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Eurothrash…

So it was holiday time again and despite working until late on the Friday and hence only doing last minute packing, I found myself heading off at Oh Dark Hundred on Saturday, 1st June to the Eurotunnel to meet up with Yox and Purge.

Yox had organised the crossing tickets as well as working out a route that linked up a number of great biking roads in and around the Pyrenees, so we were heading off there with a view to getting all the way down to the Pyrenees by nightfall. The benefit of travelling off-peak as far as the French are concerned should have been that we wouldn’t need to book any hotels in advance and hence we wouldn’t have any pressure to be at a pre-determined destination on any day.

They both took the mick out of the lack of tread on my sporty tyres which I’d though would be fine for the trip … without realising I’d done the 2,100 mile Ardèche trip on the same tyres before… And so we turned out onto the motorways and headed South. As it transpired, the motorways were a leeeetle bit abrasive and by the time we’d lost and found Purge around Paris and made our way down to Clermont-Ferrand, the tyres were well and truly shagged and wouldn’t make it home. Ah!

Purge and I were both using Tom-Tom Rider satnavs – mine a more recent model after my other one was stolen by my psycho ex-girlfriend – and both had been updated to the latest maps … which showed the hotel we selected as being halfway up a hill in a residential area. It wasn’t there, of course, but we went back to where Yox’s Co-Pilot Android software (the same I use on my iPhone) had guided him. I then went in and negotiated a decent room rate for the three of us with use of their own garage for the first overnight stay. Then shower, change, beers and a huge evening meal before bed.

Day Two and we were heading off via Millau towards Perpignan. The twisting roads of the Haute-Pyrenees were fabulous but tiring so as we rode into Quillan, we found a traditional-looking hotel, the Hotel La Chaumiere, to check into. As it was Yox’s birthday, the beers, the wine and the food were on Purge and I.

The view from my balcony

The view from my balcony

The meal also included the heaviest wine bottle I’ve ever seen: truly bizarre (but tasty)!

The heaviest wine bottle ever

The heaviest wine bottle ever

After dinner, it was up to our rooms … and I discovered that my carefully-arranged base layers had flown off the balcony and were laying in front of the restaurant. Ah!

Day Three and it was time to sort out my racing slicks. We delayed breakfast and I then spent the next half an hour ringing around all the motorcycle dealers and tyre depots to see if I could get sorted. They were all shut, despite it being a Monday, as they’d been open on the Saturday. Oh to be French! So I decided to press on into Andorra alone – our planned destination – to try to find tyres and let Yox and Purge head off into Spain to play on the roads. This included my first real view of some of the passes and cols and snow-capped peaks.

Note racing slicks...

Note racing slicks…

Instagram version!

Instagram version!

Some epic twisty roads towards Andorra then saw me going through the 2.8km long Túnel d’Envalira which was like going through a refrigerator!

Emerged from the Túnel d'Envalira

Emerged from the Túnel d’Envalira

Then it was down into Andorra. As I came close to Andorra la Vella, I passed by a KTM dealer and popped inside to see if they could sort me out with tyres using my best Spanglish. They were really helpful and directed me to a car/bike dealer nearby that happened to be a Kawasaki franchise. So in I went, agreed a deal to get new tyres fitted that afternoon and then went off to find us a hotel, the Novotel. While the tyres were being fitted – a process that took the entire afternoon… – I went out scouting for dinner and found an excellent tapas restaurant.

Out with the old...

Out with the old…

...in with the new

…in with the new

When Purge and Yox arrived after enjoying what they said were some of the best roads they’d seen, it was off to eat.

Allow me to explain through the medium of interpretive dance

Allow me to explain through the medium of interpretive dance

Day Four and we were heading off to Bagnères-de-Luchon via the twisties. Epic roads out of Andorra – back the way I’d come – and this time, I’d set up my helmet camera to capture some of the footage:

It was warm and sunny … and snowy at the top of the Pyrenees which meant the scenery was spectacular.

Once we were into the Haute-Pyrenees again, we went up a few of the Cols that feature in the Tour de France as well as a few others:

Col du Port

Col du Port

On one descent, I was able to coast for over 3 miles, overtaking cars and lorries with the engine off! Yox also did the reveal on his luxury item: he’d brought some fine coffee and a little fold-up stove to brew it on, so we had coffee at the Col du Port … and he set fire to a picnic table by mistake.

Finally we made it into Bagnères-de-Luchon where we pulled up in the square next to the Hôtel Panoramic where I did the usual and we checked in.

