Le Mans or Bust. MotoGP Tour

a bit bigger than that.

Not that I'm intending to do anything as adventurous as them, I couldn't afford the time away from the day job, and

what they did took a lot of organisation.

Anyway finding a small opening in my diary in May. I decided to take the bull by the horns and have a go at a small excursion.

Before you say it, sad forty something's, as depicted in the recent film Wildhogs staring John Travolta, Tim Allen and Martin Lawrence is very close to the sentiment for the whole trip.

Not being a Harley (WildHogs) kind of guy, and feeling I'm not going to be on terrain that will need the capabilities of the BMW GS1200 (Long

The plan is to leave very early, about 3.00am start on Thursday morning from Staffordshire and making the 200 mile trip down to Dover for the 8.00am ferry.

We should have completed the 300miles through France and be down at the historic Bugatti grand prix circuit of Le Mans late

17 May 07 - Day 1
It's 2.00am, I've had non of the intended sleep I was hoping to get, it's dark, raining like you wouldn't believe - perfect start to a 530 mile bike ride.

Funny enough, only 12 hours earlier I was more concerned about even doing the trip, being as the bike was in a dozen bits, all because of a bulb failing in the speedometer. Needless to say it did go back together.

First job of the morning was to meet up with the first of my traveling companions, John and Oly. Sitting astride the bike waiting for them to arrive, the rain bouncing of my petrol tank, I couldn't help wondering if this was such a good idea. There were surprisingly few vehicles around at this hour on a Thursday morning. I then see two sets of headlights approaching. They pull in to the meeting place and within minutes we are underway.

We drive the few miles to J13 of the M6, it's closed southbound. We divert through Penkridge and rejoin the motorway at J12.

As we approach J8 of the M6, we start to see signs telling us that the M5 junction is closed. So yet again we have to go past to J7 (Scott Arms) and turn back to the second meeting place just off J1 M5 (West Bromwich). That's the first 30 miles done and the waterproofs are doing their job well. John Bennett (the trip organiser from MotoJB.com) and Manny were waiting for us.

Again we head back onto the M5 and then on to the M6, still raining. Next stop will be for fuel, 100 miles which is roughly how many miles these sports bikes do before the fuel light comes on.

Two fuel stops later we get to Dover, around 7.00am and catch the 8.15am SeaFrance Ferry to Calais. In the queue is Gordy - who is driving the support van with all the camping gear, including a diesel generator, the size of which would power a small town, and a fully working domestic fridge - pre-loaded with beer.

At Calais we start the 300 miles to our destination, still raining. With the exception of fuel stops we would now be on the bikes for 7hrs.

Our route takes us through the attractive city of Rouen, still raining. After which we can now get moving - using the French toll roads.

We had a slight problem en-route. JohnB's satnav wouldn't charge on his bike, it turned out to be a problem with the cradle. The "bikers handbook" suggests several items all bikers should carry, amongst those items is electrical tape and cable ties - couple of minutes later, problem solved and we are rolling again.

We finally got to the camp site, La Citrie near Arnage, about 5.00pm. Gordy had already arrived with the van and more importantly cold beer.

We parked up in the main square just in front of the cathedral, given that we hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast on the ferry, we embarked on finding food.

We found a small restaurant and spent a very comfortable few hours over looking the square.

Le Mans MotoGP Bike Tour, Practice day.

18 May 07 - Day 2
I slept pretty well, it's been a while since I've slept under canvas. It didn't get that cold and unlike JohnB and Gordy my airbed remained inflated.

Breakfast is provided by the site owners, Peter and Trevor, from their log cabin. By 9.00am we were at the prebooked priority car park. Well they call it priority parking, you'd have thought that meant close to the track, not quite - but at least it's secure.

The day progressively got warmer to the point where by midday it was very hot.

The grandstand seats were just at the end of the pit straight, just as the track peals right.

Getting out of the circuit that evening proved more difficult than expected. At the exit to the car park, marshals were stopping all bikes and requesting proof of ownership.

A few of us had our documents on us, which only proved to make the issue even worse because now they wanted to check the VIN and chassis numbers. For those that didn't have their documents - their parking ticket had their registration number written on it and allowed to carry on. Strange idea of security.

That night after an evening meal, prepared again by our hosts at the site, sitting under their marquees, we head back to the track to watch one of the live bands organised at the circuit. Not really my type of music - but a very drunk German guy appeared to be suitably entertained.

We get back to the site and have a few drinks, whilst debating which of the stars in the remarkably clear sky signified north, all except Manny who was fast asleep again.

Le Mans MotoGP Bike Tour, Qualifying.

19 May 07 - Day 3
Again another good nights sleep. After breakfast we rode the 5km down to the track. There was a lot more traffic this time.

We decided to walk around the track, see if there were any good vantage points in which to get a few action shots. This one worked out quite well of Valentino Rossi with his knee down.

Of course as we went round the circuit we found other things with an entertainment value. Oly and JohnB decide to catapult themselves, strapped in an steel cage, 100ft into the air for no other reason than it looked a good idea at the time.

