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been planning this trip for a while but with no definite parameters for a number of reasons. The idea was that, I've wanted to do the "gorges du Tarn" for a long time and that ties in nicely with Millau and the suspenders bridge. Once I'm that far south I'm only a mornings ride from our Base at Capestang on the Canal du Midi. That could tie in with invading @Tango's personnal space and drinking his coffee ( well it'd be rude not to...) as he's not far from there. Once that far south I'm too far for me to ride home in a single stage so back home via the Gevaudan and the Auvergne with an overnight stop somewhere in the Puy de Dome. I still don't know wether I am physically capable of the distance (using very little autoroute) and I haven't done 8 or 10 hour days for a loooooong time, That and the weather forcast is mainly why i'm keeping theplans fluid cos if I find it's just fucking miserable and / or painful then I shall stop and re adjust the plans accordingly ( the Joys of riding alone) Plan A is this ( ish). wednesday morning to Clermont Ferrand ( I know I can do this, cos I'e done it before in a small group. about 4 hours afternoon: millau via les Gorges du Tarn. spend the night in Millau and then an easy ride down to Capestang where I'll stay on one of our boats and, if they've let him back in the country, say hello to @Tango ( can you PM me a phone number mate? that way I can let you know if i've copped out, or call you on thursday afternoon to meet up.) Friday, still a bit vague and will depend on motivation and weather but something basically hesding north with with the autoroute as the escape route if needed overnight stop around Ambert or Thiers. Then more North and home on the saturday which will just be a slog cos from Vichy North I know the roads having ridden them many times already. Unfortunately no real escape route here as returning into Burgundy and the land that time forgot and the world passes by. I'll try and take some pics if the weather's not too bad. about 1500km in all.

From how you describe her, she is big enough to have her own gravity so maybe it does.

I stayed there in 2012 , it was run by some Dutch people when we went there. We pulled into the coutryard on our bikes and as soon as we got off we were handed a beer They had a good band on as well on one evening .

Shes a cow not a squirrel

Its alot better than being stuck indoors all day

Thats so cute I tuned back in today specifically to see if they made it and by jove theyre in Spain. Hats of to you Pete, you've pulled off something that sounded unlikely to happen I've told Mr Slowly bits n pieces of this tale as things as progressed and just gave him the update. He said "He (Pete) won't put up with that, I think what will happen is he'll say nothing until the grandkids have been there long enough to really like the life there and his son can see it then when the power balance has shifted he'll let rip because she's a bully and they only respond to being slapped down. I couldn't believe it, told Mr Slowly thats thats exactly your plan. He said nodded and said Hmm fair play.

i can bring my pellet gun ... i got telescopic's

i think you have .... didn;t see any cakes or chocolate in the shopping you got her...

I like to see our granddaughters ( nice when they bugger off home too ) on regular basis, the elder ones (16 & 18 years) are a joy, the 7 & 11 year are a bit of a handful, but could not imagine not seeing them...........so @XTreme do what you have to do.

Sounds like an elephant gun is going to be more useful

Ive only been through Clermont Ferrand once but what a shithole, quite surprising for France .

yeah I'll only be stopping for lunch at Clermont, pshing on to millau for the night if I can make it.

well according to meteo France, it looks like I'll be riding into rain tomorrow and will be playing dodge the thunderstorm by the evening. Thursday doesn't look too bad, showers but nowt worse. Friday I'll be running north trying to keep in front of a storm front coming in from the south west, which I hope will go through during the night otherwise I'm going to have a really shitty day on saturday. Still, it's better than they were forcasting a week ago so maybe it'll not happen... OH, @XTreme,

Belfast band. The drummer has decided to concentrate on her education so a guy is drumming now. European tour just announced.

This place was doing great until we gave women the right to vote, been downhill ever since, fact.

Women need to be taught their place early, give them too much free reign and they get out of control.

your calling in life .... driving round in a lorry all fucking day .....

I heard it’s summink about Stu n Six covering themselves in marmite, wrapping each other in clinglfilm and being paddle boarded by a dwarf.

Ohhhhhhhh yes we need a photo

An online reference to a local legend of dancing witches being turned into stone trees got me searching out more information. Sure enough the place existed and only about 18 miles away from where I live. A bit of a search on GSV showed that you could drive as far as a small medieval church and then walk through the grave yard and around a small moat to see the trees. Also mentioned online was that the trees were on private property and you had to walk around them on public footpaths. I found the road leading into a farm and the church. Straight away I saw signs forbidding vehicles to pass a certain point on the road, not to turn around there, not to park on the verge, not to park on the road, keep all dogs on leads, walk only on the footpath, keep out of the fenced areas etc, I have never seen so many signs in one place. I suspect the ruined trees are all that survived from a once lush wood, all the trees being turned into wooden and paper signs. I parked a metre off the road in an area that was once grassed verge but had been scrubbed out by vehicles leaving the farm yard and cutting the corner, just next to a sign saying No Parking. I figured if the verge was private they would have put their fence around it so it was part of the road and there were no properly legal No Parking signs, they were just bluff and bluster. Leaving my bike I walked through the church path gates. This was heavily signed, forbidding everything you could think of, plus a few things I hadn't. I made a note to try these things later on. The path turned a sharp corner and there was the abandoned church, fencing surrounded it with, you've guessed it, plenty of signs warning me to be good. The church looked fantastic, I will be returning when it is open again, the sign people look to be doing a good job fixing it up so I shouldn't really have a dig about the signs. I walked through one of the smallest graveyards I have ever seen and in front of me was a gate (multi-signed of course) and a short path to a second gate, also signed. I could see the tops of a few creepy looking trees the other side of a hedge. A quick loop around the moat and I was on a grass path next to the trees. I took a few pictures and carried on to a ploughed areal with a cross field path and took a few pictures from the side. It is a bizarre site, the trees are obviously dead but haven't rotted away like I'd expect. There are lots of new trees which looked recently planted. When I returned to my bike I was just getting ready to leave when an old man came cycling up and we had a chat. 45 minutes later he was still chatting. He had the uncanny knack of never finishing any sentence before starting the next one which made him quite hard to follow. Subjects he covered included, the Battle of Maldon, Viking raids, the manufacture of pressed house doors in the 1970s, shift and night working, Anglo Saxon coinage and the cost of cycle inner tubes. In the end I told him I had to leave for an urgent appointment and he rode off to look at the church I had just left.

