with less kilometers and not 45€ of péage...

Who's planning what for the coming summer riding wise? Any epic road trips in the planniing stages? I know Pedro was looking at a northern ride into Germany... The French, in their inimitable way, have maintained the practice of having what the uk call a bank holiday, on the actual day the date falls rather than on the nearest Monday. Though this sometimes give a random day off in the middle of the week, it will sometimes, when coupled with one of the "movable feasts" of the Christian calender, generate a ridiculously long wekend. It is then, a national sport, to spot these occurences and calculate how to get the most time off for the least number of days "paid Holiday". I have always said that you ca't get anything done in France in the month of may and 2024 is a blinder 1st of may ( labour day) is a wednesday so a day off mid week 8th of May ( V.E.Day) is rather obviously, a wednesday. 9th of May ( ascension) so another public holiday 11th and 12th are saturday and sunday, which means that if I book friday 10th May off from work I'll have 5 days off for a single day's leave from work. That's got to be bike time right? So, planning with a couple of mates,a Britanny trip for that looong weekend in May. Auxerre to probably St Brieuc on day 1 which will be bollox boring as far as Rennes but we can do without using the Autoroute. about 6 to 7 hrs riding I reckon. St Brieuc to Le Conquet along the coast on day 2 much less distance but very minor roads so much slower. Day 3 from Le Conquet to Lorient, along the coast but cutting across the odd peninsula to avoid the worst of the holiday traffic and pausing to visit the Standing stones at Carnac and the tomb of Bernard Moitessier at Le Bono on the way round. Day 4 from Lorient to somewhere like St Brévin les Pins again along the coast and day 5 from there home will be a simple but long days ride west via Nantes, Tours and Vierzon, crossing the Loire at Bonny sur Loire and thus home. should be about 2000km over the 5 days and I don't know if I'm physically capable of it. Gonna try tho cos its not going to get any easier with time First night is now sorted and the following are coming together, so... Bring it on!

yeah but there's 5 of us, which means two hotel rooms for 5 nights and car is still the cheapest way for us despite the bloody crossing costing 160€ each way. it,s also doable in a day's drive for us from here. less so from where you are.

Thats because a horse and cart has less to check…

I usually grt the info from one or other face book page or via a FFMC mailing.

Car mot’s and now bikes are every 2 years here. Car cost me 60€ last time.

that,s why I wont buy anything Nissan. Renault are shit, crooked money, govt backed, dishonest, rip offs.

oh what a pile of shyte! I thought they enlu had those in France... 45km/h max and no licence... 38tonne semis obliged to overtake the bloody things on the narrow N roads causing all sorts of mayhem, drivers usually completely pissed or so moronic as to be incapable of passing a driving test. I HATE them!

I expect that I'll return to honda when this one dies, but won't be for a few years yet I hope. Goodness knows what piles of semi electric poo wil be available in 5 or ten years from now though.

we wanted to visit my parents for Christmas, Mum's 92 now and Alzheimers is getting steadily worse, but there is just no way we can afford accomodation in the area for 5 of us at that time of year (last year at nearly 2000€ for 5 days nearly killed us) so we're not doing anything for Christmas but are saving for a uk visit in feb when we can have the same accomodation for five days for just over 800€...

