The hunt for Vin Diesel...

Zut Alors! Here we go again...

Welcome to this travelogue which will describe our experiences and exploits as we ride around Europe peddling our own unique brand of British diplomacy to our cuddly little Johnny Foreigner neighbours. Yes, the Red Lion Bikers will shortly be back on the road once more and this year we take on Europe. 3300 miles of what we hope is the best that the continent has to offer... its beautiful and varied scenery, diverse and welcoming people, warm weather, wonderful roads and interesting food.

I shall attempt to relay our experiences in as literate a fashion as possible, the standard of which may vary dependent upon the usual factors...

Do feel free to have your say... become a follower (it'd be nice to beat last year's total of 4!) or add comments to any of the posts

Monday, 30 May 2011

The hunt for Vin Diesel...

You may think this to be a somewhat recurring theme but to say there were some bad hangovers on Friday morning is an understatement. This in part may provide an excuse for what happened on the road to Barcelona. With our tour's half-time destination plugged into the satnav we departed Carcassonne bleary eyed and after four nurofen, a pizza and a beer stop in Quillan later we still felt as bad but, being the intrepid explorers we kid ourselves into thinking we are, we continued. Reidy, being the most sociable amongst us and also because his Ducati moped struggles to keep up with the monumental BMWs, had trodden his own path a while before us so it was with the utmost sympathy that we received news that Clarkson had filled the aforementioned bike up not with petrol but with diesel. Numpty. The machine may both sound and run like a tractor but those little Italian combine harvester designers have yet to make their bikes run on derv. Andy managed to empty his tank with the help of the lady behind the petrol station counter and we all sighed a collective relief that we wouldn't be put in the position of having to bail him out again (see Blog entry 'Don't follow us, we're lost too' in case you'd forgotten).

We were all keen to reach the Catalonian capital as after seven days of being in the saddle we were all beginning to resemble Desperate Dan, not only in our gait but in looks also. The hotel receptionist thought it most amusing that five silly Englishmen would play a game of drawing lots to work out who sleeps with who but what she didn't realise is the magnitude of the result of this contest as I have explained previously.

Our first evening in Barcelona passed relatively uneventfully, though after a bit of a route march to find a bar on the beach front we were confronted by the sight of two naturist blokes walking hand in hand along the beach, one sporting a man bag which, to be honest, could have been better placed to preserve the man's dignity. Urrrggh! And before you say it, if it had been two lady naturists doing the same thing we'd have reacted no differently...