In true Jimbo fashion, i'm leaving at 5am and still up working before i go, 90% packed though which is amazing for me lol.... but just finished now and thought i'd cheer you boys with your tea and toast in the morning by saying..... WE ARE NOW ON TOUR - ENJOY YOUR DAY!! lol 6.36 tunnel. 5.30am meet. lovely Job!! Day 1 to the ring Day 2 Brits invade germany - again - dambusters tour Day 3 chill and ring time Day 4 Black forest Day 5 Switz Day 6 Route Napoleon Day 7 Mooch around Day 8 As 7 Day 9 Motorail home. Cant fooking wait now..... See ya in a week fellas - laptop with me hopefully be in touch! laters. Jimbo
Right, so this is well over due and no doubt now old news... but thought i'd start trying to put these together to give you an idea of our little adventure. 6 blokes, 6 bikes (reduced to 3), 9 days, 2750 miles, 6 countries, 4 laps and a big train taking the strain home. This is our story, hope you enjoy fellas – we did! Day 1 – Calais to The Ring of Love. We are fortunate enough that we all live a short punt to the tunnel, so a 6.25 train shouldn’t have caused too much of an issue, however me working till 3am in the morning trying to get things sorted before the big off, Dave just chilling and not un packing from the Scotland tour, Russ running out of fuel on the M20 and having to push it a mile and our chilled out nature of not giving a sh!t and that we had plenty of time for a coffee, resulted in a bit of a dash to the tunnel, followed by nobody having euros on us, changing up some cash, and missing the train! No sweat – on the next one. Off the train was quick fill up, motorway punt for a couple of hours (we done it in 1.30hrs) then onto some nice flowing a roads to keep up entertained, this is actually the MCN route guide to the ring http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvfjb7GcMJY , well worth doing as it brought out some decent roads. http://goo.gl/maps/U3cjW here’s the route! Didn’t take too many pics of the day… Lunch in a nice town called Revin before crossing the boarder into Belgium This is Russ, you’ll see more of him! Notice Dave starts getting ready to leave before we have eaten lunch lol Dirty Dave and Mark sharing a pump… very close are them Bro’s – they share everything! After a long day but awesome roads… a well earned pint at the holy grail! From our hotel overlooking the ring…. He's a ringer alright...
Day 2 – Ring Ride Out Well the day was meant to be full of promise, a big day out in the region sampling some of Germany’s finest tarmac whilst taking in some local sights, culture including the picturesque castle at Braunfels http://www.braunfels.de/Sites/gensite.asp?SID=cms160720131007462291986&Art=0119 and history taking in one or two if the Dams famous for the WW2 dambusters raids… well it didn’t quite work out like (got a bit, erm, sidetracked on the roads round our hotel) that and we saw none of these (sounded pretty gay anyway), but we did do 350 miles and had a right crack! This was the intended route http://goo.gl/maps/rRET9 but with a slow start to the day, we skipped the fancy castle and had to save the Dams for another day…. http://goo.gl/maps/4PA4m Ten minutes form our hotel – Awesome! Erm… my camera died then! so need to get the rest of the pics from the lads…. But the castle looks like this… pretty isn’t it. And the dam looks like this…. Nice and new We didn’t see either…. But we got home about 8pm and had a blast!! Proper day on the bike, nice late pizza in town couple of beers and decent kip for what was to be the main event!! The ring....
