A lap of France..... a possible suggestion

My trip across France in August (hopefully) will be just ten days, in the car, and less fun that your bike trip looks!
 
My trip across France in August (hopefully) will be just ten days, in the car, and less fun that your bike trip looks!

28 days of tenting, hotels, Air B&B and wanton gluttony. France is good in a car and the aircon works!
 
Fingers crossed, it looks like this jaunt (which we have been looking forward to for longer than is reasonable) may well be on. .....
I am just tidying-up the routes (again) which I'll share with bods here.

And here it is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yfs2a61rj5p39xc/dob retirement - updated - 09 july 2020.gpx?dl=0

Is it a perfect lap of France? No, it's simply the places that my friend wanted to go to. Even so, is it bad? I'd like to think it's OK, all the same.

If I get around to it, I might do a piece on what I took with me for the 28 days / 27 nights away, what proved useful and what wasn't.
 
A triumph of function over style....

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Have a great trip - looks amazing.

I start my Balcony Roads (and throwing in the Col de Parpaillon) trip on Friday. The only ones I'm missing out are the three on the Pyrenees side.
 
Have a great trip - looks amazing.

I start my Balcony Roads (and throwing in the Col de Parpaillon) trip on Friday. The only ones I'm missing out are the three on the Pyrenees side.

Just as well ! Spain is shit ! Nutty has said so !

Hope St Malo has reopened , Richard . They’d dissolved the handling company 2 weeks ago so the port was shut.
 
Just as well ! Spain is shit ! Nutty has said so !

Hope St Malo has reopened , Richard . They’d dissolved the handling company 2 weeks ago so the port was shut.

Spain is great; the food is shit. Take your own sandwiches like JB does, and you’ll be fine.
 
Spain is great; the food is shit. Take your own sandwiches like JB does, and you’ll be fine.

Spanish cuisine is a highlight of the trip , especially Basque and Asturian.
Can’t beat a delicious Fabada or cachopo , or dipping in and out of the pintxo bars.
You should be riding a GS . Don’t like foreign food, carries ketchup everywhere ?
Steak and chips please :)
 
Spanish cuisine is a highlight of the trip , especially Basque and Asturian.
Can’t beat a delicious Fabada or cachopo , or dipping in and out of the pintxo bars.
You should be riding a GS . Don’t like foreign food, carries ketchup everywhere ?
Steak and chips please :)

I love foreign food, as you well know. Stop being a cock again. :dabone
 
Here you go, Nutty, the Spanish ‘Ketchup’ song...

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Thank you.

I might have done it a bit differently but my friend (whose retirement it is) chose the places he wanted to go and how long to stay at each, which is absolutely fine with me. I have known him for over 30 years and he’s been a good pal (amongst several) so part of the fun of the jaunt will just be the pair of us wittering on. We are just lucky (touch wood) that we have avoided the Covid thing and that (touch wood again) the barriers have lifted just in time for our departure on 10 August.

We have been talking about the jaunt, usually empowered by several pints of London Pride (which experience tells us, makes us very clever) for several years. From March it looked like it wouldn’t happen at all but we kept all the bookings, campsite reservations, ferry and train crossings in place, just crossing our fingers that it might happen. Our patience, seems to have paid off..... cross fingers again.

I hope to do a trip report. As it’s his retirement do, I also hope to gather up some half reasonable pictures and get them published nicely by one of the online ‘DIY’ publishers into a book, adding in a map and anything else I can think of. A decent enough present for a good mate, I think.

We are being joined on the first leg by the former risk and insurance manager of Jaguar Landrover, who is a good friend of David’s, who has just retired too. He’s a pretty good engineer / mechanic in his own right, doing up old bikes to a high standard as a hobby. He’s just completed a very nice FS1E, brought back from the complete dead, which is worth a few quid. As he says, if only we’d kept some bits from the 70’s but it was more fun thrashing them around.... which indeed is the whole point of being young.... having fun! We hope to have some similar fun.... but now in our early 60’s :rob:friday
 
Looking forward to the trip report, I am sure it will be a good read, and I am sure everyone will get some good tips of where to go on their "awesome steeds" when touring France. The present of a book covering your trip is a great idea and very generous of your time. I am sure others and not only me would be interested in reading it. Probably a future classic. Enjoy your trip.
 
Having toured many times with both of you, I’m sure that a trip report will make great and very amusing reading. Immensely envious and wish I could join you, if only for part of the trip.
 


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