h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Didja miss me?

We was away for 10 days on the big bike to the South of France (and back, obviously...)

I appear to have written a small book of notes en route, so more will follow, but the highlights included:

Videoing our trip across the Millaud Viaduct
The switchbacks around the Gorges du Tarn, inclduing a pair of eagles swooping in front of us
The Pyrenees, and the little town of St Girons
Bergerac, and its picturesque old town
La Baule, on the coast (cw Bastille Day fireworks)
Mont St Michel - especially watching it illuminating as dusk fell.


Oh and the food and wine was superb, natch.

welcome back tinker and is looking forward to the postings

definitely looking forward to the trip report, so get cracking, missus!

Bergerac? But you said France, not Jersey

Millau Viaduct
Any chance of bunging that on u-tube?

Any sign of nighthoover amongst our friends over the channel? So did you bring back any food goodies with you?

Smelly cheese?

I always like it when a friend of mine heads over to the continent he brings back the most fantastic smelly cheeses cooked hams/meats/salami/type things and forign booze

Have just typed it up on Word and it's 6 pages long!

Souvenirs are a bit tricky on a motorbike, so sadly no smelly cheese nor delicious wine made it back across the channel in our paniers...

I'll try to stick both the videos (Millau, plus the Gorges du Tarn with eagles) on UTube, but that may take some time to figure out. Full report in next post.

Saturday 7th July.

Departed Lisburn 9 am. Weather pleasant – odd light shower, but good enough riding conditions. Onto the boat at Rosslare at 2.30, and immediately bumped into a former work colleague. Queued to book dinner and breakfast in the restaurant, and enjoyed some drinks at the bar accompanied by the ‘entertainment’ – boy, that Riverdance has a lot to answer for! Evening enlivend by a school of dolphins leaping alongside us for a good 20 mins. Since it was 7/7/07, and we were staying in lucky cabin 777, we decided to risk 77 euro on the casino pontoon table. And of course lost the lot. Oh well, it was fun living out our James Bond fantasies for a while. And intrigued by the Roumanians beside us playing three hands simultaneously. Cabins on the boat are tiny – the walls are made of tissue paper or a derivative, the cover seems to have formerly been a handkerchief, and the pillow had more in common with a breadboard than any feathers. Do people never fall out of the top bunk in a rough swell?

Sunday 8th July.

Great breakfast in the restaurant – saves queuing at the café, and at 14 euro is good value compared to the same meal elsewhere on board. Recommended! Captain announces half hour delay with an excuse that sounded akin to ‘the wrong kind of sea’. We gave each other a despairing look, knowing that we had a long journey ahead of us, and that we’d told the hotel we’d be there about 8. Tricky getting into gear in the crowded stairwells, and standing around fully geared up in the bowels of the ship I could empathise with oven ready turkeys. We zoomed off the boat into a sunny Cherbourg, and were instantly struck by the good roads with little traffic. France is very bike-friendly – every passing biker gives a cheery wave, a thumbs up, or a rather comical shake of the foot. We stopped at a Buffalo Grill just outside Le Mans, and were treated to our first experience of French ‘customer service’. Despite there being people seated in the ‘fumeur’ section, we were shown to a non-smoking table, and when I asked where we could smoke was told ‘outside’. Had to press the waiter again and ask in my rather rusty, bizarrely accented and grammatically all-over-the-shop French if there was no way we could move to the smoking section, at which he sighed and reluctantly moved us. We continued on the autoroutes – I had my handy credit card in my handy right forearm pocket, which made passing through the peages a breeze. Then the rain started. Heavily. The eta on the GPS jumped to 9 pm, and I phoned the hotel to advise them, only to be met with more French hospitality, as I was warned 9 pm was the maximum! Zoomed as fast as poss through the driving rain, and got to the Hotel de la Poste in Culan on the dot of 9. Had the first of many many delicious meals – I had the sandre, a fish I’d enjoyed many times in Luxembourg, but which seems unknown in the UK, while R had a steak and what he pronounced as the best mashed potato in the world.