I took a run out to bed the new rear brake pads in. Headed south to check out an abandoned building. It's actually called Soutra Aisle and was founded as a hospital 862 years ago. That was 616 years before the USA existed. It occupied a large site but this building is all that remains. After that I headed cross country and explored a few single tracks until I saw this in a village called Bolton. I'm guessing it was an old mill bit it has been converted into a house now. nice crypt in the churchyard. After that I headed back through Haddington and on to East Linton then Dunbar. I noticed both East Linton and Dunbar had quite a lot of electric vehicle charging stations which seems out of place. I headed to the harbour in Dunbar which is overlooked on one side by the castle ruins and the Battery on the other. I went up into the battery and enjoyed the outlook into the North Sea. then headed home.

@Mawsley front room

Fucking state of you in that photo with Bob you look too fat to even get on the bike! Stay at home and do the route via Google Earth!

Every cloud and all that eh.

We missed the first four years so we've got a lot of lost time to catch up on.

Well I hope the kids work out just how poisonous their mother is

Absolutely......that's why we have to walk on egg shells!

And long may they stay local so it gives you both a good chance to make up for lost time

Can't Rich......we want to see our grandkids! The last day or so has been fantastic being with them......after all, we've waited four years for it. It's ironic that this would never have happened without Putin going crazy!

She was a bit more subdued tonight......the wife reckoned it looked like she'd been crying. And I haven't even given the horrible cunt anything to cry about yet!

Either that or a long range snipers attention and as it happens I'm a good shot

No......she's just a bully that needs a straightener. People like that never stop until they get one!

A Psychiatrist's attention is what she needs!

@XTreme dont fall for this shit... he's after your grandkids

Thats why this is a good fight, the bookies are going bald doing the numbers.

He loved it! And the closer ties we build with the boys the more difficult it is for her to drag them away.

I like this girl so far, she sounds spunky and Pete isnt sure how to fuck with her yet kinda funny actually...round one goes to Poland...

Some dirty bastard hung his underwear up to dry on them I suppose, done for them all.

Will someone please return the real @Buckster Bloody excellent Ian , well done that man

Excellent Ian! Abandoned shit for me and a graveyard for @yen_powell! Pity you couldn't have found a van for @Six30!

Yen skulking round graveyards again? Great report Yen.....and I've never seen trees anything like that before! Really strange!

Lol, you’re not wrong about the signs Were there any signs forbidding discarding soiled kecks

Well the first point of note was no vans in sight so thats one thing he could learn from this one though many have gone before and he hasn't learnt anything thus far so I think he's probably a lost cause on that front

Nice one Rich, some nice historical stuff there. You need to teach @Six30 how it’s done

That’s not a report, it’s just some photos

My guess is the batshit crazy polish bitch has dumped his lifeless body in some abandoned dago midget hovel and driven off in to the sunset laughing maniacally

The promised ride report.... So got out on the bike alittle after 9 this morning and headed north on the A19 and A1 up to alnwick, there was nothing to really report on though just boring mile after mile of motorway riding....about 37 in all but once that was out of the way I reached the lovely little town of alnwick though I didn't stop for pics. I then headed out west towards Rothbury on the B6341 a very nice stretch of road and this is where I took the opportunity to take a few pics in the 2nd pic you can just make out the radar dome connected with RAF Boulmer. I then carried on towards Rothbury and stopped for a few more nice pics A few worthy of bike of the month here so when the time comes I'll be submitting. Once the requisite pics had been taken I continued on until I spotted an old ruin at a small hamlet called Edlingham which is an 11th century fortified Manor House and a slightly more recent church. Just so pete feels at home I went there for a pic or two though there may be too much greenery for him to take.... Once back to the bike I had a nice ride for the remainder of the road to Rothbury where I stopped for a quick tab and a can of coke, which is where I ran in to a mate who was out aswell to I decided to have a ride over to kielder with them though when I say with I really mean they took off as though they were riding the TT winning lap and for me that wasn't the reason for a ride today so I decided once at kielder I would have abit of craic with them and depart my own way to ride at my own pace and just enjoy myself instead of scaring myself silly with them two. Only took one pic at kielder though I can't seem to find it so you're all out of luck. Once my sarnie was eaten I remounted the bike said my goodbyes to ted and mitch and rode off from whence I'd came and retraced my way back to the A68, once found I turned right and headed south on to the rollercoaster which was alot more fun than it was yesterday in the car though I can tell you I lost my stomach over the crest on more than one occasion but it was now time to get home as I was getting abit tired so I decided against stopping for more pics. Nothing of note to tell of for the ride home apart from 1 cager on the A1 taking an exit ramp just to want to rejoin the A1 right where I was so I made them take the exit and go get lost. All in all a nice enjoyable mostly relaxing (if you discount the ride with the lads) few hours in the saddle. Hopefully it won't be too long till I get out on the bike again