Day 1, Friday 22 June 2007 Derbyshire UK to Calais France 220.5 Miles (Total so far 220.5 miles)

9:45am we set off, weather was true to form for the uk, raining!! to be fair it was only light rain, luckily I had loaded the bike up on the Thursday while it was dry so all I had to do was start the bike up and go. The bike was real heavy with all the gear on, Tail pack, Tank bag and panniers
 So off we travelled down the M1 and it didn't take long before the heavy rain started, and boy did it bloody rain for around 100miles or so, it wasn't until we got to South Mimms services the rain had stopped, and started to brighten up, by this time I was sodden to the bone due to the fact I'd not put my waterproof trousers on properly, and the water ran all inside them and soaked straight through my leather trousers. As normal on the M1 miles and miles of roadwork's and 40mph speed limits slowing us up considerably. For the remaining 80 odd miles around the M25 with (more roadwork's) and M20 (yes you guessed it, more bleedin' roadwork's) to the channel tunnel terminal it remained dry and mainly sunny. Arriving in Calais off the tunnel, the weather was still fine, our Hotel (Hotel etap Coquelles) was only a few miles from the terminal across from the Cite Europe. It had been a long wet day, time to dry out and relax.


Day 2, Saturday 23 June 2007 Calais to Orléans 264.9 Miles (Total so far 485.4 miles)
 
Early start today 8:30 overcast but dry for the minute but we had a few showers later but nothing major, today would be the trickiest of the routes of the trip getting around Paris. So off we went, we got on the A26/E15 motorway in Calais heading for Paris getting on the A1/E15, miles and miles of free flowing motorways virtually empty (a sight never  before seen in the UK) The GSX1400FE was in its elements, plodding along merrily at 80mph (130kph) eating up the miles as easy as a knife thru butter, this bike was made for the open roads and the holiday spirit was just starting to kick in, and then we joined the A3/E15 on the outskirts of Paris, this is were it gets interesting ( interesting, ok so I lied! more of a pain in the A$$) traffic is bad around Paris and surrounding suburbs. Last year I went around the périphérique  (why I here you ask! Microsoft Autoroute, grrr), yep it's a car park just like our M25, This year I went a different route onto the A86 missing the périphérique, as routed by tomtom, mmm (with raised eyebrow) well what do ya know, even bigger car park, it is time consuming getting around Paris but it was the only time we got stuck in any traffic anywhere in France.
 We joined the A6b south of Paris, this pretty much means your home free and no more traffic jams all the way to the Mediterranean, just clear open roads, the tomtom sure does take the hassle out of trying to remember the route, stopping looking at maps and routes. We the merge from the A6b onto the A10 from now on its all easy riding. we carry on down the A10/E50/E5  until we meet the A71/E5 intersection at Orléans around 50 miles south of Paris our Hotel (Hotel Campanile Orléans-Oust) just off junction 1 of the A71. by now it had brightened up and was sunny. We arrived at the hotel at 15:30, it had a nice little restaurant, and the steaks were excellent and I kid you not they were 2" thick, I've never seen anything like it in my life. After we had our meal, we had a walk around the town, and coming around a roundabout was a French K2 1400, the first one we had seen in France
 

Day 3, Sunday 24 June 07 Orléans to Narbonne 418.9 Miles (Total so far 903.9 miles)