Day 3 – Its Ring time! We couldn’t get on track on the Saturday as there was a private classic car meet, this also wasn’t due to finish until 1pm on the Sunday, so after a couple of long days, we decided we would have a nice chilled morning, watch the cars, have a look round the centre at the GP circuit and then head over to the ring to get our laps in! Where 3 lads headed for home and Dave, Russ and I would kill some time for the afternoon (maybe do some more laps) before we headed south in the morning…. Up at the complex - bit of a weird place tbh! not surprising they are loosing money Nice Car Mr He didnt care! What a legend... Would be in a museum or wedding car over here! We like retro.... Car after car after car....was awesome to see! Well, it was hot, the track hadn’t been open for days, and it was BUSY!! Not just normal Sunday busy like I’ve seen before, totally rammed pack with locals ranging from polo’s to GT3’s, race corvettes the lot, all chomping at the bit to get out there…. To make things worse, they kept delaying the which only added to the growing gridlock of cars to the carparks and road in and out of the entrance. This was going to be interesting….. Dave V must have smoke 15 fags in that long drawn out hour as tensions rose…. Me I wasn’t nervous, done it before haven’t I, cool under pressure, just get out there and get on it…. yeah right, I was bricking it too!! My last Sunday visit was lively, and this seemed a whole lot busier…. but luckily, we came prepared! Well one lap down, and it was manic!! Cars everywhere, saw two accidents in 1st half of the lap, but me and Russ managed to steer clear of any further trouble, the lads on the other hand who hadn’t been before set off just before got caught up with the sheer volume of cars, including a guy locking up on the inside line tipping into a corner… needless to say, we called it a day! But we were all buzzing from it... well nearly all of us The lads headed home, and we went for a tear up down to Cochem which is an awesome ride and very scenic stop for a drink / dinner! The plan was to then head back and catch some evening laps and use the remainder of our cards we purchased. If your reading this – REMEMBER track shuts early on Sunday’s. Shite – what we going to do? Track not open till 1pm Monday and we have a mammoth ride south, we cant wait till then to use our laps and then ride 350 miles of twisties……That would be really stupid!!!
Day 4 - We are Idiots of the highest calibre..... Yes you guessed it, we sold our soul to the devil, stayed at the ring to use the remainder of our laps! but the track was dead and despite me going "off piste" on lap 1 of 3 which unsettle me a little, chipped our times down to 9.13... tbh was a little gutted but couldnt push too hard after that and had a whole week to get through. Mr Ring - i'll see ya next year for an 8 min showdown lol Pilot Road 3's done an amazing job on the ring unfortunately Dave didnt pass the noise test and was stopped after his 2nd lap - apparently 111db is too loud lol So at 3.30pm we set off on our "days Ride" http://goo.gl/maps/Nq8sy the plan was simple - gun it! head down to cochem, pick up the river road, cross country to the b48 which is a epic biker road that blew me away last year and is just awesome as it's so quiet, eat dinner on the road, head over to Baden Baden, then smash the B500 as the sun came down onto our hotel stop in Frieburg. Maybe, just Maybe doable if all goes to plan.... it didnt! it was hot, really hot! talking 30+ and relentless tiwsty perfect roads took there toll, our absolute refusal not to go on anything other than "perfect roads" made it a long hard day.... through the b48 and we were buzzing... stopped at a lovely town for dinner and with the lovely late summers evening we thought we had it in the bag... We rode hard that day, hence no pics, but this was taken at dinner, bout 8pm - totally shagged... I'll get some off the lads as the roads and scenery was amazing... after a lovely dinner in the square we planned to pin it to baden baden and pick up a couple hours of b500 bliss.... it went wrong here! really wrong, the roads the sat nav were sending us on were showing as closed, so we followed the diversion signs thinking it wouldnt be too long of a d tour, about 50 miles in the wrong direction and then crossing the bridge to do it all again the other side meant that by the time we reached Baden Baden, it was gone 10pm, totally dark and not wanting to miss the b500 by riding at night, we stopped short of our intended and booked hotel and found a place to get our heads down. Catch up again tomorrow required!!