Now R’s French vocabulary was limited to what he’d gleaned from war movies, so, conscious that an inopportune ‘Ventrez les canons!’ might spark a diplomatic incident, I decided to put new Foreign Secretary Milliband on speed dial…

Monday 9th July

R’s previous visits to France had been limited to theme parks, so on this his first morning in a typical French village, the little switch on his back seemed to jump from ‘Tigger’ to ‘Japanese Tourist’ setting, as he wandered off photographing every church, side street and crumbling auberge. It was all I could do to stop him photographing the space-invader shaped electricity pylons. The weather was much nicer so we changed to dark visors and continued down the A75, the meridian autoroute that takes Parisians to the Mediterranean across the Massif Central. We exited at sortie 40, and headed for the Gorges du Tarn. Our first view of it, approached from the top of a tableland, was nothing short of jaw-dropping, and we hunted out the camcorder to do justice to the vast expanse of steep rocky cliffs sweeping as far as the eye could see down either side of a tiny river meandering at the foot of a 300m high valley. Wow. Just, Wow. We snaked down the mountainside to find the jolly little town of St Enimie, where the GPS had told us that the Hotel du Gorges du Tarn was. Drove up and down the main street – nope, no sign. Asked at the Restaurant du Gorges du Tarn, who said that yes they used to be a hotel, but no more. Since we’d booked into an establishment of that name for 2 nights, I was becoming concerned. I asked for help at the tourist office – as I read out the phone number that I had, they stopped and said – but that’s in Florac, about half an hour’s drive from here! R was determined that we were staying put, so we phoned a few local hotels until we got a room for the night at the Chante Perdrix, about half a mile out of town through a rather spooky tunnel, with openings onto the river Tarn below. I phoned the other place in Florac to explain why we weren’t coming, hopefully they wont stick us for a deposit. We strolled through the delightfully tacky tourist shops, and invested in a fleece for R, whose view of the prevailing weather conditions was proving optimistic. We dined at the Hotel de 2 sources, and booked a room there for the following evening. Oh look, more sandre on the menu! Hurrah! We had a few drinks at the rather deserted Bar de la Digue (weir), before making our precarious journey home through that footpath-less tunnel, admiring the illuminated rock faces, and the array of stars in the sky.

Tuesday 10th July

Set off on the 906bis which hugs the foot of the gorge for about 20 miles. I wondered how this place compares to the Grand Canyon, and why it isn’t better known. I’d seen the term ‘Causse’ on the signposts, and hadn’t recognised it as meaning cliff or hill, but some research told me that it was a specific geological term coined to describe these limestone tablelands, the word being derived from calyx, Latin for lime. We oohed and aahed our way over to the town of Millau, and the information point under its famous viaduct, designed by Norman Foster and opened in 2002 to knock an hour off the journey of all those Parisians en route to the Med. It is certainly a masterpiece of engineering, and is the highest bridge in the world. We bought a T-shirt and a sticker, attached the camcorder to the front of the bike and then headed off to cross the beautiful slender mile long bridge. I cried with joy as we did so. We then took another twisty road up the side of the Causse Noire, and lunched on rather fine omelettes with Roquefort at an auberge, narrowly avoiding a Dutch International Incident. Montpelier Le Vieux is a collection of amazing rock formations, but it’s a 3km walk around it, so we gave it a reluctant wave goodbye and headed back to St Enimie. On our road back, we stuck the camcorder on again to capture some of the grandeur and terror of the winding roads, and as luck would have it, as we rounded one corner 2 large eagles swooped in front of us. We arrived at the Hotel des 2 sources just as the rain started. The nice man at the hotel made us each a welcome espresso. He’s not French, I opined. Italian, as it transpired. Wandered the cobbled back streets and found the most wonderful jewellers, with pieces inspired by Picasso and Kandinsky. Honestly, I could’ve bought the entire shop, but restricted myself to a necklace and earrings in amber, gold, and black obsidian. Souvenir shopping is kinda restricted on a bike, but luckily enough jewellery doesn’t take up a lot of room. Also bought a green pashmina to wrap around my neck against the wind. The rain got very heavy and was bouncing off the road, so we chose an indoor restaurant for that night’s meal. I spotted Eau de Vie de Gratte-Cul on the menu, and asked the waiter if that was really what I thought it was (my translation being ‘scratch-arse’), but no, he smiled wanly and explained that it was the name of a local fruit that eeked its way through the sparse soil on the cliffsides.

