July 2024 saw another 10 days’ holiday and trying to cram in some of FulGaz’s challenge over the course of the year, the FulGaz Ironman Sprint Series which I had started a few months ago.
The holiday was our second long distance trip on the BMW R 1250 RT starting in Northern Spain and heading across the Pyrenees into France before heading north through Switzerland to Luxembourg before heading back to the UK via Belgium and France.
Most of the luxury hotels we stayed in put rest and relaxation above exercise so trying to hit the gym was difficult plus we were travelling for many hours each day.
Anyway, here are July’s stats:
July 2024 Statistics
Activities: 29 Distance: 342.23 km Time: 14:15:47 Calories: 12,836
Turning to my weight, at the end of June I weighed 81.9kg and at the end of July I weighed 84.7kg, which is up a massive 2.8kg. Most of which was gained by eating, drinking and being merry in some fabulous hotels and restaurants…
Last week we were on holiday on the BMW R 1250 RT LE driving through Spain, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium when we got a call from Group 1 Ford telling us that our car hadn’t actually been reserved!
That was the bad news.
The good news was that they could get hold of one with the same specification but with the Driver Assist Pack (Driver Alert, Traffic Sign Recognition and Adaptive Cruise Control) as well, but they’d need to charge me a little extra towards it.
I was concerned that would take it over the £40,000 list price issue, but I was assured that that doesn’t include the first year’s VED figure, so with that taken off, it’s still under the £40k ceiling.
The other news is that it should arrive in August: good because it means we get it sooner, but bad because that means it’ll be a 24 plate rather than a 74 plate.
So we went ahead and agreed over the telephone (confirmed by email the next day).
The original plan was to have a long day in the saddle, heading up to the Milau Bridge and the Gorges du Tarn, but herself was beginning to flag a bit, so I instead set a course along some nice-ish roads from Banyuls-sur-Mer to Castillon-du-Gard in Provence, where we were due to stay at the delightful La Vieux Castillon.
Le Vieux Castillon
This was the hotel that Channel 4’s First Dates show had used for their summer holidays the first few series of First Dates Hotel before they moved to one in Italy, I think?
Anyway after a very hot day – 38°C – we reached 1,175km and were ready for a rest day the following day.
By the time we reached the hotel, it was still 32°C at the pool. They let me leave the RT outside Reception which was a weight off my mind. And yes, it’s a fabulous hotel, every bit as good as we had hoped.
We had booked their gastronomic package, but sadly the restaurant was closed the two night we were actually booked in for, having shifted the dates. So for our first night we enjoyed a lighter meal from the bar menu.
The next day was a rest day, so we spent it mainly by the pool, although we did go for a wander around the streets of Castillon-du-Gard.
Dinner was at Joio Restaurant nearby which is managed by the chef at the hotel and opens when he’s not working at Le Vieux Castillon. We ate their signature starter and main and a couple of cheeky glasses of wine. Very reasonably priced too as well as delicious.
Out of Spain into France. So that was the Atlantic Ocean over to the Mediterranean Sea then. And goodbye Spain, hello France. 910km so far, riding the BMW R1250RT along the N-260 (and others) from La Seu d’Urgell in the Spanish Pyrenees to Banyuls-sur-Mer on the French coast. We also diverted up to ride the infamous Gorges de Galamus.
Once we got to our hotel and parked up – after the BMW Connected app decided we should approach it from a footpath above – we checked in to our room.
Côté Thalasso Banyuls-sur-Mer
I have no idea what that clicking is in the video, and no, I didn’t mean the old biddy walking down the corridor…
Food at the Côté Thalasso Banyuls-sur-Mer exceeded expectations; the tasting menu was superb with the beef and dauphinois potatoes a high point before this dessert. A lovely local red wine too.
So Banyuls-sur-Mer was better than expected and they were kind enough to let us keep the RT parked outside reception where they could keep an eye on it. We decided to pin it to win it to get to our next stay, but first we explored the harbour.
