27/04/2008 by Brigid.

George Higgins’ Alaska itinerary for next year’s trip has precipitated two or three weeks’ frenzied planning chez Rynne. Trying to work in two services for John’s new bike, and get to Calgary in time to see the last couple of days of the Stampede, has had us burning the candle at both ends. The trip may be 14 months away, but we already have scarily detailed descriptions of conditions for all the major Alaska highways, and have plumbed practically every gas station en route into Garmin MapSource. However, having suggested to George that 300 miles per day might be a touch on the ambitious side, we have not managed to do any better. And, frankly, after all these late nights and early mornings, I am beginning to feel the simulated effects of 24 hour daylight already. Our lack of sleep could partially account for John’s latest irritation with Triumph.

To recap briefly, until November last year, John was the proud owner of a 2003 Triumph Trophy. When I registered my BMW in France, John assumed that registering his bike would be just as simple. He was wrong. A letter from Triumph in Paris told us that the French authorities did not recognise the bike’s VIN number as being from a type sold in France. Putting the bike through the necessary tests to ensure that it meets current French road-worthiness and emissions regulations, would have cost in the region of € 5-6k. With no Certificate of Conformity, John could not register the bike … and no registration meant no insurance. The only thing he could do was take the Trophy back to the UK and sell it. In January, he took delivery of a brand new Triumph Tiger, a bike that is most definitely available here in France.

Luckily, as fate would have it, John decided to leave the new bike at his brother’s, giving him a set of wheels when he had to return unexpectedly to the UK at the beginning of February. Unluckily, the day we eventually chose to bring the bike back to France turned out to be the shittiest 24 hours of weather we have had this winter. John braved driving rain, sleet and gale-force winds to get the bike as far as St. Gaudens, about 13km from home. But, when snow began to settle on the A64, I insisted that he abandon the bike, covered, at the péage station and come back for it in the morning.

Once we finally had the bike back it took us a further week or so to send the log book, together with receipts for the necessary modifications to French spec, off to Triumph in Paris in the expectation of receiving the coveted Certificate of Conformity.

Picture the scene, if you will, when we opened the response,

“Il s’avère que je suis dans l’impossibilité de vous faire une attestation …. il faut vous preniez rendez-vous à la DRIRE …. TVV Anglais n’est pas le même que le TVV Français.”

We still don’t know exactly what TVV means, but even if you don’t speak a word of French, I think you’ll get the jist.

Having peeled John off the ceiling, I rang the nice man at the DRIRE (Direction Régionale de l’Industrie, de la Recherche et de l’Environment). I say “nice”, though the last time I had spoken to M. Lavielle over the Trophy, he had sounded less than sympathetic. I read Triumph’s letter to him and he, as I feared, launched into a schpeel about having to send the bike to Paris for emissions tests and it being too expensive to be worth the effort. As he paused for breath, I mentioned that he had said the same thing to me regarding John’s previous bike and, surely, the same could not be true for a 2008 bike. To my relief, he agreed that something didn’t seem quite right, and to send him all the documentation we had sent to Triumph. He then went on holiday for three weeks.

Having been in France now for more than 30 days, the Tiger’s UK insurance was invalid, and so John’s bike joined my BMW in the hall. With a bit of manhandling, we managed to tuck it snuggly under the stairs, leaving just enough room for us to use the front door. It was quite a talking point. I don’t know many other people who keep two 1000cc+ motorcycles in their hallway.

With the weather now warming up and the mountain roads beckoning, we have made some progress. I rang M. Lavielle again the day he got back to the office. Encouragingly, he remembered seeing my letter. There was a bit of shuffling of paper at the other end of the line before he told me that I needed to ring Triumph in Paris. “What!?”

Apparently, instead of writing a half-witted and unhelpful letter, referring me to the DRIRE, what Triumph should actually have done was to supply an “Attestation de Conformité Partielle”. “Bien sûr”, said M. Rivain at Triumph, when I spoke to him a few minutes later, “I’ll post it today”. Great, isn’t it, when people know their jobs.

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13/04/2008 by Brigid.

I came up with the title of this post as John and I were doing a bit of impromptu mountaineering this afternoon (see below). However, as we came home to find the dastardly duo eating two beautiful veal escalopes that I had stupidly left out to defrost for dinner, perhaps I should have called it “Dinner’s on me”. Bloody cats!

Anyway, back to the point. For most Pyrenean ski stations, the season ended last Sunday. Sad really, as we had a good snow fall the preceding week, and the mountains now sport a healthy dusting. Tant pis! Spring has sprung, so we bought ourselves a couple of new maps and started walking again.

On Wednesday we gave dinner to Lizzie and Carl, a young British couple who are bravely restoring a seriously dilapidated little house a few streets away. They have their work cut out. They had to install a new staircase just to reach the first floor (second, if you are American), and have to lean a stepladder against an unreliable stairway to reach the loft. There is only one window in the front of the house at ground level, so lighting is supplemented by open metal grilles in the first and second floor landings. At the moment, they are concentrating on the earthen ground floor, which they have had to level manually before they can think of installing anything more modern, like wooden floorboards …

Anyway, I digress. Having a dog, Lizzie and Carl are also keen walkers, so they kindly brought round a couple of maps to show us some good routes. One of these showed ‘grottes’ (grottos) nearby and an intriguing chateau that we didn’t know existed, “Chateau d’Eau”. So, today, we set off over the river to Gourdan Polignan to find them.

Last week, John and I decided to explore an intriguing group of buildings visible from the golf course on the southern bank of the Garonne. Apart from finding that there is no footpath the other side of the river, and having to pick our way through an overgrown railway depot, we were disappointed to find that the buildings we had taken to be an ancient fort were, in fact, a disused gravel quarry. Today we arrived by road and, with the benefit of our new map, found our way onto a very pleasant riverside walk. The grottes and chateau were marked half way up Bouchet, a small round hill that bears the scars of centuries of quarrying. From the contour lines on the map, it appeared that the path passed a couple of hundred metres below.

Not to be disuaded, if Lizzie and Carl and their dog had walked to the grottes, then so could we and, seeing a rough trail tramped into the hillside, we followed it - stumbling over rocks, slipping and scrambling up mossy banks, then back into the trees to be stung and pricked by thorns and nettles. At last we came upon the grottes. Nothing too exciting, just caves in the rock, the largest of which had been extravagantly barred with new steel gates. “Perhaps to prevent underground access to the Chateau”, I said, hopefully. There was no shortcut, so we had to retrace our steps back to the open hillside. We could see there was a road a couple of hundred metres further up, and this seemed a better bet than risking our limbs, slipping on the way down the slope. However, there was no beaten track this time, and John and I found ourselves inching our way, rather gingerly, over loose shingle and boulders to the summit.

In reality, we never got anywhere near the summit, but we did stop once or twice to admire the magnificent views and take some pictures.

John was none too impressed being asked to stop climbing and pose, as the ground under his feet threatened to fall away with every slight movement.

Once on the road, finding the Chateau was a doddle. Impressive, don’t you think.

When we got home, I looked up Chateau d’Eau and discovered that it is French for ‘water tower’ … Doh!

PS: We bumped into Lizzie and Carl in the Auberge this evening. They were amazed when we described our walk to the grottes. It seems they found some small ‘tunnels’ about 20ft above the riverside walk, and assumed that these were the grottes. They will be going back tomorrow …

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