A three-man trip to the south of France, Barcelona,...
Words: Fabio
Pics: Drooze
Part 1: The road to France
You’ll all probably know the feeling of getting tired of the rain, cold, a bit of snow here and there... Well, we were too, so Drooze and me got together and started to “plan” a trip to better climates. We talked to whoever was in our mind to join us and finally we ended up with just three, Drooze, Dimitris and me.
Some guys had no money because they still went to school, other couldn’t get the two weeks off from work, another one just became dad, so obviously he couldn’t afford to leave home so long, and so on...
Then there was the question where to go. South, obviously... One of the first places we had in mind was Barcelona, but because Dimitris and I above all love trails we had to add trails in our trip. I made a phone call to Cyrill from the Gréoux trails, but due to other activities the trails there were unridable for the moment. Second place was also in the south of France, which name I will not mention out of respect and peace for the locals. It was also a bit of a guess if we were able to ride there, but we took the risk.
Then there was another place popping up in my mind, Malaga. Being in the far south of Spain, it was a bit of a question if we were able to get there. And then there was the possibility to stop near Biaritz on our way back, there are some awesome trails we would definitely like to visit too...
Conclusion: there were enough possibilities if the weather was bad at one or more places.
The plan was that I, being the driver, was going to pick up Drooze first. I had to be there around 1pm, and then at Dimitris around 3pm.
As I am not very good at calculating the time necessary to pack my stuff, make my car ready, and so on, I was at Drooze’s at 2pm. I pretty fast noticed that me being late was not a big problem because he wasn’t ready yet, so eventually we left his place at around half past 3pm, rode about 10km and got stuck in traffic, on the highway around Antwerp. When the traffic was getting better we continued our way to Dimitris’ place, being in Asten, Holland. After some traffic problems in Eindhoven we ended up at around 5pm at Dimitris. After loading up all his stuff we made a quick stop at Pauls Boutique to buy us some tubes, tires, a chain...
With all this done, we were finally on our way to what should be a good trip with nice weather, chill riding sessions...
But bad luck struck again! When we got near the border between Belgium and Luxembourg it started snowing, really hard. Traffic slowed down and eventually came to a stop... We stood there for about 2 hours straight, probably caused by 2 trucks stuck on the uphill road that was covered with snow.
Traffic slowing down. We had no idea what we were in for...Thanks to Apple we were able to watch a movie on my macbook :p When we looked out of our window after the movie had ended, we saw some cars making a u-turn to get off the highway at the previous exit, and so we did too. We took a small road covered with snow trough the woods to get to the next highway entrance.
U-turn on the highway. Doesn't get more illegal than that, except perhaps in this case...
Tiny road covered in snow, in the middle of nowhere...
After hours in the car, our blatters were filled to the brim, and driving at 50km/h the next gasstation would take another hour. So we "parked" under a bridge, in the middle of the highway. There's a first for everything... Eventually we got safely trough Luxembourg and riding on French turf, and being after midnight already, we were on the lookout for a place to sleep an ended up in a Formula 1 hotel near Metz. If you are searching for a cheap place to spend the night without any luxury this is the place to be, 33eur for a room whit three beds, very cheap in my opinion.
A bed, at last! We could've been in the south of France by now, but the weathergods decided differently...
