Today was Mark's
happy day as the hotel breakfast had sausages and bacon so he promptly ate the
lot.
On checking the
bikes last night we noticed that Steve's chain was tight on his bike and needed
adjusting so we went about finding somewhere that sold a spanner and an Allen
key. The first shop had none, so we went to a cycle shop who also said they
didn't have any despite having them on display in the window. So we went to a
scooter shop who also didn't have anything. How can nowhere in the city sell
spanners. When you ask they look at you like you're crazy. You can buy light up
dog leads and snow skis, but not a spanner.
We opted to ride to
the local BMW dealership, and when we got there Steve's bike was magically OK,
it must have been the heat and lack of lube. We pretended to the BMW people
that we'd meant to just drive through, park for 5 mins and then leave and got on
our way.
After a few hours on
the road, we stopped at the old F1 track in Reims, it used public roads and is
now disused but the pits and grandstands still existed.
After some pics we
treated the spectators to a racing fly by with the bikes where we topped out
4th gear as we thundered through. Steve was temped to try and beat the lap
record which is currently held by some guy called Fangio but not with the cars
around.
Afterwards we pushed
on and stopped in a little village for a bite to eat. They had pics of
sandwiches and baguettes but didn't understand our broken French, mimes or
points at the pictures. We were about to go in the kitchen and make one
ourselves when she suddenly clicked that we meant 'sandwich' and not 'sandwich' or 'sandwich', so she made us a sandwich.
The roads onward from here were super straight and the traffic was light so we managed to get a move on. The French also signposted when each and every corner was coming up like they had too many signs left over or something.
We soon arrived in Amiens, a nice place in the north of France. Obviously it had a large cathedral too. Our hotel was very nice but our room was very small. To get into the bathroom for instance, you had to move the bed and we only found the wardrobe hidden behind the room door after about 20 mins. For some reason there was a rocking chair right in the middle of the room too.
We did have a balcony though which overlooked the park, unfortunately though, the park was full of nutters, shouting like crazy, but we had to have the balcony door open as there was no aircon or fan in the room.
We went out and checked out the cathedral before finding a whole host of riverside bars.
As usual for foreign bars, every other one was rammed, and the others were completely empty, no in between. We tried a couple out and had some tasty beers before heading back into the town for a meal at 'Big Bens' (we were home sick). Steve had a massive steak and Mark had a giant burger both of which were excellent.
Afterwards we headed back to the riverside for some last night drinks and were befriended by some other English people with a Wienerama and Viezla dogs who we chatted with for a while (we wanted to play with the dogs really).
Finally we decided that we should call it a night as it was a long ride home the following day.
Day 9 - Home
The journey home was pretty straightforward, a couple of hours on a toll road back to Calais, then the train to Folkestone followed by 3 hours home.
The motorways in England really showed how poor our driving standards are in England. Lane hogging, undertaking and random last minute lane changes/pushing in was common. Oh, how we missed the disciplined German autobahns and observant French drivers. Anyway, that's not news to anyone is it.
Well we had a great holiday, I hope you enjoyed reading about it, see you next time.
Mark & Steve.