In fact, I don't know if it was the good weather that was a major contributory factor, but the whole event appeared to have almost a party atmosphere.

Le Mans MotoGP Bike Tour, Race Day.

20 May 07 - Day 4
Having carried our gear all day on days 2 and 3, we decided for the 5km to the circuit we could leave the wet gear behind at camp. Should have checked the weather again that morning really.

The morning was great the 125cc race was in perfect sunshine. It was good to see Englands Bradley Smith make the podium after scraping paint with his podium warriors.

As the 250cc race started the skies were becoming grey. By the time the main event lined up, whilst on the grid the race was declared wet.

With the race over, our attention reverted to the walk back to the bikes. Whilst the race was running we thought we were very clever to be seated under cover. We decided that having left our wet gear, we would just wait a little for the rain and traffic to subside before getting the bikes. Imagine our horror when we realised we had left our helmets fastened to the bikes in the pouring rain.

The rain did subside after about an hour, most of us were lucky. Oly however found his lid resembled a goldfish bowl.

Getting out of the parking areas wasn't too difficult, the Police had shut off one of the roads we needed to get back to the

camp site, however JohnB and Oly managed to get through faking a need for fuel. The rest of us managed to do a U-turn and slip straight past un-noticed.

Our final evening was spent on the camp, in preperation for our return home. We had to pack as much as we could to allow us to get away as near to 8.00 am as possible.

Le Mans MotoGP Tour, Trip Home.

21 May 07 - Day 5
I woke at 5.00 am to the sound of rain hitting the tent canvas. Great just what I wanted to hear, ah well maybe it'll stop by

the time we get on the road.

By 6.30 everyone was up, and we started to break down the camp to load into Gordy's van. The rain had eased and hopes were high of a dryer ride home.

JohnB's satnav chose a couple of strange routes to begin with - think it might have been trying to avoid the autoroutes. He was also feeling worse for wear, in fact he was feeling quite ill, this resulted in a corner of a foreign field being forever England (not for the first time in my blogs). Eventually we got back on the toll roads and started to make progress.

Some of the fuel stops on the autoroutes in France have funny ideas. One we stopped at, we had to park at the pump, then queue up at the counter to give the checkout your credit card, go back to the bike, fill up and finally queue up again to pay with your card. It slows things down a lot.

Without question the weather was improving, so much so that we could even see some of the scenery. By the time we made the second fuel stop I even ventured to getting rid of my wet weather over trousers.

All was going well until about 50 miles from Calais. Oly, on his Kawasaki Ninja picked up a front puncture. Part of my preparation for the trip was to get new tyres, I also had the tyres "slimed", which helps repair tyres whilst on the move (good stuff). As a result I was carrying a couple of compressed air canisters just in case I had a puncture. So that whilst waiting for the slime to work, I could replace any air lost.

Alas Oly's tyres weren't slimed, we were on the autoroute, miles from anywhere. We decided to use the first canister in the hope that we found a garage or services. It lasted 10 miles, at this point JohnB decided he would try to find the next services and get a can of "tyre weld". He sped off in to the distance so I decided we might as well put the second canister in Oly's tyre, it might get us

to a service area. It got us another 10 miles, still nowhere to get any tyre weld. It did however get us just far enough for a toll gate. We got through the toll, and parked up.

This is when we had a stroke of luck, another biker, travelling back from the MotoGP spotted our difficulties and offered us the use of his tyre weld. Not only did he have good taste (riding a Ducati 749) but was just a really nice guy. He hadn't been without problems himself - his visor blew off his Arai lid on the way down, he couldn't get a replacement at Le Mans so he had to buy another make that didn't actually fit, and then with electrical tape bind it on.

We made it to the next services expecting to see JohnB, we suspected he had gone back for us - but there was always a chance we'd missed each other and that he was in front of us. We rang him, but obviously as he was riding we left a message to let him know we would continue to the ferry terminal.

We completed the last 30 miles, however, we had missed our ferry by 10 minutes. SeaFrance were very good, for £10 we were able to change our tickets to the 5.00pm crossing. As we were waiting at the terminal not only did our Stoke friend turn up, but JohnB also arrived - clutching a can of tyre weld.

The crossing was nice and calm, poor old Oly found a quiet corner and was spark out for most of it.

All these delays meant we were running a little behind schedule, we fueled up in Dover and started up the M20. Manny decided he was going to sprint off - the rest of us made steady

progress finally stopping at Corley Services on the M6 to have a coffee and a final chat before taking separate routes to our respective homes.

I finally got home around 11.00pm. Tired, but delighted with the whole experience.

If there was something worth mentioning as an epilogue to this trip, carry electrical tape, a few tools, cable ties and tyre weld.

Other than that just do it - life's too short otherwise, I'm going to have to do it again, somewhere different maybe next time. While I ponder my next trip I'm looking forward to the British MotoGP at Donnington in June, not such a big trip but going by previous years it will still be a lot of fun.

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