France has, until this year, avoided having an MOT equivalent for motorcycles. they have now invented one, and have somehow managed to take all the stupid bits of everybody elses MOT or equivqlentand roll them into one pointless surperfluous and inefficacious bi-annual visual inspection. The statistics ( these are generated by the French "Sécurité routiere" organisation who are rabid anti speed, anti motorcycle road safety advocates and remain incontested by the govt. and ratified by the majour insurance companies) - the road infrastructure is directly implicated in 25% of all road traffic acidents. - in road traffic accidents involving motorcycles, The fault is imputed to the motorcylist in less than 40% of cases. -the number of motorcycles on the road has increased by 30% in the last 5 years. -over that same period the number of mortorcycle deaths has decreased by 20%. - Mechanical failure or defect is implicated in less than 0.5% of accidents involving motorcycles. Now I have nothing, as such, against a regular MOT type test if it can be shown to be beneficial. it can't. the govt has just announced how the test is oing to work ( bearing in mind that this is supposed to be in place for january 2024) and it appears that the test centres will not be required to have anyone on their staff with a motorcycle licence! The staff will be required to undrego a 1 day raining course on how to carry out the check, and this will include instruction on how to move a motorcycle around the workshop and " instruction on how tp pick up a motorcycle should you drop it". Needless to say, this raises some eyebrows, not least those of the insurance companies who maintain that if you do not possess a motorcycle licence, and you damage it whilst in charge of it then any insurance would be void... Is it only me that can see some charges of GBH on the horizon here...? anyway, yesterday afternoon, despite temperatures around 0 c we went and made some noise and fucked up some christmas shoppers saturday afternoon, to display our discontent. we stopped in front of each of the main MOT centres in town. They were closed of course but it was easy enough to set their alems off with a couple of bikes up against the building and half a dozen backfires... this fucked up their day as they then have to get someone out to shut the alrm down. It should be mentioned that the police ;otorcycle escort managed very successfully to be busy at the other end of the convoy whilst this went on... as that last pic was taken, the camera battery succombed to the cold, which was a shame cos as we started to move on one of the dozen of BMW GS's refused to start and had to be assisted by a guy on a 1990 Honda transalp... of course i laughed like a drain suggesting they were using the Honda to carry out a " reliability graft". 30 seconds later, Karma struck and the tiger refused to start. Victim, I suspect, of an hour at idle speed with heated grips on full power. The convoy dissapeard down the road and I started to ring Mrs Moon to bring me some jump leads ( i've never tried to push start the tiger and wasn't about to start in the middle of town in saturday afternoon traffic... Then an angel came to rescue me, one of the FFMC outriders ( either a girl or a guy with very pretty eyes...) had seen me pull off to the side, guesse what had happened, ridden forward to a colleague she knew had a booster in his top box, and bought it back to me. Luckily the battery on the tiger is easily accessible under the seat so we started it from the booster and I followed her to catch up with the main group. The battery seems fine now so ai can only think that it was the heated grips drawing more power the the constant idle was providing charge to the battery. the battery is at least 6 years old so it may well be on it's last legs as well. After the group dispersed I rode into town with a mate and we found a bar in the centre square that was doing christmas ale and mulled wine. On top of that, the landlord announced that he give a 10% discount to motorcyclists at the weekends. Result! got home well after dark and with temps down beloz freezing. Lukily the ride home was nly about 5 km so no real challenge. I don't expect the demo will have the slightest effect on the installation of the new technical inspections set up, but at least no one an acuse us of not have protested from the beginning.

I love how they declare this a win for the uk tourist industry...

My grandfather had a copy of that painting hanging over the staircase in their house when I was a kid. never knew it was Dali.

What with storm Ciara and then Domingo the atlantic depressions and the shitty weather they generate here, despite being 500 kilo;eters inland fro; the atlantic, were causing my own minin depression so I said " merde!" to it and profiting from an easing of the wind and rain, geared up and went for ride. I actually managed to dodge most of the rain, though not al of it, and rode on either bone dry windswept roads or half flooded windswept roads having arrived after the deluge. In fact, it was all so windswept that I have a windswept hair look INSIDE my helmet... I managed to do 140 ish km mostly around the backroads. I took a couple of pics while it wasn't raining. 12 century North gate in Joigny

shit weather here at the moment, been hammering with rain and blowing a bloody hooligan since wednesday evening. I had planned on going toTroyes on wednesday ( bank holiday) but it would have been foolish to be out on a bike in what they forcast for the evening and I coulsn't have got home before the eastern edge of the depression reached us so I cancelled. Still blowing hard today so no riding either. hoping it will have blown through by tomorrow so i dont have to spent the entire weekend inside.

Why does this not surprise me?

I did manage to get out for a couple of hundred km this afternoon, I rode the back roads up north as far as Nanteau sur Lunain ( long story...) had a coffee in the local boulangerie / café and a chat with the owner and then took the route nationale home. Weather was shit, windy with rain showers. I got the first rain shower about an hour into the ride and though my gear is water proof the temps dropped with the arrival of the rain so I pulled over at a bus shelter to add the thermal liner to my jacket. Heated grips and new winter gloves bought in Dijon last week, made the rest of the day positively bearable. Great wee bus stop, complete with free library!

Blimey Pete, if i could afford a van…

Probably cos im a complete arse off road so i ride reeeeeally slowly…

I have a stunningly interesting and exciting weekend planned if you must know. This morning I have defrosted the fridge !

he said "mate"...

yea, we're just not telling you about it.

I haven't submitted anything to BOTM for a while cos all the rules about size and shape and post production and when and where and how and who meant that you basically have to take a photo specifically with that in mind. I don't. This one happens to be the right shape, I don't have photoshop and I don't think I made any adjustements to this one before saving it.

Hi Dany, welcome in, I'm sur Pedro's has warned you about some of us. ( it's all true...)