Wednesday 29 July 2009 at 9:36 pm
No lying in till 10am today. I awake at 4:25am to Dave knocking on the bedroom door (five minutes before my alarm goes off, it's as if he didn't trust me). Bleary-eyed, we load the last few things into the van and hit the road - down towards Cahors, autoroute south past Toulouse as the sun comes up and on towards Andorra, before climbing up into the mountains.
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Monday 27 July 2009 at 9:42 pm
I wake up at 10am on Sunday, the combination of beer, wine, good food, and a lack of sleep on Friday night overcoming the bright sunlight streaming through the windows and my natural inclination to wake up fairly early. A couple of rounds of bacon-filled croissants liven me up somewhat, which is a good thing, because today is the day I get my first taste of off-road riding.
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Monday 27 July 2009 at 7:12 pm
Well the planned updates during the event didn't quite happen, mostly because my laptop charger decided to have a bit of a sulk and not work, but also because I was having a bit too much fun to sit down and type stuff up. Anyway, now that it's over, and the laptop seems to have decided it's going to run off mains power again, its time to make amends, starting with the trip down to the Lot Valley...
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Thursday 16 July 2009 at 4:22 pm
Some time tomorrow afternoon I'll be leaving Derby and riding the ZXR400 down to Portsmouth, from where I will board a ferry which will deposit me in Ouistreham (Caen), on the coast of Brittany, at about 5am on Saturday. By Saturday evening I will hopefully find myself enjoying the hospitality of Dave and Kate Haines, of
Lot Valley Enduro, in the vicinity of Cahors. Early on Monday morning I'll be leaving, with Dave, a couple of other reprobates from the
Performance Bikes Forum and a van full of bikes, and heading for the town of La Molina in the Spanish Pyrenees, where we will be competing in the
Horizons Unlimited Mountain Madness.
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