1st August
Despite a huge journey today, things just get better on this trip.
Yesterday evening the campsite proprietors served me a three course meal, salad, then a raqulette type dish which I could not finish followed by creme brûlée. She came over to chat, telling me about her and her family’s plans to camp in Florida. She says in America there is a freedom that you don’t get in Europe. If you are awake at 4 am in the states you can go shopping at Walmart. Her plan is for a seven week trip through Arizona with her family, a rented car and a tent she has already bought. She also told me that she couldn’t believe I was born in 1956. Modesty forbids me to recount the rest of her comments. Later with a cigarette and music on headphones I watched the sun go down. I was awoken in the night by a rusting noise and I was convinced that there was an animal in the tent after my food. I am not sure there was but I got back to sleep waking up three or four times. I packed up after breakfast of croissants but not coffee as the last nice strong black coffee did not agree with my tubes. More details can be provided by personal approach. I was on the bike by 10.20 bimbling down the twisty lane until joining the main road in the town nearby I could see that today was the day that the French all get in their cars and start their holiday. There were queues of traffic at most junctions. I rode a mixture of motorways (the limit is 81mph) and some lovely twisty roads giving Limoges a wide berth. I only stopped twice very briefly to drink some water and munch some cheese. No sitting down. I left at 10.20 and arrived at 4.20, so six hours on the bike, a little less with the stops and only 203 miles covered. I was slowed down a lot by the traffic but it could have been worse. The weather was bright to overcast.

However, arriving here was very welcome. After some twisty small roads my GPS took me up some steep paths to the campsite and I made a hesitant entry on a small inclined parking spot that took some reorientation of the bike to make work to get the side stand down and leave it. The site is Les Quatre Seasons. One of the owners is according to the website a chef so for 25 Euro they serve a three course meal which I have booked for tomorrow night. I am hoping that it is communal as well as delicious. The owner here is interesting a white haired English man (I presume) well spoken for such a role, with something of BBC’s reporter John Timpson, but more whimsical. Very welcoming after a moment or two trying to recollect who I was. There is no shop and I am under supplied with food but he provided a lovely bottle of local ish beer with a metal clip top unlike the distinctly iffy little bottle I got elsewhere. This site is unlike any other I’ve been in, it’s much larger than the previous two, but it’s spread out in an orchard with a number of pitches levelled out from a beautifully sloping area of five acres with apple trees. There is a Dutch family in a tent fairly near by by there is still a sense of space and some privacy. Belinda made her usual entry on sloping grass ending up just about under control not really where I wanted her to be, right in the middle of the pitch. But at least I get a chance to spend the evening and night very close to her. (I have to say that if no one else was around I would spend the time inspecting her very closely.) if no one else was on this site I would really appreciate riding around on this bumpy terrain, I would get a lot of confidence and fun and falling off on grass would hurt neither me nor her.

I’ve discovered that while my three legged camping stool is exquisitely uncomfortable(and won’t be taken again, thank you very much) these Touratech panniers make extremely comfortable seats, especially with the sheepskin on top – and tables. Tomorrow the weather forecast says it will reach 29degrees. It’s a shame there is no pool here. Apart from a three mile stroll down to the nearest town supermarket that closes at 12, I have no plans. Then Monday morning I ride about 75 miles over to my last campsite where the pitches are in a shady wood. It may be that I can extend my two nights to four and then go straight to La Rochelle on Friday. Tonight’s meal is going to be improvised. It’s a shame I have no meat but I have cheese and bread and olive oil and something sweet for later.

France is funny. The beauty is off the beaten track. The roads I have taken have mostly been through rather dusty unattractive towns and only occasionally through beautiful countryside. I don’t understand the French psyche if there is one- they have their obvious intellectuals but the strikes at Calais remind me that they have a real hard core aggressivity too, like their revolution, a mixture of rationality and beheadings.

31st July
The Next morning. The evening sun shines over the valley into this campsite and it is obvious that everyone here, not much more than a dozen people, mostly Dutch, the rest Brits, turn their chairs toward it to get the last beautiful hours of warm sun. I joined them in this sun worship sitting on a bench looking over a field, of something, I don’t have a clue what is growing. I never sleep that well camping but got up before anyone else at around 8. Where there are no small children there is definitely no early rising. My breakfast order of croissants arrived and I brewed up some acceptable coffee with my rudimentary equipment. Hmm. I’ve had enough of this tea malarkey. So now I am trying to connect to the wifi here without much success. It is warm already. With nowhere to get to today I am at a bit of a loss how to spend the day. Some people seem to stay here all day others get out and about. I think I need to unwind a bit, to get in to a day of doing nothing not even worrying about how I will get out, get to the next place etc etc. tonight I get my meal at a tent. Let’s see what that is like. The campsite owners tell everyone how good it is.

I loafed around reading, the Macfarlane book is improving, two women offered to lend me a bicycle so I could ride down the 3k to the town supermarket but it was going to close for lunch of course so I gobbled up my food bought yesterday (you see, I am right about always having food), had a snooze despite someone starting a strimmer and a cock crowing next to my tent and then cycled down the road to the unremarkable town where I bought some choice items that hopefully won’t melt during a day on the back of the bike. Then I got back rather hot from the effort and tried out the pool.

I am off further south tomorrow. My knowledge of the geography of this area is poor so I rely on the GPS to get me to the next campsite. It is 4 and 1/2 hours away according to it, so I will take the quick route, that’s a long time for a journey it says is about 180 miles. It has clouded over today, which is fine by me as long as it doesn’t rain.

30th July
First day not subject to the tyranny of motorways. Forty nine miles to lunch at Chalonnes a Loire. Nice small d roads.