Wednesday 11th July

Up at 8, R got an extra croissant off the nice Italian bloke, and we debated various routes out of the gorge. Since it was raining, we let the GPS decide, and she took us to the Viaduc again, where we stopped and compared notes with a couple of Triumphs. French autoroutes are extremely efficient at getting you from A to B quickly, but can be boring. Not so the A75! After Millau, it swoops and sweeps down off the Massif Central offering tantalising glimpses of little towns on either side. As we approached the coast there was a definite change in temperature, and the smell was that of warm sand and peaches. We stopped at one point and R noticed that the exhaust had come loose. As I took out my earplugs on removing my helmet I was almost deafened by the troupe of cicadas in the olive grove beside us, vying with the trucks thundering past. That little tool kit R had packed proved a god-send, and in 20 mins he had made the necessary repairs and we continued through Limoux, famous for its Blanquette, a sparkling white wine. Checked into the Hotel Cartier in Quillan, parked the bike beside a Harley in the locked garage at the rear, and found a bar on the market square just as the stalls were packing up. I bought myself a new belt to hold up my trousers which were, like the old joke about the Frenchman’s trousers, Tou Long and Tou Loose. R spotted an English transvestite playing a guitar, and we enjoyed the ambiance in some sunshine at last! As I tipped out my sunglasses from their case I discovered my Bluetooth phone earpiece, which had gone missing a fortnight ago. Shows how long it had been since we’d seen that big shiny yellow ball up in the sky. We were tempted by the promise of a rooftop terrasse, with views of the foothills of the Pyrenees, and settled down for another fabulous meal of monkfish wrapped in chorizo. R decided we should have a bikers meet here next year, and started phoning all his friends to tell them of this brilliant plan. I could hear the phone company’s shares go up as he worked his way through his contacts list. Quillan didn’t seem to have much in the way of evening bars, but R did try and strike up a conversation with an old French woman, asking her ‘combien est le chien?’ when trying to ask how old her dog was. He was starting to explain the significance of the 12th July to Ulstermen, when I thought I’d better drag him to bed before I had to call Milliband again.

Thursday 12th July.

Some of us were a little hungover! Nice local preserves with the breakfast – green tomato chutney which went down a treat with the cheese, and watermelon/lemon, and pumpkin/orange. I think the GPS may have been a bit hungover too – surely the D115 would have taken us straight there? But no, she decided that we need a wee wander now and then through the gently winding roads around the foothills of the rather pointy Pyrenees. Through a 2 km tunnel at Foix, and on to the charming little town of St Grions, where 3 rivers meet. We checked into the Hotel Eychenne, a fabulously beautiful old post house, complete with a swimming pool. As the sun was shining we decided that a quick stroll around the town, followed by a dip in the pool sounded rather perfect. The restaurant at the hotel is very very good, and we dined on St Jacques, grilled turbot and nougat glace, and some wonderful local cheeses – Brebis we’d tried the night before and adored, and here we were introduced to Bo-Ma-Lo (River Baup? Check spelling). Our neighbouring table was taken up by a group of wiry legged cyclists, eagerly discussing that day’s stage of the Tour de France.

Friday 13th July

Don’t know if was the date, but I was ready to invent a new crime by about lunchtime – Sat Navicide! I wanted to ignore her after we’d got as far north as Agen on the autoroute, and take the N-something to Bergerac, but no, she insisted on a selection of D roads, very pretty going through fields of sunflowers, but at one village there was no pleasing her – every one of the 5 possible roads out of the place resulted in an ‘Off route. Recalculate?’ My ass cheeks were aching, my ears were ringing, and I really wanted to look at a map. Exasperated, I got off the bike and accosted a wizened local and sorted out which way to go. Good job my rear end is made out of something not unlike those memory foam pillows, so it bounces back into shape readily. Down through the vineyard clad hills into Bergerac and Hotel du Commerce. Once we’d worked out what the parking restrictions were, it being Bastille Day the next day, we left the bike right outside our hotel room window, changed into T-shirts and shorts and set off to explore. Croque Monsieurs, ice cream and a glass of Bergerac at the café beside Eglise de Notre Dame, and then a wander through the very picturesque old town, with its little cobbled streets and timbered houses. Found a bar where joy of joys they had both vodka AND coca light, of which R had been painfully deprived on the trip so far. Me, I was in my element with the choice of wines. R’s tum was starting to rebel against this diet of rich food, and so we just had a pizza before going back to the hotel, where I grabbed his Gobbler’s Knob and he began a long night of dashing between bed and loo. As the night wore on, we were both growing concerned over how we were going to do the next day’s ride – one of the longest of the trip at over 500km on autoroutes.

