Another superb food snaffling session fills my lunch bag with treats and meats; the French Riviera sun is beating down from another cloudless sky and I’m packed up and ready to navigate Montpellier to find DocBiker pour le chien and then cross country (no motorways!) to Millau viaduct.
My plan was to use no sat nav and my little post it notes made me proud to arrive outside Doc Biker without a wrong turn! Typical French mechanics can’t speak English but I nevertheless made my requirements abundantly clear suing impeccable French. They did not have what I needed. As it turns out I visit three bike shops during my tour and none of them have oil for an automatic chain oiler like what I have. The chain stays dry. It will have to cope.
Au revoir to the kind Doctor (actually I don’t think he was a real doctor) and I head off north through the city (which looks quite nice actually) to find the D65, D986 and then the funky road that would take me all the way the wonderful D999!
And this was a great drive – but it went up a level when I entered the green patch – the maps helpfully label France with these green bits to show the most interesting places. I got especially excited on the off piste section I planned that took me north through La Roque to ensure I entered Millau from a good angle to see the bridge I was after.
This place was nestled in a brilliant gorge and it presented a beautiful picnic spot under a bridge by a wide clear stream (the thing responsible I suspect for the gorge in the first place).
And here’s some helmet footage of the arrival into La Roque and spotting this place.
Whilst basking in this place I was joined by a fly fisherman who you will spot in one of the stills above if you look really closely. He comes here for trout and to escape his English wife who was born in Rochford, Essex. At first he claimed she died there but after he mimed childbirth I corrected him. Silly man.
After my snaffled lunch I hit the lovely road again towards Millau and before long I was astounded to see the damn thing. Geese it’s enormous.
The pics and film are taken from a spot right below the bridge where the French have built its very own visitors centre. It opens later in April according to the sign but that didn’t stop half a dozen disappointed souls turning up to go in and then slinking off again.
One couple from Belgium with whom I had a delightful Brexit conversation with that strayed even to the Trump-Farrage combo we delighted in seeing after the event, had travelled 1000km from where they were staying on holiday to visit the centre. It wasn’t open and as as they say in their part of the world, “Da Rulsh are da rulsh” so they shrugged went off to see if they could find a way up onto the bridge. I though about doing that but time was getting on and I knew I had a fair old run to make before it started getting dark – remember I now only have a pair of sunglasses with the lenses that help me see – Carcassonne was my next station stop. And it was still a long way away.
I planned to stay within the green for as long as possible and work my way south and west to Castres, then due south to Carcassonne. Unfortunately I got carried away on the top section and before I knew it I was almost in Albi, knackered and worried about how long things were going to take. Here the bad planing gremlin caught me by surprise and I turned on my sat nav looking for the place I was going to sleep that night.
Blast – it, I should have got a proper map out and in future I always will. But that little plastic bastard took me this way and I just followed it. Never again.
Later that evening, when I realised the route I’d sat on bored for hours when the direct route south from Albi would have taken no longer and been infinitely more entertaining I was really cross with myself again (like the Cannes/Nice affair).
What really got me annoyed however was realising that in listening to the idiot with the Triumph I’ve ended up at a place in France that couldn’t really be much further away from Calais and I only had 3 days to get back up there! Tomorrow will be the 11th and I needed to be on the train early on the 14th to make it home in good time – I needed to be able to pick up my long lost wife and kids at Heathrow at 7am on the 15th awake and in a car.
The Pyrenees were so close and yet might as well have been in Australia – I simply did not have the time to see them if I want to avoid a gruelling 8 hour + motorway run to get me back north. Oh yes – and I still needed to book the train back!
That bad planning gremlin had made me spend hours getting south that I would now need to re-trace! Bugger. On top of that I am now about to stray off the proper road maps and rely on the Big Atlas. Planning just got low res.
Booking.com helps me find two places that will correct my overshoot – one just north of Bordeaux and the other just north of Le Mans near Alencon. From there a B&B an hour and a half away from Calais that I had contacted last year in early planning was reachable and yes – they had a space and offered a tantalising four-course dinner with a proper Full English! Oh yeah. That place was in the heart of WWI Somme territories and next door to Lochnagar crater. I reckoned I’d just have time to see it before heading off to Calais. I also book my train for 12:30 to ensure I can make the sights and get back to Blighty with plenty of travel time.
So for the nights of the 11th, 12th and 13th my plans looked like this with a mix of motorway and off pistes:
Note that this will mean I’d have completed an almost total circumnavigation of France!
I was not looking forward to retracing my motorway steps back up past Toulouse tomorrow and missing out of the Pyrenees but I had to cover the ground. Gritted teeth and Normandy spirit needed again. Ironically Normandy (or as the French say incorrectly “Normandie”) will come into the story – as those readers with an eye for detail will already have noticed.
As I prepared to have an early night I heard four roaring motorcycles blast through into the car park below… amateurs I thought.
The Bonehead's Guide to Advanced Motorcycling 
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