Catching up #4b: French Topping

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The weather as you can see just could not have been better! In fact I won’t see a cloud until I hit Carcassonne (spoiler).

As I leave Montgenevre and taste the tippy-top of France the roads remain amazing and I find my first rest stop after few minutes gawping at the mountains without crashing. This movie clip takes you to that stop and there’s some stills here too.

An absolutely beautiful picnic spot where I enjoyed some snaffled fruit and pastries smuggled over the border from Italia. After a while I noticed the Danger signs: you may have noticed them in the pics.

I’m a keen geologist and as I refocused from the mountain tops to the pad of grass upon which I stood I could quite clearly see some of the tell tale signs of creep. Slippage. There were clues suggesting that this vantage point was in the process of significantly reducing its vantage and advantage of high altitude. At some point the village down below would be significantly less so.

Then of course the danger signs and the red and white plastic tape across the entrance stated to make sense. Those Eurocrats again and their health and safety! It’s all gone mad I tell you.

Still, I had finished my pastries so no point hanging around here. Time to get back on the road and lap up those those twisties and head for Gap!

What the heck is Gap you ask! Well dear readers, Gap is near the top end of Route Napoleon! The french had very sensibly banished their heroic General Bonaparte to the small holiday island off the Italian coast famous for small, dry and mostly pointless toast – the island of Melba. Here, presumably angered by the toast, Napoleon mustered an invasion force of over a thousand Frenchies and marched them up the hill via Grnoble to Waterloo – and we all know how that ended.

That Route is now the N85 and my plan was to pick this up at Gap and head south – a kind of Napoleon Contraflow – towards Cannes. My B&B was booked at crossroads (no, not a motel) on the N85 about 70km short of Nice and the Frenchy Riviera.

 

 

 

 

 

And OMG – the bottom half got super twisty! Unfortunately I had burned all my film footage on the top half but oh boy this got exciting and it was full of crazy biker dudes just like me!

There was a bunch of fat bastards on roadhogs that were going hell for leather and they passed me just after Castellane so I gripped hard with my knees, relaxed my shoulders and steered with my arse cheeks to keep up with them… and keep up I did although I eased of briefly when my left toes scraped along the tarmac on a steep bend… but I was soon on their tail again.

I passed my B&B by five miles before I realised I’d overshot and I had to let the fat boys go. Back at the B&B I pull in and go sit down on the veranda where a bunch of degenerate-looking bikers a swilling beers. As it turned out they are all accountants and solicitors from Basildon, apart from the lady who was a local whore. Lovely people – here they are driving off with the prossie.

The owner of the B&B comes out and guesses I am her new guest (they only have three rooms booked that night) – she’s English and very excited as I am the first ever English guest they’ve ever had! They have only been open for a month having bought the place in February. Her and her husband moved from Marseilles: she’s the business brains having done that kind of stuff for years and he was some kind of maintenance man… good combo… until I meet him wearing the chef’s outfit. Nevertheless for dinner that night I choose his special – a kind of beef stew, Provence local dish. I must say it was bloody marvellous.

A couple turned up on an old Triumph that was falling apart on holiday (as it happens) from Marseilles and whilst he was doing some running repairs on it we have a bit of a chat about where to go next. My plans are to visit the Pont du Gard and the Millau bridge at some point but he shows lots of good places in the Pyrenees!

His choice of motorcycle should have rung alarm bells but I get suckered in and the Pyrenees via Carcassonne started to get me all fired up. I would live to regret it but I make a last minute booking for a B&B in Nimes which would allow me to visit the Pont before looking to the next set of mountains down South. I plan the route and sleep well.

Damn it – in the morning I discover I have booked a hotel for the wrong month and have to find something else – which took ages and meant that I was so late setting off that I needed a whole new (shorter) route! Blast, things unravelled a bit… but that’s the next instalment!