Today has gone really well. All in all I enjoyed the last campsite. I opted in for pizza mainly to join the crowd along the long table. I supposed I had to be the oldest guest, the others were all couples with young children, intelligent, funny, nice company and I was so glad not to be camping with small children any more, one couple with two small girls, twins maybe who screamed and shouted at every opportunity. There is no privacy camping. Imagine washing two naked screaming toddlers with a strange man brushing his teeth a couple of feet away.

I think the success of these trips, finally, is in the detail. Yesterday evening before it got too late I plotted a route along small roads close to the Loire from where I stayed to where I am now, camping l’etournerie. But where that is I am not sure exactly. This site is sunny! And tucked away down a grass track with maybe six pitches on it and a small swimming pool. I think this is one of the adults only sites that I booked (actually planning this trip is rather hazy as it got mixed up with my medical tests when I was convinced I’d spend the summer in hospital having parts removed). It makes a difference – the planning not the surgery. The place really is quiet, just the conversation and splashing of three Dutch people in the pool just down there, the buzzing of bees and the crunching of eucalyptus leaves under my feet. The place is simple. So different from the theme park places I have stayed at or nearly stayed at. This is a nice recipe.

So today my mostly GPS-less route planning worked perfectly. I had a list of road numbers and turnings written on a sheet of paper in the tank bag and managed to get most of the way here like that. I stopped at Chalonnes a Loire at a large supermarket, the brand of which is new to me and had a salmon and prawn salad and bought some provisions (when there is an opportunity to get food I have realised you should always take it). I spent a good hour there. Eventually my trail ran dry and I opted to turn on the GPS and obey its suggestion for a blast down the motorway then back down some very smaller roads where I always wonder if the GPS really knows what it is doing. Eventually down a grassy track I found the place. Belinda did not like the uneven grassy ground, or rather I didn’t and sadly we can’t keep vehicles on site so she is just behind me out of site on the track. Now, I shall be complaining to Touratech because the handle on my brand new Zega Pro 2 pannier broke while I was carrying it. It was hugely heavy I admit, but I expected a bit more from this hard core brand.

I was too late (4.30 is too late) to order dinner. The site owners make three course meals and serve them at the campers’ tents. So I have ordered for tomorrow evening. I have also ordered pain au chocolate and croissants for breakfast. This morning breakfast was two beautiful moist pain au raisin but my attempt at tea was not good. Dried milk definitely does go off. I will return to coffee so at the U-shop supermarket I searched for a device to make coffee and only managed to get a tea strainer and some ground coffee so I will improvise. It will be better than tea with globules. Today’s ride I think was 144 miles. My average throttle position since I’ve had the bike is 11 percent and I’ve made 5 and a half thousand gear changes.

28th July 2015
Written on the rolling waves.

Amid calls from a son for moral advice and plumbers arriving to investigate our failing boiler, I climbed into my armoured clothing and set off on the bike for this trip to France. Moving was so slow in Cambridge, first down Mill Road then along to Trumpington Street then finally onto the A10 where it started to lightly rain, then down to the M25 anti-clockwise interrupted by a call to fill up with petrol somewhere near ghastly Uxbridge, my willingness to risk reduced by my last experience of calling out the RAC on the side of the same orbital road because Bertha was always optimistic about petrol, then tailbacks finally leaving the orbit and heading off toward Portsmouth only to get stuck into another jam. I arrived in Portsmouth with only a stop to get fuel and a to much two bars of a triple Bounty bar standing next to the pump. Over three hours riding and tiring. Arriving here though, as usual, on a bike you get your own lane right to the front of hundreds of cars in line. One other man on a bike who was very nervous about parking up. The men here just tied our two bikes to the railing with some old rope, we both picked up something more substantial and did our own fixing, lingering anxiously, mind you I am glad now, two hours into the all night trip and there is some pitching and yawing I’m unaccustomed to in my trips to date. We sat and chatted while our cabins were cleaned. He learned to ride even more recently than I did, got the licence that limits riders to small bikes but ignored that and just bought a big bike anyway!

I’ve just returned to my swaying cabin from the restaurant (I didn’t fancy the cafe with its hoards of children) where I remembered that the French enjoy food unlike the Germans and I wondered if this could be the key to a successful holiday, weather permitting as always. Feeling rather over full not helped by the swaying opening and closing the door to my bathroom like a ghostly hand is moving it, bringing back pseudo memories of my childhood trips on the Harwich to Holland ferry where I was always sick. Always? Perhaps just once.

So tomorrow I head in a direction I approximately know. I have forgotten to write down which campsites I go to on each night. I have GPS coordinates of each but I don’t know which order I have booked them. Pitching and yawing.

Tomorrow I leave for my ninth motorcycle trip. I’m heading down to South(ish) west France, to the Dordogne, camping for the most part (apart from two nights at a friend’s house in La rochelle). Since my last trip to the Black Forrest, I have a new bike, new luggage, a new GPS (I bought it with the bike), new bluetooth headset and even new prescription sun glasses non polarising – so I can read the GPS screen. What could possibly go wrong? Well, the weather for one thing. I ought to publish the dates I go camping so that everyone else can make a point of staying at home. Its blustery and raining on and off today and some sailings from Portsmouth have been cancelled today due to bad weather.
This clever little map makes it all look so calm:

Still, supplies have been renewed, the bags are packed,

oil and fuel strapped on the back of one pannier, a litre of vodka on the other, trying to travel a bit lighter this time, so the huge Redverz tent is staying at home in the cupboard and my faithful Vango tent is coming along. A great hair cut (instead of last minute dental work) too.