Motorcycle Explorer December 2014 Issue 3 | Page 45

B
rakes aside, I liked the Marauder. I wanted
to ride it again, but I didn’t want anyone else to
know I wanted to ride it again, so I determined to
lure it and its owner far away from the mocking
laughter of our friends and then enjoy it in virtual
solitude. I just had to avoid being photographed
on it.
"We’d made a conscious
decision to try and clear
the motorway section
of the journey quickly,
but we’d greatly
overestimated our
stamina. "
So, the previous day, under glorious sunshine,
we’d ridden from Nantes on the west coast of
France towards Bordeaux, which we’d made our
way around with great difficulty before finding a
campsite in the Landes de Gascogne national park.
It’d been a long ride, made worse by the previous
day’s blast down from Calais. Over the last 48
hours we’d covered the best part of 1,000km, most
of it dull motorway slog. We’d made a conscious
decision to try and clear the motorway section of
the journey quickly, but we’d greatly
overestimated our stamina.
By the time we passed Bordeaux we were both
exhausted, irritable to the point of homicide and
desperately in need of a break; it was only the
glorious sight of the Pyrenees, distant but finally
within reach, that spurred us on. At last we were
clear of the urban sprawl, the bloated cities and
the congested autoroutes, heaving with stop/start
traffic clotting impatiently amid those saturated
arterial pathways.