Another year has passed and the ZRX’s MoT expired whilst we were in Berlin, so I made arrangements when we got back to get its MoT done.
Last year, it had been given an advisory for the Akrapovic full system fitted, so to be safe, I decided to fit the baffle before taking it in. Ah…
It’s held in place by a small bolt which was proving fiddly to fit, so I took the baffle back out to try to screw the bolt in and remove it a couple of times to remove any soot build-up …and instantly dropped the bolt which then rolled all the way down into the headers. This meant taking the system apart, which is more time consuming rather than difficult as other than the bolt on the silencer strap to the rear shock, the rest of the system is held together by springs and I’ve had the spring hook for years now. Once dismantled, Alison’s slimmer fingers were enlisted to reach in to grab the errant bolt.
Refitting the Akrapovic with the baffle was a doddle and so off we went, only to find we narrowly avoided a crash with a car pulling out … because they didn’t hear us (or see us).
A quick cuppa at a nearby McDonalds – Alison’s coffee was crap as expected – and back we hopped to find Blue Rex waiting with a full pass with no advisories.
Back home and the baffle was whipped back out again in a trice for safety’s sake.
Mileage this year is up to 19,918 miles from 19,621 last year: a massive 297 miles from the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride and a couple of trips down to Bahnstormer Alton.
June 2024 was interesting with a week’s holiday and a continuation of FulGaz’s challenge over the course of the year, the FulGaz Ironman Sprint Series which I had started a couple of months ago.
The holiday was our first long distance trip on the BMW R 1250 RT taking it back to its birthplace at the Berlin factory (and a couple of nights binging at the Hotel Adlon Kempinski. Sadly the main gym was being refurbished so the temporary one was less than brilliant; all a matter of timing.
Then home to celebrate Fathers’ Day … and two weeks of diarrhoea (and counting) thanks to some food poisoning ? the Ball & Wicket (hence the full week gap whilst I was unable to do anything much at all).
Anyway, here are June’s stats:
June 2024 Stats
Activities: 25 Distance: 301.38 km Time: 16:33:55 Calories: 12,432
Turning to my weight, at the end of May I weighed 83.4kg and at the end of June I weighed 81.9kg, which is down 1.5kg. During That Week, I managed to lose 3.1kg and spent a lot of time on the toilet…
I finally went and did it: we wanted a second car that would be more practical than my Abarth 124 Spider, so we’d started looking at cars to do semi-regular trips down to the South-West, usually with a bit of luggage, birthday cakes and loads of presents for the grandkids (of which there are many, too many!).
Having seen a nice Kia Ceed GT-Line secondhand at a car dealer around the corner, we realised that they weren’t much more new and then we thought about the Proceed shooting brake version, etc.
Given I’d be driving it when we were both heading down, I wanted a bit more pep so we looked at some other options, including a Skoda Octavia VRS – we didn’t try one – and an Audi S3. The latter we test drove and loved it, although I wasn’t a fan of the Sportback’s looks, but we did like the saloon version. Despite the S3 having just been ‘facelifted’ the price was quite steep which put us off a bit, getting us to consider secondhand models which were still north of £40,000.
We then had an offer of a run-out Cupra Leon Estate which was very nice and a great price but it was only available in certain colours and we couldn’t do the deal in time thanks to delays by HMRC repaying me for overpaid tax as well as my bonus from work being late.
In the back of my mind, I’d thought about the Ford Focus ST and getting one in the Estate bodystyle, so I popped a thing into CarWow and asked for some quotes and SMC Slough came back with a decent offer on one.
Somewhat bizarrely, Ford’s colour options are a flat red as standard, “Frozen White” as a £300 option, even though it’s still just a flat colour, and everything else as an £800 option. The metallic red favoured by Mrs RHM was actually disappointing in the flesh, and then of course there’s that £40,000 excess VED issue…
“Vehicles with a list price of more than £40,000
You have to pay an extra £410 a year if you have a car or motorhome with a ‘list price’ of more than £40,000. You do not have to pay this if you have a zero emission vehicle.