Bagnères-de-Luchon

Bagnères-de-Luchon

Bagnères-de-Luchon

Bagnères-de-Luchon

Bagnères-de-Luchon

Bagnères-de-Luchon

Day Five and we were headed off to Spain via a few more peaks which were covered in snow … which we duly played in. Obviously.

IMG_3331

I'm snow angel

I’m snow angel

2013-06-05 11.12.12

Eejit dance

Eejit dance

Talking of playing, Yox had rigged up his camera and followed me off down one of the descents:

After a day’s bend-swinging (including a visit to our spiritual home, a village called Perves), we were tired and decided to cut our intended journey short, so we checked in to the fabulous Hotel Cotori in El Pont de Suert.

Hotel Cotori

Hotel Cotori

That’s a pedestrian square… We were recommended a decent tapas restaurant where, despite the protestations of the owner, I went ahead and ordered us a whole selection of dishes that just kept on coming. Delicious! And all finished off by us.

Day Six and it was breakfast with two grumpy buggers. Something about a blue ZRX’s alarm going off at 3.15am. I was unaware of this, given I was sound asleep at the back of the hotel…

So the plan for the day was to head back into France, but we hadn’t reckoned on the nature of the route being so twisty and covering a large vertical variance: up and down like a whore’s drawers! This wasn’t helped by finding out when we were there that the famous Col du Tormalet was shut due to there being 6-9m of snow on the road at the summit!

More epic roads and scenery though. Tired and getting late, we diverted into Lourdes to find a hotel for the night … and we found one: a €29 a night one that we christened “Hotel Paradiso” that probably charged the rooms out by the hour too… What a dive! Lourdes in general – and our hotel in particular – was full of gangs of schoolkids with various coloured beanie hats and scarves being led around by Catholic priests. What a strange place!

I woke up quite hot at around 3am and my body heat had ‘refreshed’ the mattress such that there was a smell of urine from the depths of the mattress (itself on a plastic-covered bed base). I couldn’t wait to get a shower in the morning! Purge had the evening before found a dead insect in his sheets!

Day Seven. Keen to get a move on and put the Hotel Paradiso behind us, we headed back into Spain via a whole load more passes, peaks and valleys.

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Photo!

Photo!

IMG_3381 IMG_3371 IMG_3350

We got as far as Jaca in Aragon and after filling up we headed to the Hotel & Spa Real Jaca which did us a great deal for the rooms and underground parking with breakfast. The only downside was the Saga louts that checked in later: a whole coachload of OAPs that swooped on the restaurant to scoff the food.

Day Eight and I woke up to the “shh” of car tyres on wet roads. Looking out of the window, I could see it was absolutely tipping down: not good considering we were hoping to get to Le Mans by the evening. So we had breakfast, checked out and headed out into torrential rain at around 9.00am, up and up into the Pyrenees towards France. My vented race boots started leaking after 16 miles but fortunately the rest of my riding gear was keeping me dry. Stupidly, I’d not worn a base layer under my T-shirt and hadn’t zipped-in the liner to my riding gear either, so the combination of rain storms and altitude meant I was getting really cold. By the time of our first fuel stop into France, I was grateful to be able to put on some more clothes before we headed off back into the worst riding conditions any of us had ever seen (in my case, in 35 years of riding).

The autoroute around Bordeaux was more like a canal and at one point it felt like I was sitting on a chair while someone directed a fire hose at me, the rain was so heavy.

Towards Paris it stopped raining and near Tours at another fuel stop, we decided to pin it and win it: we wouldn’t bother stopping for the night near Le Mans; we’d just keep going for the other 300 miles to the Eurotunnel station and see if we could get on a day early, ratther than getting changed out of our wet gear and potentially facing another day’s wet riding on the Sunday.

We arrived at around 10.15pm, some 780 miles later and were pleased to be put onto the 11.45pm crossing, so we finally had something to eat and drink and on we went.

Homeward bound

Homeward bound

Back onto English soil at around 11.45pm UK time, we went our separate ways and I blasted back towards London and my apartment, which I reached at around 12.30am.

Roughly 2,100 miles again. Another epic Euroblast.

So yes, I’d ummed and ahhed about getting a new bike for the trip before I left and more or less settled on a new Triumph Sprint GT 1050 but knew I’d not be able to get it run in and sorted before the off. Blue Rex was epic in the twisties and looks the bollocks too, but on the motorways above 90mph for mile after mile and hour after hour it’s a bit of an effort plus some fixed luggage makes sense. So I’m test riding a Sprint next weekend and will probably place an order there and then so I can have it properly sorted before next year’s planned Eurothrash two-up with GT to the Alps.