Saturday 14th July. Bastille Day.

Up early – that medicine we’d got from the pharmacie seemed to have done the trick enough for us to get underway. Skipped breakfast in the hotel as the gendarmes were pacing up and down outside setting up barriers for the parades later on. We stopped to refuel, and I had the WBE moment of the holiday (Worst. Breakfast. Ever) - Tea from a coffee machine that came with a head…not pleasant. The traffic was noticeably heavier, especially round Bordeaux, but most of it seemed to be going in the opposite direction, and at about 4 we had reached the Hotel Christina right on the promenade at La Baule, a rather swish seaside resort set on a 6 mile bay in the Cote d’Amour. In order to get the bike round the one-way roads that ran off the prom, we waited till the cycling gendarmes had finished arresting some poor sod before riding a few metres down the footpath and round the back. Found a little bar to sit in and watch the world go by, while I had half a dozen fat oysters and a glass of Muscadet. Strolled up and down the main shopping street, and then looked for somewhere to eat. Quelle horreur! Everywhere was full. Bastille Day, you see, all the tables had been reserved in advance ages ago. As a last ditch attempt, and because R was enjoying seeing the staff crack up laughing when I asked for a table, I tried a little Italian place on the seafront. Now, maybe it was my super polite use of the conditional tense ‘Auriez-vous une table?’ Or perhaps it was because, in an effort to conserve what clean underwear I had left, I was going bra-less. Whichever, the patron showed us immediately to a table where we enjoyed tagliatelle with scallops and a couple of glasses of Chardonnay. We returned to the hotel, took our drinks up to the rooftop terrasse and had a perfect view of the Bastille Day fireworks on the beach. Woken at 3 am by a thunderstorm, complete with hailstones. Damn, should’ve covered the electrics on the bike!

Sunday 15th July

Best breakfast of the holiday – there was even some hot stuff available, in the shape of omelette and bacon. Now, R had been keeping today’s destination a secret – a surprise as the last night of our trip. In the distance I could see the distinctive rocky pyramid of Mont St Michel, and joy of joys, we were booked into the Hotel de la Digue, with a view of the Mont, silhouetted against a big bright Breton sky . We were in time for lunch, and I tucked into a plate of grilled sardines, while R had cheese and bread. On biting into a mouthful, he discovered a large metal pin. ‘This is not what I meant by a staple diet!’ he said. The weather was hot and sunny, so we zoomed down to the Mont in shorts and T-shirts – motos can park very close to the entrance, and with helmets tucked into the panniers we were free to wander the steep little streets unencumbered with gear. Mont St Michel is an amazing higgledy-piggledy agglomeration of cobbled walkways and miniature stairwells winding up to the abbey, with its gold statue of St Michael perched precariously on the spire. Noting the times of high tide – at which point the car park would be underwater- we made our way up to the welcome coolness of the ancient stone abbey. 8 euros entrance fee, and 6 euros for 2 headsets which give lots of detail about the long and fascinating history and architecture of this world heritage site. Pilgrims walk around the mont, watched by firemen/ lifeguards who are familiar with the tidal bore that rushes across the sands. As we made our way back down from the abbey, a voice said ‘Are youse from Belfast? I though I recognised the accent’ We compared notes on our trips, and said ‘bout ye big lad’ to her boyfriend, who poked his head around the door but explained he couldn’t come out cos he had no shirt on. R was out of his cigarettes, and we could find no tabacs on the rock. Asking a few other shop-keepers, we were eventually informed by an old crone who hissed behind her hand – try the Chapeau Rouge. Mission accomplished, we rode back to the hotel just before the rain started, and got on the outside of some of the local cider. We had booked a table at the hotel across the road, the Relais St Michel. The meal was mouth-wateringly good – I had a massive plate of seafood including crab, oysters, prawns, winkles and whelks. It was also eye-wateringly expensive – but a drink on the panoramic terasse with its view of the Mont as dusk fell and the rock was illuminated was unforgettable.

