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Chilly Ride to Normandy.... a flurry of ride reports


Francois_Dumas

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Francois_Dumas

Yup, here comes the first one...... more to follow.. I have so much to share with you that I cannot possibly cram it all into one Ride Tale. So bear with me please..... blush.gif

 

Friday morning June 17th Nina and I set out on our first real ride to somewhere. All the in-country tours did not count....

 

The biggest anxiety was not the ride itself, or the bike, or even our feeble bodies... but rather:

.... will the RT's cases hold all our luggage !!?? confused.gifblush.gifblush.gif

 

Well, they did... and then some.

Since we had to go to a party, we could NOT just take travel clothing..... (well, I could have... but... <cough>..... okay...).

 

We crammed it all in. Including two pair of extra shoes, food, drinks, my camera (most important), plenty of maps, a huge hair dryer...... (!!!).

 

We forgot only one tiny little thing..... the flimsy bit of paper I had printed the night before leaving.

On it was...... the address of our friend's 'gîte' (a sort of rural B&B) and directions of finding it in the middle of the 'Normandy nowhere'. Shucks !! crazy.gif

 

I had printed the MapPoint map... so we were able to find the village. I even remembered seeing the little road we needed was close to the church...... But it took us 25 minutes venturing through the village, and all its little country roads, until a friendly village dweller could tell us where the house was...... OUTSIDE the village.. of course.

 

I'll make a special Tale about the 'gîte'. It deserves it... and perhaps some of the readers here might want to visit one day wink.gif

 

Okay, here are some snapshots of our First Ride Anywhere.....

 

The (actual) route we took....... 722 km's (and a bit for some detours at the end)

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Nina is wondering if she has everything now......

 

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Weather is not great....... pretty chilly and rain threatening...

 

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If you're riding through Belgium this summer.... be prepared for serious problems all over the country. This is the detour we made around Antwerp.. the main ring road is down from 4 to 2 lanes and traffic jams start well outside of the town.....

Similar problems at Brussels, the road from Brussels to Luxembourg AND the road from Liege to Luxembourg....

 

If you can, ride AROUND Belgium grin.gif

 

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First stop... 11 am, still in Holland.... Nina munching on a sandwich.... good, these BMW clothes...... !! (Later on in the trip I would change that opinion drastically..... )

 

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Rest area near Breda.....

 

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Two hours later and we're still in Belgium !!! Grrrrrr...

 

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Nina is still alive..... she does give me looks as if she were my old schoolteacher...... I must have missed a few gear changes... <cough>. "This was YOUR idea of fun, was it?' she said moments later...

 

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Just south of Calais we saw clouds over the hills bordering the sea (The Channel)..... and moments later I had to turn on my fog lights and slow down considerable... We were shivering in those clouds for about 45 minutes.... weird !!!

 

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A rare sighting of a strange species..... eating more sandwiches... Nina got hold of my camera crazy.gif

 

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Near Le Havre (left on the map) you have to cross the river Seine (yes, the one all Paris tourists know). Here it is quite large (!!) and there are two amazing bridges spanning it. We took the old one coming down (NO TOLL for motorcycles, which we thought was very kind), the Pont de Tancarville. Weather was improving.... clear, not very warm..... and we were almost there...

 

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This is the 'old' bridge....

Pont de Tancarville website

 

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RT on a rest area near the bridge.....

 

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Next..... a lot of riding and turning around..... all the parking lot practice really came into play here... We tried ALL the little roads into the countryside from the town center of St. Maclou..... except the one we had to take...

 

Fog had now litfted, sun was out, we had been 'at it' for TEN hours and were quickly reaching 'boiling point'.... You know how man and wife invariable start bickering at the end of a long day driving/riding and having to find that little hotel..... blush.gif

 

Here is what we were looking for....... looks like an old barn in the middle of a Normandy field? Well.. it was, actually..... but we'll show you that in another Ride Tale.....

 

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Francois_Dumas

Hmmmm.. the title is a bit 'off'.... the second part is what I was intending to do.. not what the thread is about.. but I cannot take it off anymore. It really takes some getting used to not being the admin on a forum <grin>.

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Francois,

 

Good to see your post, reminiscent of my ride in the area, as you know. Wasn't aware there was a toll free bridge over the Seine near le Havre. The weather reminds me of what I experienced four of the five days!

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Francois_Dumas

BOTH the bridges are toll bridges, but they let motorcycles go through for FREE ! (You'll have to wiggle your way past the barrier though, they won't open it for you... it upsets the 'counting' I believe.... grin.gif ).

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