Or maybe a late summer long weekend sortie across the Channel just to get a feel for it… 😉

Well it was a beautiful but chilly day in London today and so I left GT’s to ride in to the Ace, arriving before 10am after a cobweb-blowing ride across town.

We counted them in and we counted them out again!

And talking of chilly, the Ace chilli cheesy chips went down really well with GT and I and you couldn’t tell they were veggie either.

Today was Kawasaki Day at the Ace Cafe London. It was also the Virgin London Marathon and where I live the roads close at 8.00am. Despite GT taking part in the marathon – she managed a 4:00:44 finish time! – I headed off before the road closures to the Ace Cafe for Kawasaki Day, celebrating 40 years.

Of course, 11 and 23 mile markers en route were too good to pass unnoticed so I hoisted celebratory wheelies as I drove through!

Getting to the Ace at 8.00am I grabbed a cuppa and breakfast and then decided to have the ZRX dyno’d again now I’ve put some miles on it and the results were very impressive: 163.2bhp and 98ft/lb which even beat some poor bloke with a shiny ZZR1400 and Akra pipes!

Here are some photos too:

Well today I went to collect the ZRX from PDQ post-fettling. And yes, I think it looks great!

Larry mentioned that Nick had test-ridden it just to be on the safe side after they’d achieved their best-ever dyno results for a ZRX1200R on standard carbs/bores. I’d asked for a 44T rear sprocket as before and Larry suggested it would be sensible to go back to a 42T at some point as Nick had come back wide-eyed and declared it a tad berserk… We’ll see tomorrow!

PDQ Dyno Results

Well the results of the engine work and fettling at PDQ are in: up to 158bhp at the rear wheel! Well done to Larry and the team.

Dyno Chart

Dyno Chart

Also interesting is that that was up from 130bhp before their engine work and after I’d fitted a full Akrapovic system and rejetted it myself a while before.

And to put all that into context, it was dyno’d standard but with an Akrapovic end can in July 2005 and put out 114bhp (up from c. 108bhp as standard at the rear wheel).

A quick update on Blue Rex’s progress: it turns out that reprofiling my standard cams would have been experimental and Larry wasn’t prepared to experiment on a customer’s bike, so we agreed to buy a new set of ZZR1200 cams after all along with stronger valve springs.

As the clutch had been slipping on track for a while, I also asked Larry to upgrade the clutch plates and springs whilst it was apart.

In the intervening period, its MoT has expired so it’s been MoT’d and passed.

Worse was yet to come: PDQ have been awarded the sole concession for Dymag wheels worldwide and was offering an introductory deal … so a set of 7 spoke magnesium alloy wheels in satin black are going on with a new, slightly larger section Bridgestone BT016 tyre (which should be fine for our planned Ardeche Valley trip in June) rather than a full-on trackday tyre. Oh and as my secondhand Akrapovic full system would be looking out of place now, I’ve upgraded to a new hexagonal system with carbon fibre end can to set it all off – the removed parts will be for sale on the OC when I collect it. As that won’t be for a week or two, PDQ will run the engine in on the dyno and do a pre and post run-in dyno run for a reading as to what the engine is putting out.

Well after Robspeed Motorcycles at Grimsby serviced Blue Rex and left it misfiring within 3 miles of their workshops, I decided the time had come for Blue Rex to get some fettling and proper setting up.

I’d been keeping a set of cams I’d been sold a few years ago which I was told were ZZR1200 cams. So I rang Larry Webb at PDQ in Berkshire to ask him what he suggested. He recommended fitting those cams, gas-flowing the cylinder head, fitting high compression pistons (in the existing bore sizes) and then fettling it all together properly, so I dropped it off and have left them to it.

Bad news came recently: the cams I’d been sold were actually standard ZRX1200R cams so I now have the existing ones plus a set of new ones. Larry is going to send them to the States to get them re-profiled instead as that’s what they used to do back in the day. This will add a few hundred pounds more to the existing quote, but is cheaper than buying new ZZR1200 cams which are silly expensive.

We’ll see what results we get.

RBLR1000

I was signed up to do the RBLR1000 – 1,000 miles in 24 hours for charity with proceeds going to the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal.

So I had the bike serviced at Robspeed: a full service with shim check, etc. and a new chain and front sprocket which left me with a little change from £500.

But on the way home it started spluttering a bit. I assumed that some fresh petrol would help, so I topped it up and then took it out for a shakedown run on Thursday. Fine wide full open but running rough as a dog’s bottom at low revs or tickover.

I daren’t use the bike for 1,000 miles in the Highlands, so I had to quickly fettle the Fireblade to have the satnav working and the like. And so I abandoned Blue Rex for the Blade for Scotland. Read on…