Monday 16th July

A sombre day – it was the end of our holiday, the sky was leaden grey, and R wanted to see some of the famous and moving WW2 sites on the Normandy coast. We started with a brisk scoot back down to the Mont to take photos with the tide in, and to get some information on the on-going work that is being done to restore the maritime setting of the rock. We watched a few of the salt-marsh dwelling sheep as they made their brave dash across the road in front of coaches full of Spanish and Dutch tourists. And then we set off to Arromanches, where the Allies had constructed a floating harbour for Operation Overlord, before following the coast up to the massive and pristine American military cemetery, sited above Omaha Beach. From there it was but a short hop up to Cherbourg, where we put our lessons learned on the outward bound leg into practice: I leaped off the bike and left R to argue with the crew about how close to the wall the bike could go, and baggsied a corner seat in Molly Malone’s bar, with a thankfully not-too-good view of the stage. As we settled in for the night, we realised that we had only a handful of euros left, since the Worst Garage Ever had refused to take credit cards because of the storm. So it looked like we would be relying on plastic for everything this time, and giving the casino table a wide berth. We got chatting to another biking couple who were intrigued by our Gobblers Knob, and compared notes on fuel tank sizes and spectacular roads. Very sensibly we went to bed at 10, where we were rocked to sleep by the rather lurching and heaving seas. The boat would give a load groan every so often, which caused me to open one eye wide and hope that the bike was OK.

Tuesday 17th July

Only a slight delay due to ‘unseasonably wet waves’, but in the 20 seconds that it took us to get the bike off the centre stand and away from the wall, the crew had allowed the ramp for the next deck to come down, so we were trapped there for a couple of minutes. Good job neither of us is claustrophobic. Off into rainy Rosslare, through the rather damp vale of Avoca, and onto the heavy traffic and roadworks of the M50 round Dublin, up to the border to the first garage we saw for some much needed Regal filters – R is the only man who takes fags with him when we go abroad to cheap-tobacco-land, and he’d exhausted his supply a couple of days earlier and was surviving rather testily on Marlborough Reds. ‘Home sweet home’ he smiled as he inhaled deeply.

Note: The Road to Gobbler’s Knob is a book by Geoff Hill, a Belfast travel writer who road a Triumph Tiger along the Pan-American Highway from the Southern tip of Chile up to Alaska. I gave a copy to R as a thank-you for his support and encouragement while doing my bike test, and we both enjoyed reading it and extracting endless comedy from the title.

Wonderful, B

I've been to a few of those places and it was lovely to see them again through your eyes.

Glad you explained about the Gobbler's Knob. I was rather wondering what that was about...

woohoo! nice hols tinker

nice essay, there. thanks

Umm... Shouldn't it be Passepartout?

I'll read the account later as I'm currently experiencing a headache, but welcome back B.

Am a bit upset about the lack of smelling fromage and le vin in the paniers though, especially knowing you and Dia the Death's fine nose for a good bottle. May just have to float some up the Lagan next time I visit Lisburn then.

Sounds good - I'm amazed how much distance you were able to cover, wouldn't want to do all that in a car...

Quillan in particular brought back a few memories - last time I was there it took me a week to get from there to the coast (but I did walk...) It's a really nice part of France.



sprout

Never been to France - sounds like the grub alone is worth going for.
Gobbler's Knob, eh? Reminds me of a whisky called Knob Creek, sometimes just Knob for short. One time I went into work, after a bit of a heavy night, only to be met with the unintended innuendo "We all know what you were at last night - you stink of Knob!"

It was rather a lot to do in 10 days (8, really, if you take off the ferry overnighters.) But a great recce trip for the future.

Photos are still being sorted, and we have got the video footage onto my 'puter, so just need to edit it and add a suitable soundtrack before popping it on UTube.