Trip to the South - From the UK to Puglia (Part 1)
We leave Walsall on a cold dark morning at 7am on the long journey to the channel tunnel. We arrive bang on time - 10.30 - and a friendly assistant directs us to collect our Euros with only 10 minutes to check in. We are ushered on board the train. We are behind a man in a Lotus who seems to have a friend in another carriage. They swap places and the friend dons gear a biker would be proud of and bizarrely jumps into the open-top Lotus! The train pulls into Calais and engines start to rev as we climb onto the bike and press the starter, ready for our long hike to Italy – but nothing happens. The bike doesn’t start and we look at each other in amazement. After pushing the bike up a very steep access ramp a friendly French recovery man arrives to our aid and eventually tows us to the garage outside of the Euro tunnel.
After consulting the manual (yes, always take one with you), we check the fuses and lo and behold! one has blown. A quick swap around soon gets the bike started with gasps from us both. We ride without incident until the next fuel stop, when after filling the tank the fuse goes again! We change our last spare fuse and promptly stall the engine, with the obvious result.
Now there is a choice of waiting for the French police to ‘recover’ us from the motorway or risk using the ‘full beam’ fuse and ride on just low beam. We opt for the latter and decide to get off at the next motorway exit. After leaving the motorway we travel on low beam through unlit winding country lanes as we head for lights in the distance where we eventually find Laon, which seems to be a very pretty town even though we can’t see most of it because it’s so dark. More by luck than judgment we find a quiet hotel in the old quarter and settle down for the night with some welcome French cuisine and a very hot bath.
Day Two
We awake refreshed and armed with details of a local motorcycle shop and confident that all will be solved, only to find that motorcycle shops in France are closed on Mondays. Lady Luck takes a shine to us and the shop cleaner arrives, he does a quick search of the workshop and hands over four fuses – free of charge.