Day 5 – Jimball Rally So after one hell of a day on the Monday we were now in for a real treat! We were going freelance in terms of the route (see below) but the plan was the entire length of the B500, Switzerland over the Alps and into France for our hotel in Seez at the end of a switch back mountain pass.. happy days!! Let the games begin, hit the road nice and early, and sampled the delights of the B500, in full flow and enjoying the epic road, we made “swift progress” allowing a few stops along the way including a bit of C(rash)SI where I showed the boys how lucky Bruce was when he had is off a couple years previous, and a lovely scenic stop on the lake at Mummelsee where Russ asked a lovely girl serving us how here English was so good… “erm I’m American” wasn’t the answer he was expecting Anyone that knows Bruce would know how hard it would be to squeeze him between that kerb and Armco at a fair few mph!! The lake…. We really did ruin her peaceful morning lol Cracking on and knowing time was of the essence we hit the road, conscious that we still had a mega day ahead (we wasn’t even at the point we were supposed to be leaving from and it’s now mid morning) we decide to stop taking pictures and messing around…. Found a nice little place for lunch at the bottom of the B500 on lake tittisee And now we were at a cross roads, see we had left this bit of the route TBC on the basis that we had heard horror stories about Swiss police, quick call to Bruce our legal representative and the response was “if you three idiots are intending on going into that country, then your mad!! Please, if you do, just take it easy….” We had expected this response and you would not believe the conversations we’d had over a few beers at the ring on how we intended on “tackling” this obstacle… our suggestion to Bruce that we would “Jimball Rally it” was met with actual horror and fear… sitting on the border, with I big afternoon ahead we opted for version B of the rally and go for it…. what’s the worst that could happen!?!?! Switzerland is beautiful, totally totally stunning, but by Christ do they hate bikes, they hate noise, speed, and men on bikes, they don’t like you filtering, overtaking or generally riding through there country…. Was only one thing for it, get through, and get through quick….lol Prob was we straddled a few lakes which were lovely, but at 20mph for miles on end, in leathers in plus 30 degrees you soon start hating it and dreaming of the snow capped mountains we could see infront of us…. Meltdown number 5 not bad scenery though... Switzerland done and dusted, we climed off the mountains which to be fair were incredible, but if you intend on taking a sports bike there and riding it semi quick, I wouldnt bother, the consequence was always on our minds and put an edge on it... i digress... we climbed up and over the hills, hit an a road for a while then picked the mountain pass to Mont Blanc, will have to find the road name as it was awesome... filling up at Mont Blanc we were faced with 2 options, round the motorway for half hour and avoid the twisties to our hotel, or at 9pm woth failing light, hit the tunnel, come off and go over the mountain to our hotel, of course we opted for option B. paying 27 euros to go through an endless tunnel hurt, missing the junction on the other side and not being able to turn off 23 miles into italy really really hurt, all getting stressed and Russ doing a u turn at a random tolls was painful, being police escorted out of italy not knowing our fate was quite worrying, another missed hotel and 100 euro room at midnight was a nightmare but the 165 euro fine for Russ was quite a kick in the nutz!! lol luckily, we were stopped at the toll and forced to go through and pay on the way back, meant we got off the fine, not before arguing with the highways snake who then tried stiching us up.... another loooong day and missed hotel and 11pm finish.... who said it was a holiday!!!!