Today was to be the longest day in respect of mileage, a total of 418.9 miles (674km) but probably the easiest as its literally "one" long road to the south of France it may be an easy route for today, but extremely exhausting,  We depart the hotel 9:15am, again very overcast and if I remember right around 15°c we rejoin the A71/E5, very little traffic more or less empty at times and the 1400 is purring away to its hearts content. the terrain was quite flat at one point with little hills. After around 50 miles the sat nav then changes for the next turn off, which was 327 miles away!!  I was looking forward to today, I remember last year travelling down, lots of fields and wildlife, fields of sunflowers etc.
France has the same population as the UK, but is 2½ bigger country. By the time we entered the Auvergne region of France the scenery had changed, more hills and dark mountains in the far distance getting very picturesque. We called in at a service area called "Aire des Volcans d'Auvergne" 46° 3'32.95"N -  3° 6'46.72"E on the A71 (around 20miles north of Clermont-Ferrand  ) time was around 1:00pm the weather had been getting better and better by the mile, and was now 32°, the temperature had doubled since setting off and we had done 170miles today so far, I phoned home, the weather was bad with continuous heavy rain. This service area was no ordinary one, it had panoramic view points, it turns out that the "mountains" in the distance are actually Volcano's. From this point on it has to be the best parts of the ride to the Med. The views are spectacular watching the mountains get closer south of Clermont-Ferrand now on the A75 and we are starting to see more corners on the roads. 
Now the A75 has to be the most amazing motorways I've travelled on so far, as I said earlier, stunning views but now heading into the mountains either side of you, gorges, bridges, tunnels and the road gets more appealing  more and more corners, around 70miles south of Clermont-Ferrand we pulled into a rest area called Aire de Garabit, to our surprise had a view point overlooking a red Iron built railway bridge which was huge, we have travelled on this motorway before, but not stopped here so missed out seeing this sight before hidden away. There were by now big black clouds in the skies around, but it was still sunny tho we and had passed wet patches on the roads in places, we carried on down the A75 it was getting blacker, the temperature was varying from 24°c to 30°c but seamed to be dodging the the Black stuff quite well only hitting a few spots of rain, the roads were wet through, really wet we had missed a big storm so far. We must have done 50 miles riding around what looked to be thunder storm clouds. It was now getting extremely black above us now and I was needing petrol, it was looking like our luck was going to run out any second, so we called at a petrol station (20-30 miles north of Millau) Aire de L'Aveyron filled up with petrol and have a bite to eat, the time was now getting on (4:15pm) and still 120 ish miles to go. Anyway the lightening started we and the bike where under the canopy of the service station then an almighty clatter on the canopy roof....W.T.F....then looked at the floor of the car park... we were shell shocked, it was a hail storm... with hail stones the size of gobstoppers, I tried to get a photo but they were melting as fast as they landed and didn't look the same on the picture. The hail only lasted a minute or so then the rain came for about 10 minutes then cleared up as fast as it came, within minutes blue sky was appearing so on we pressed. What a day so far, sun then hail storms. I was getting a bit disappointed as we were getting close to the Millau viaduct, which is the tallest road bridge in the world, I wanted to get a few pics of it and was praying for it not to be raining. As luck had it we got to the Millau viaduct and the weather was good so I managed to get the pics. The bridge has only been open a couple of years or so and there is also purpose built view points to walk up from off the motorway. It was now 5:15pm and nearly 100miles to go. From Millau the A75 motorway gets really twisty, probably my favourite section, unfortunately the speed limits are considerably slower as a lot of the corners are quite tight, its good to get the bike leaning fairly low around the corners, it makes the riding more fun. It is a slow section of motorway which means it is a time consuming part of the route, tight corners and going down mountains as we are now hitting the edge of the Pyrénéese in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. towards the end of the A75 were back more or less on sea level, the land flatter, we then join the A9 in the south of France, this motorway running just a few miles inland from the Mediterranean sea, at times you can see it in the distance. We carried on on the A9 until the turn off for Narbonne were we stopped at the Ibis Hotel Narbonne. It had been a long, hot & sticky day, then the hail storm, we were absolutely exhausted, it had taken us 10 hours today, time for a soak in the bath and into the hotel's restaurant which the cook steaks and fish on a open log fired grill, one of the best places we have eaten at.

Day 3, Monday 25 June 07 Narbonne, France to Platja d'Aro, Spain 119.5 Miles (Total so far 1023.4 miles)

Today was to be the shortest day in respect of mileage, after a long day yesterday it meant we could have a lay in today, catch up on a bit of sleep, a lot of early starts and long days started to catch up on us, I felt a bit of it today with a bit of a migraine, took a load of pain killers and back to bed for the morning to try and sleep it off. We set off around midday rejoining the A9 heading for Spain with the Mediterranean in sight on our left passing Perpignan and in front of us are the mountains towards the spanish border, they are big very dark looking mountains, the thing I did notice is where the high mountains were, the clouds hovered above them covering the peaks, away from the mountains clear blue skies.  The A9 takes you straight to the Spanish border, the motorway then changes to the AP7 once in Spain. After yesterday's roads, today's roads seemed to be more normal style of motorway. A More industrial route than we had seen the previous days as we go past Perpignan. As we approached the Spanish border we went over a few gorges with thousands and thousands of trees. As we pass through the border into Spain we only had 40 or 50 miles to go to reach our destination of Platja d'Aro, we stayed on the AP7 until Girona and take the local roads into Platja d'Aro, I knew it was a fairly large town but we got to the Hotel Xaloc quite easily without hitting the centre of the town. I have to say, the hotel was by far the best holiday resort hotel we had ever stopped in, it was spotlessly clean, staff were extremely friendly and virtually situated on the beach (50 meters away) I would highly recommend it to anyone. weather was warm all week for our 6 night stay, cloudy at times. The temperatures were hot at times but bearable.