My DNF....As we all know plotting routes certainly complicated ones are not my speciality...Looking at the book I saw 3 big points routes for leg 2: Ireland+UK +Holland and /or France ...or Baltic States+ Finland/Sweden Denmark ....or Spain Portugal+ France...Leg 1 I poorly planned best I could find with high points tru Germany Switserland,Liechtenstein,Austria and Chech Republic no combo's complete as I ran out of time by 02.00 before the start...needed at least a couple of hours sleep so I could run the 36 hrs without.I did not have the guts to choose the ferry routes into Ireland and/or Scandinavia so opted for Spain and Portugal....big miles and loads of high points and a combo possible if I cud ride the miles all surf beaches 7 in total + a lot of fairly hi value locations.So I left Brno at 5.13 on tuesday heading for Zaragossa via 1 location in Austria of 5000 pts and 1 in Monaco of 3000 into Zaragoza for 1970 pts...altogether 2300 km to get these pts...then onto Madrid where I arrived at 5.40 well over 2700 km i.e. I had ridden a BBG 1500 mls in 24.Had a coffee and a sandwich at a gasstation before heading south to Sevilla and the Huelva and into Portugal to a bonuslocation pretty near to where we'll be living in a couple of weeks...then onto the cliff of Sagres and along the westcoast of Portugal to score the surf beaches as well as the Lisbon stadiums...by then it was wednesdayeve and I had again ridden for more than 39 hrs non stop with 2 powernaps of 20 mins each.Took my restbonus in Lisbon for 6 Hrs.Lisbon was the place things slowly went pearshape...Zumo kept sending me in circles around the stadium and around the hotel I wanted slowing me down by half an hour.I normally always fill up before I take a rest as I cant remember next morning wether I filled up or not in the past...this time I didn't fill up as I wanted to get some much needed sleep.Woke up at 02.00 next morning on bike at 2.15(3.15 W.Europe time)heading for 1st bonus of another long day but with a margin to play with of 1 hour....saw a sign on my 1st section of motorway for gas was some 70 km out...a tad too much for comfort so ordered 1 nearby my route from Zumo...it had me turn off after 10 km then ride 3 km to turn around at roundabout and come back to station which weas near the entry of motorway....so I did an illegal Uturn into the station immy got gas and an expresso and back on motorway...only to see 10 mls down the road we did not do the bonus locaton which was given at some 25 km from Lisbon....Checked Zumo and bingo 1st mistake of the day made....the bonus location was at the roundabout where Zumo send me and I ignored ....Doh!! Homer would say....turned around and went back as I wanted the points and was furious at myself for such a stupid mistake....costed me a total of 55 minutes...i.e. al my spare time just in case blown to smithereens.Punished myself for rest of the day just eating bars and drinking water and pushed myself riding hard untill I had done all of Spain excluding the surfbeach of Compostella (too far away from route)tru an outburst of storm and rain near Santander and into France for the surfbeach of Mimizan near Bordeaux at 17.45...Had a quick recalc and decided I would again ride tru the night as I was feeling pretty OK had time for a halfdecent meal and would go for the near Nantes and Calais beaches and then via 4 more loacations to Stuttgart giving me an arrival time of 1600 PM thursday...enough margin for 1 or 2 small delays and or kips.On motorway to Les Sables I was slowly running low on gas...had passed 1 station on motorway as the sign informed me of another station near the end of my piece of motorway....arriving there it was all dark and no station to be seen near said motorway and not wanting to take the risk of riding for many miles to find a station closed I decided there must be open stations on the main road going to the coast....into the 1st village I had Zumo advise me to a station which was closed on arrival...then going back to main road it was pitchblack darkness on a small road,saw a lampost some 1 km straight ahead of me,decided to let Zumo find the next station as I slowly progressed it found it so I pushed go....then I got truly ffed...Zumo went Off Route...Recalculate....pushed no immy it said it again...then looked up over the road and was 10 cm away from hi curbstones in a very slight curve in the road kept bike up for next 2 meters then ended into the bushes and dropped bike sideways into it....soft landing I had absolutely nothing(pure luck could have been a tree or a wall....bike was stuck in 75 cm's of bushes and no way I could pull it out....2 mins later a nice young women stopped after several cars decided I wasn't worth saving, called the police and a depanneur for me which turned up 15 mins later we pulled out the bike by the 4 of us and loaded her onto the truck where we found the stabiliser of the steering unit broken off and from just looking at the front it might be that the forks are bend a touch as well....anyway nothing could be done to get me riding promptly again so I sat in the office of the depanneur and called my insurance and road-assistence cover guy.... an hour later a taxi came to pick me up and took me to Ibis hotel in Nantes booked me on the TGV train to Paris for 16.00 dep and booked a cabby to get me x Paris in rush hour to Gare du Nord for the Thallys train to Bruxelles where another cabby was waiting to get me home where I arrived at 22.00 same day only 22 hrs after the accident....they also arranged the bike to be picked up and brought to my dealer here.What a service....some very good invested pennies went their way during the years and I never needed to rely on them this time I was rewarded for my loyalty to them!!Several good lessons learned again....It's a thin line between success and failure and dont drive and text/play with GPS!!Hope to see you all again in 2018 for the next version of the Eurotour.Once again a big cheers for Roberto to claim victory...even if I had succeeded to get to the barn in time I was nowhere near his pointsvalue!!All riders must be congratulated for a fine performance .....Now back to packing more boxes for our move to Portugal in 2,5 weeks from now! Hasta la Vista!!
