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guzzi.webemoi ride, 22/5/2009

RJVB

GT Reference
Joined
Oct 28, 2008
Messages
1,936
Location
Paris
Two weeks back or so, I finally gave in. Being on this board is great, but lacking a bit in the "let's meet and go ride" department, at least for us here on the old continent. The generic, local biker forum I'm on here doesn't work well in that aspect either — somehow I don't connect with bikers as I do with Guzzisti. Guess we're special after all! :*

Long story short, the reception on guzzi.webemoi.com was like a home-coming, and so one of the 1st questions I posted: any rides planned for the (long) Ascension weekend?

The answer: nope, why don't you organise something.

Now one should know I'm not the best at navigation. I can recognise interesting roads from a map, but following a roadbook is a whole different story. I'm very good at following a lead (usually Anne, who also happens to be very good at navigation).
I was also planning not to be in Paris for those 4 days, but at Anne's place at the countryside.

So a deal was cut: I'd come up with a roadbook, starting at La Ferté Milon, one or two other members would program their GPSs, and whoever felt like it would meet us to spend the day. (La Ferté Milon is about 1h30 from Paris, which isn't a negligible distance in this part of the world.)

The roadbook we came up with is an extended version of a trip I made earlier with Anne (described in the Aisne Spring Rides thread).

Rendez-vous was given at 11:30 at the La Ferté Milon train station.

A few days before leaving for Anne's place, the elevator of the parking where I keep my bike nowadays got blocked, with my bike inside. It was repaired just in time, but the event added some extra suspense to the whole enterprise!

As a result of this "proactive stress", and of some subtle language differences in the way times are expressed, I left for the meeting point an hour early. Which turned out to be a good thing as it allowed me to keep company to a board member who'd decided to come at the last moment, for a while at least.

After going home to fetch Anne, and after making another grand entrance — this time 2-up on Anne's scooter! :silly: — 2 others arrived ... which made 3 guys complaining about their GPSs and fuelling Anne's distrust of those gadgets. And sure enough, the one to lead us with the "digitised" roadbook arrived 10 minutes late.

And then we discovered that no one had read the forum too accurately (or I had not posted too accurately): A & I were the only ones to have prepared a picknick. This is never too big a problem, even in rural France: it's rare not to have at least 1 bakery with an interesting choice of tasty bits.

So we left, "marcury" leading off his TomTom, me in 2nd position, and Anne closing the ranks. A nice little pack: two silver Norges, a black Norge, a gray Breva 1100, a rosso Breva 750 (with customised saddle) ... and a Satelis 125 :)

Moments later, we were in the fields
IMG_0002.JPG
, and yet a few more moments later, in the 2nd village,
IMG_0005.JPG
,
the TomTom missed a beat and would have led us in the wrong direction. This would become a habit, but fortunately I still knew the roads to take here.

Initial planning had foreseen the picknick at the ruins of the Abbaye de Vauxclair , but with the late start and early departure (from Paris), hunger flexed its claws way before that. At the entrance of a nice old town called La Fère en Tardenois, which has a nice *old* wooden market hall, but also the ruins of an even nicer medieval castle a bit out of town. So that's where we headed.

The road from la Fère leading to Fismes and then beyond is a nice one, with sweepers, traversing forests and fields, and generally in above-average shape (compared to other roads we took). i think all of us enjoyed this part, but I was less amused by the white thing that fell out of the sky and bounced high off the road too close to me for comfort. It took me a while to figure out I'd just had a close encounter with a stray golf ball...

We managed to find the Vauxclair abby despite a closed road and then went for a drink at the Caverne du Dragon, one of the WW-1 "hotspots". We were blessed with extraordinarily nice weather, so we could really admire the spot the opponents of old had chosen to kill each other off. I also discovered the advantage of a museum-bar: without a license to serve alcohol, they actually stock no-alcohol beer, usually unavailable in traditional bars (but so much more appropriate while riding than "real" beer).

Re-hydrated, we rode on, hoping my northern detour of Soissons wouldn't prove too difficult to figure out without a reliable electronic guidance system. It did, so we crossed the Aisne river at Pommiers rather than at Vic-sur-Aisne - which actually turned out to be a lucky guess. The surrounds there are much nicer than they are further downstream.

The GPS had long given up, and my guidance on this stretch wasn't faultless either, but we had Anne's expert services at our proposal, so after a bit of map-studying, we did arrive at Pierrefonds, albeit not via the superbly twisting road I'd chosen.

The castle was still there, and the terraces all open, so we parked in a nice row and went for a final drink together, during which decisions were also made on how to continue and where to split.

All in all a very rewarding day, and not bad for a first attempt at organising a ride (hey, somebody has to say it, but "they" all agree! :silly:).

Almost exactly 200km for us, between 350 and 400km for the others.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mgn12m7/SortieIDF20090522
 
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