This ride has to be one of the more challenging ones I have attempted, not only due to the distance, but the heat with, somewhat surprisingly, the cold I experienced in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Those temperatures ranged from the mid 30’s centigrade, to 9 degrees or less whilst riding up the A75 in southern France. I guess there may have been an altitude in the mix that caused that!
One of the problems was that my Camelbak had burst before leaving home and I had no time to replace it…. This meant buying bottled water and during the Spanish section from the start to early evening, every fuel stop also needed me to drink a fair old bit of water, fortunately I also needed to go take a leak at most of these stops too, meaning I was drinking enough and not getting dehydrated!
This did mean that fuel stops were going beyond the usual ten minutes, these mount up!
On one or two stops I also ate some fruit and occasional pastries to keep me going!
The route I had planned took me up the A75 in southern France, which turned out not to be a good choice for an overnight track, it was not only a twisty road, it also had roadworks.
This reduced my average speed significantly for a while, but there was nothing to be gained by trying to re-route, it would have taken too long.
I had planned to go as far as Amiens to build in a decent buffer, but with a satnav glitch that took me off route to a non-autoroute track, I lost around 30 minutes by the time I recovered to the route. This was probably due to a previous satnav hiccup that required a reboot and appears to have reset my default to avoid tolls and motorways….. doh.
Once I realised this was the case it was a simple case of set the tick boxes back where they should be and get going….
The 30 minutes doesn’t sound much and in a SS1000 it isn’t, but in a BBG1500 it’s a big loss of time.
After this delay in the area of Clermont Ferrand I was concerned as it I wasn’t sure there would be a way to make it up!
A rest stop was taken when I realised I was going to start struggling, so into the next available Aire and parked up.
This one had a convenient toilet and a picnic bench, so a brief nap and a leak followed by a splashing of cold water on face and head was more than sufficient to get over the tired spell.
Off I went once more, stopping for fuel shortly thereafter.
A change from a westward course to a northerly one saw me onto the A10 then A26 for Le Mans then Rouen.
Of course, much earlier on when the temperature had dropped I had stopped to layer up, did not expect that. I had my mesh jacket and gloves on until the air temperature had plunged from low twenties to just nine degrees…..
Now as the sun came up the temperature was climbing, but time was getting tight, so I would just have to persevere!
Somewhere south of Le Mans my intercom battery expired…. I carry a spare as I had recently replaced my E1 Schuberth with a C4Pro Schuberth, the main reason for that choice being that the intercom battery can actually be changed.
However…. This is a fiddly task and as I said before, time was short…..
Of course the satnav was working fine, but I wasn’t, I missed a turn by yards, well at 130kmph a few yards is a good as a kilometer…. Fortunately, the next turn was only a mile or so, sorry a couple of kilometers… and off I went to get back on course, through the peage, paid the toll, up to the roundabout, a quick check of the satnav and back through the toll gate the other way!
Didn’t lose a lot of time here, maybe 5 minutes or so, but well you know, time etc….
I was doing continuous mental arithmetic given my remaining mileage and time and could see that whilst I might not get to Amiens, I could still get enough miles in for a small buffer…
Then I got to Rouen….. and lower speed limits.
I played nicely for the distance through the city and when I reached the higher speed limit I got back up to speed pronto.
The hope was that with around fifteen minutes remaining there would be a service area to get fuel and receipt and the signs indicated the distance to the next one and the time remaining, should just about work out if there were no more delays.
Suffice to say, got to the next service area, dived in and got to the pump…. For the first time in the two weeks I had been away, the pump declined my debit card!
I grabbed my credit card and stuffed that into the slot, punched in the pin number…. and it accepted it.
Filled up, got my receipt and moved over to a shady area to see what the receipt time was.
Well it was okay, it meant I had finished with twelve minutes to spare…..
I couldn’t believe it…. 1500 plus miles in 24 hours!
Took off my heavy jacket, fleece jacket and packed them away. Got my mesh gear back out….
Went inside to a nice air conditioned area of the café and treated myself to a baguette and a cold drink…
Once I had eaten I called my wife to advise I had hopefully completed the task I set out to achieve,, subject of course to verification!
I sat for around an hour and once I felt I could get up without feeling as if I was going to jump up and down and shout something appropriate, I went to the loo and drained the tank…..
Outside, my bike was no longer in the shade, it was in the 29 degree sunshine.
So I not so much hotfooted it to my hotel in Amiens as hot butted it…..
My bike performed faultlessly, the need to ride at the higher speed limits to keep the average speed up did have a somewhat deleterious effect on the fuel economy, but the average for the ride was over 50mpg so I thought that quite acceptable!
These last few miles, well okay it was about a three quarters of an hour ride at least, were harder than the previous 1500 odd….. but got to the hotel, checked in, went to my room and peeled off my spandex and got into the shower…
That will do nicely.
Update: The ride has been verified by Daz and the fee paid, so could not be more chuffed, thank you to Daz for a prompt verification!