Day 6 – Route Napoleon Baby!! After the last two days of intensity playing catch up, we were only a mere hour from our intended start point, coupled with the fact our destination was Castellane which isn’t at the bottom of the Route Napoleon, which is I’ve done top to bottom by 3pm we happy we were finally back on track, and today wasn’t going to be too much of a challenge. The plan simple, over the pass to Seez from just the other side of the Mont Blanc, onto Val-d lser over the passes, onto Modane, Braincon, more passes and pick up the N85 at La Mure where we stick to the Napoleon right into Castellane http://goo.gl/maps/c9wqe biking heaven!! Swift progress saw us dispatch Bourg Saint Maurice over a pass and we were surprised at the level of snow up top! Back down the other side and swiftly onto Val-d lser where we stopped for fill up and enjoy the scenery in the plus 30 heat once more!! However coming through town we would not have beleived what lay in front of us just ten mintues up the road... Road closed chaps - not open till erm, saturday! Was now approaching 12 and it meant turning back on roads to a point 2hrs back then attempting other passes we wasnt sure was open! great, revised route now looked like this! 300 miles and 7.5 hrs.... http://goo.gl/maps/1lKLL Man up and crack on! going to be another late one.... Moutiers came and went and stopping for a stretch we then had route option time, follow A roads to Albertvilleand dash for N85, or option B, mountain pass "shortcut".... our absolute refusal to do anything resembling a motorway meant option b naturally! http://goo.gl/maps/14FVf 302 miles 9 hrs prob was, and not knowing by map, the roads we opted as a shortcut were near on single track (good tarmac) hairpin after hairpin after hairpin after hairpin... for HOURS!!! think russ lost count at 36.... lol That really hit us hard and seemed to take an age, coupled with another road block albeit this time due to works, meant we didnt get to La Mure until around 5pm totally cream crackered with the majority of the Route Napoleon still to do. but one thing about getting there late - the roads were empty!!! it was now officially HAMMERTIME! From Snow to this in a few hours route napoleon baby! Third time i've done this now, and with the combination of empty roads, fresh tarmac, 3 beer seeking nutters, stunning evening meant not only did it surpass all previous rides on this legendary road - it prob topped all road rides i've ever done! We arrived around 8.30 to our campsite and after initial fears, turned out to be a little gem! they ordered us pizza take aways and gave us all the beers out of their fridge... We'd finnaly arrived and were back on schedule!!!!! at long fcuking last......
Day 7 – Monaco or Bust!! Three days across Europe had taken their toll…. We were goosed! Combination of long miles, late nights and scorching heat had really hit us hard, so we decided to have a chilled morning, mooch around in town and have some breakfast, come back to our chalet, gear up and finish the RN and then on to Monaco for a coffee and a bimble home. Ready to nip into town 1/2 mile away... Castellane is very nice Post breakfast ice cream.... of course! we wasnt very good at camping cooking.... anyway after messing around, we saddled up and took a rather plesent ride into Monaco, always a good ride in seeing the traffic and the cars, there is def a buzz about the place. Quick lap of the F1 circuit, be rude not too, then a coke on the harbour side before heading out of town....this was the closest we got to rain! no issues out of town, bit of spirited filtering with the local bikes and general banter over the Scala's.... all good until we approach the tolls and a dude on a ZX10r gives it some beans past us whilst we are trying to work out where to go.... "erm... does he know who we are?" "guess not!!!" "permission for fly bye" "permission granted.... hunt that green bike down" yes i know, not big and not clever, but we thought it was funny at the time, and I can only say the pursuit of that dude on the ninja lead to the most scary and exciting half hour ive had on a bike (well that and some intense bbq shopping ) lets say the predetor became the prey but what goes on tour, stays on tour! Needless to say, we took the scenic quiet rode which turned out to be another brilliant road. this doesnt do it justice Safe home, we finally got to do what we'd been dreaming of, kick back at the campsite with our fully loaded chalet, and stick some grub on the bbq and drink a few beers and count our lucky stars that we were still free men
Day 8 - Gorge de Verdon Lay low Another lazy start and easy day awaited us on some of the awesome roads on our door step in Castellane, we had no plans but do a simple loop, sample the sights and head where we felt like till the afternoon so we could get back, stock up and chill some more before our early dart back into Italy the following day to catch the train.... no real plans, but we sort of done these roads and about 250 miles... http://goo.gl/maps/2riCn some roads were so good, we done them more than twice.... they say a picture is worth a thousand words.... Gorged on all that scenery it was time to stock up and get supplies for dinner
