Day 1 : Monday 9/7 Continental Escape

It's 10pm last night and my dear wife Jo suggests that I may not sleep too well because I am all excited about the forthcoming biking trip. How right she was; I was due to have the alarm awaken me from supposedly deep slumbers at 04:00. As it was, I was awake most of the night and got up at 3:45.

My Eurotunnel was at 6:20 so, leaving at 4:40am I enjoyed the deserted roads with the dawn clearly breaking over Kent. One poor baby rabbit did not fare so well; indeed he had an intimate encounter with my new Michelin Pilot Road 2 from tyre; I only hope that it was quick.

I boarded the train on time and arrived in Calais at 8am. Meanwhile, my pal Dave on his K1200 GT BMW, was readying himself to leave his house in Bordeaux and meet me in Blois. A storm in the early hours had him up early and he had planned to leave at 9:30am; taking a max of 3 hours to reach Blois. However, Dave had problems; he left on time (good !) but his sat nav started to play up. Dave returned to the house to get the destination details printed out. He started out a little late and, low and behold, the Sat Nav started to work again.

My journey down to Blois had been meticulously planned. I have used Garmin' BaseCamo on my Apple Mac and every was set up. My BMW K1300GT was making exceptional progress down to Rouen;normally a 2 hour run; we were going to make it in 90 minutes. However, that's when "Emily" decided to play up. Instead of taking me in and out of Rouen, I was routed away which caused me much angst. We reset the destination manually "B L O I S" and off we went again. The trouble with this rout is that it took me down through Evreux and Dreux, the roads of which are solid lorries and track and a plethora of road works thrown in for good measure.

However, never let it be said that John is late for anything. As soon as I had returned to the open raod, I were back again doing speeds which the Gendarmes would doubtless take a pretty dim view of. Almost as though by selecting warp drive, I arrived in Blois and was parked outside the agreed restaurant 2 minutes early, at 12:58pm.

Dave arrived hot and bothered some time later (I won't say how late he was; but all was well. We left Blois at around 2:20; tanked up again (I had only been getting 40mpg on the trip down) and set off for Gueret. Well the roads started to open out and become much more fun. What wasn't so much fun was the outside air temperature; I measured around 34C when I looked at the bike's temp guage; Dave saw 36C at one point. Whatever; it was very hot. We travelled a further 200 odd miles from Blois and are now in Aubenas. Personally, today was the longest single day's ride ever, I must have done approaching 600 miles.

Looking forward to tomorrow; the Puys of the Massif Centrale.