Woo hoo.
Those temperatures ranged from the mid 30’s centigrade, to 9 degrees or less whilst riding up the A75 in southern France. I guess there may have been an altitude in the mix that caused that!
One of the problems was that my Camelbak had burst before leaving home and I had no time to replace it…. This meant buying bottled water and during the Spanish section from the start to early evening, every fuel stop also needed me to drink a fair old bit of water, fortunately I also needed to go take a leak at most of these stops too, meaning I was drinking enough and not getting dehydrated!
This did mean that fuel stops were going beyond the usual ten minutes, these mount up!
On one or two stops I also ate some fruit and occasional pastries to keep me going!
The route I had planned took me up the A75 in southern France, which turned out not to be a good choice for an overnight track, it was not only a twisty road, it also had roadworks.
This reduced my average speed significantly for a while, but there was nothing to be gained by trying to re-route, it would have taken too long.
I had planned to go as far as Amiens to build in a decent buffer, but with a satnav glitch that took me off route to a non-autoroute track, I lost around 30 minutes by the time I recovered to the route. This was probably due to a previous satnav hiccup that required a reboot and appears to have reset my default to avoid tolls and motorways….. doh.
Once I realised this was the case it was a simple case of set the tick boxes back where they should be and get going….
The 30 minutes doesn’t sound much and in a SS1000 it isn’t, but in a BBG1500 it’s a big loss of time.
After this delay in the area of Clermont Ferrand I was concerned as it I wasn’t sure there would be a way to make it up!
A rest stop was taken when I realised I was going to start struggling, so into the next available Aire and parked up.
This one had a convenient toilet and a picnic bench, so a brief nap and a leak followed by a splashing of cold water on face and head was more than sufficient to get over the tired spell.
Off I went once more, stopping for fuel shortly thereafter.
A change from a westward course to a northerly one saw me onto the A10 then A26 for Le Mans then Rouen.
Of course, much earlier on when the temperature had dropped I had stopped to layer up, did not expect that. I had my mesh jacket and gloves on until the air temperature had plunged from low twenties to just nine degrees…..
Now as the sun came up the temperature was climbing, but time was getting tight, so I would just have to persevere!
Somewhere south of Le Mans my intercom battery expired…. I carry a spare as I had recently replaced my E1 Schuberth with a C4Pro Schuberth, the main reason for that choice being that the intercom battery can actually be changed.
However…. This is a fiddly task and as I said before, time was short…..
Of course the satnav was working fine, but I wasn’t, I missed a turn by yards, well at 130kmph a few yards is a good as a kilometer…. Fortunately, the next turn was only a mile or so, sorry a couple of kilometers… and off I went to get back on course, through the peage, paid the toll, up to the roundabout, a quick check of the satnav and back through the toll gate the other way!
Didn’t lose a lot of time here, maybe 5 minutes or so, but well you know, time etc….
I was doing continuous mental arithmetic given my remaining mileage and time and could see that whilst I might not get to Amiens, I could still get enough miles in for a small buffer…
Then I got to Rouen….. and lower speed limits.
I played nicely for the distance through the city and when I reached the higher speed limit I got back up to speed pronto.
The hope was that with around fifteen minutes remaining there would be a service area to get fuel and receipt and the signs indicated the distance to the next one and the time remaining, should just about work out if there were no more delays.
Suffice to say, got to the next service area, dived in and got to the pump…. For the first time in the two weeks I had been away, the pump declined my debit card!
I grabbed my credit card and stuffed that into the slot, punched in the pin number…. and it accepted it.
Filled up, got my receipt and moved over to a shady area to see what the receipt time was.
Well it was okay, it meant I had finished with twelve minutes to spare…..
I couldn’t believe it…. 1500 plus miles in 24 hours!
Took off my heavy jacket, fleece jacket and packed them away. Got my mesh gear back out….
Went inside to a nice air conditioned area of the café and treated myself to a baguette and a cold drink…
Once I had eaten I called my wife to advise I had hopefully completed the task I set out to achieve,, subject of course to verification!
I sat for around an hour and once I felt I could get up without feeling as if I was going to jump up and down and shout something appropriate, I went to the loo and drained the tank…..
Outside, my bike was no longer in the shade, it was in the 29 degree sunshine.
So I not so much hotfooted it to my hotel in Amiens as hot butted it…..
My bike performed faultlessly, the need to ride at the higher speed limits to keep the average speed up did have a somewhat deleterious effect on the fuel economy, but the average for the ride was over 50mpg so I thought that quite acceptable!
These last few miles, well okay it was about a three quarters of an hour ride at least, were harder than the previous 1500 odd….. but got to the hotel, checked in, went to my room and peeled off my spandex and got into the shower…
That will do nicely.
Update: The ride has been verified by Daz and the fee paid, so could not be more chuffed, thank you to Daz for a prompt verification!
Woo hoo.