Day 9 - Let the train take the Strain..... Check in time for the train was 12.30 so we needed a prompt start... also conscious that we really had no room for error on this we needed to get our act together and into Italy to catch the train. Sat Nav, Common Sense and all of us agreed this would be the best route. http://goo.gl/maps/2Yl8g 215 miles, 4 hours inc petrol stops gunning it round the motorway to the train, we’d had our fill, time to face facts and go home, besides that would mean leaving at circa 8am to arrive at 12pm for half hour contingency to find the train station. However….. in for a penny and all that, and a real desire to stay as far away from Monaco because of erm, rush hour traffic, meant we devised a cunning plan – hit the twisties, leave early and go for it! what’s the worst that could happen…. Less miles, but an extra hour journey time but looked interesting roads… http://goo.gl/maps/1WLjR deep down I think we all knew it was a high risk strategy, even borderline folly, but we all signed up to it, going for it come what may, and manned up and hit the road! And what a road, out of Castellane up to Barcellonette was amazing, we left early so it was freezing as we climbed into the mountains, but didn’t care as the roads were brilliant and we were squeezing every inch out of this tour!! Then we hit miles and miles of, well, shite…. I’d say about 10 miles in total of West Country style farm shite…. Was weird to see tbh and couldn’t quite work it out, until re rounded a corner and and met a road block of literally 1000’s of sheep, they wasn’t moving fast so god knows what time they had left to cover the ground they had, as it was now 7.30am…. this started eating the time and nobody wanted to admit it but we were now getting worried, we couldn’t afford any miss haps this morning…. Missing the train in Italy on Saturday WAS NOT AN OPTION…. Moving again we cracked on, swift progress was the key, but then the road changed out of a ski resort, I’d actually been here before and think it was the Col De la Bonnette, a single track hairpin road that goes for miles and miles, surface was poor so progress was slow….. bugger! We dont do Motoways!! Was freezing up there, but what a view... Through Barcelonnette and we crossed the border into Italy, I was nervous now as I know what the roads can be like in Italy, but they opened up nicely and we were in full flow so covered ground quickly and started pulling time back on the ETA the sat nav was showing. Game on!! The ride to Cuneo, was great, then we picked up main A road dual carriageway type roads which allowed us to cover grounds but not be on the motorway, we don’t like them! Lol and we fine, nothing could stop us now, cruising, pressure gone, we were going to let the train take the strain!! Yup, and for the first time on the trip, we were early for the most important deadline!! Made check in 1 hour early! High risk – paid of. Get in…. the beast having a rest for this one.... yup, seal of approval done... Checked in, bikes loaded and it was now time to chill and relax and wait for our departure time at 4.30pm… think a few beers are in order And very nice they were too.... even had time for a cheeky burger! or so we thought.... see, we knew it was too good to be true!! walking back to the check in point, and it was empty... totally empty... and the lady said the train is on the platform but leaving now!!! it's a five minute walk and we had to carry all our luggage and leathers etc.... it turns out departure is at 4pm not half past!! and our bikes are just about to head to Holland - this isnt good.... cant describe how horrible that feeling was.... Luckily, the kind folk of autoslaap had the train waiting for us and held it for 10 mins, we literally stepped on the train the conductor shut the door behind us and it pulled away.... THANK YOU!!! Well now moving, we could relax, kick back enjoy the scenery and a couple more beers! The cabin wasnt the most comfy to sit in, but wasnt too bad, but once bunked out was pretty cosy and i slept like a logg... we awoke around 8am, had breakfast then rolled off the train at 10.30am - was a great way of doing it, and gave us so much more time on the roads we wanted to ride. quick punt (2.5 hours) to calais and it was onto the tunnel and then home... Russ split, and me and dave thought we might as well go home via the lanes! be rude not too, had a cuppa at H's before arriving home to a heros return...not... "oh, your late" "yeah sorry lisa, the trains were delayed" "oh ok... did you have a nice time?" "yeah was amazing - really good thanks" "anything interesting happen?" "Na, just took it easy and had a really good ride with the fellas..................... " "So what about next year???? you going again????" "No - next year we are going to Spain..........."
Have a safe trip, you go through some awesome areas. There are a number of passes round andermatt still closed but I expect they will open for Monday. Remember you have 10 images per post so use them wisely. Hope you got a hot dog from the van just before loading onto the shuttle. Green with envy here...