The list price is the published price of the vehicle before it’s registered for the first time. It’s the price before any discounts are applied.
You only have to pay this rate for 5 years (from the second time the vehicle is taxed).”
What this doesn’t say, is that the “list price” includes all the options, so in our case, the ‘basic’ list price is £39,105 and so any packs you add, or any colour you specify takes you perilously close to (or more likely, over) that £40,000 threshold. If you go over £40,000 then you pay (at the moment) an additional £410 in car tax each year for five years from the second year onwards. So going over by £100 means you pay an additional £2,050 for nothing, if you keep your car for 6 years of more, which we will.
At the weekend, we thought we’d see if we could take a look at an ST and preferably an Estate so we rang our nearest dealer, Group 1 at Farnborough, and spoke to Leon. Yes, they had an ST-Line Estate in the showroom – not the ST – and yes, they had an ST hatch out back, so yes, we could pop in and have a look at the Estate to get an idea of luggage space, and yes, we could poke around the ST hatch to see what the seats and infotainment, etc. were like.
So we popped in, looked around and then thought we should just do it, so we haggled on price, spec’d it up to less than £40,000 – Frozen White and Parking Pack – and paid a deposit. ETA 2 September 2024.
The first major overseas trip planned for the RT was to its birthplace: the BMW Motorradwerk in Berlin.
I knew this was going to be a pretty boring trip as my past experience of Northern France has always been that it’s the area you have to ride or drive through to get to the interesting bits, which is why this July’s trip starts with a ferry down to Spain…
Anyway, I checked the Michelin maps I’ve got for that trip and saw that I could actually have some ‘scenic’ stuff in Belgium on the way (given that I’d planned a two stop strategy on the way to Berlin, two nights in Berlin itself, and then one stop on the way back in the Netherlands.
So at around 6am on Sunday 9th June it was off to LeShuttle at Folkestone for our fixed time trip out. On the way there, the truly irritating BMW Connected app had frozen on the A3 but fortunately I knew I was using the M25 and turned off in time, rather than continuing as the app was pretending to tell me. As we arrived to check in, I realised that I’d left my wallet at home so I’d have to try to pay for everything with Apple Pay on my Apple Watch or iPhone 15 Pro…
It froze a couple of times in France and Belgium which meant we had to go a slightly different route towards Liege than I’d planned, and threw my trust in the app off even more. I can see why some other owners have given up and ditched it altogether in favour of a mounted Garmin one (which also has the added bonus of showing “safety” cameras). Why BMW don’t let us use Apple CarPlay is beyond me.
Still, at least I got a bit of footage in Dinant in Belgium, which was indeed scenic:
We stopped along the way in a lovely little town called Florennes for a salad for lunch.
RT parked up in Florennes
We got to the Mercure at Liege and checked in, asking if we could book a table in the restaurant. “No,” they said, “it’s not open on Sundays”. Well that’s not what it says on their website! We decided to get a drink in the bar anyway, but again, we were told that’s also closed on Sundays. We weren’t best pleased… We did, however, find a little Italian restaurant nearby where we could eat.
The next day was a bit of a wet one as we headed towards Hameln (or “Hamelin” where the Pied Piper hung out. I’d booked us into the Hotel Stadt Hameln and frankly didn’t expect much, but the room was large and comfortable and the restaurant was absolutely outstanding. We also wandered into the old town to see if we could get some cash out on Alison’s Supplemental American Express Platinum Card, but sadly that service isn’t offered any longer. This meant we had no cash for tipping.
The Klim Latitude and Altitude clothing, our Alpinestars short boots and our gloves had all performed brilliantly keeping us dry as a bone, and with the heated seats, grips and waistcoats we’d been warm as well.
We then headed on to Berlin and two nights at the outstanding Hotel Adlon Kempinski at the Brandenburg Gate. I could definitely get used to champagne and caviar for breakfast every day! At least we could use their temporary gym – the normal one is being renovated – to burn some of the calories off.
We also visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; very poignant.
On the Wednesday after brunch we went off to BMW Motorradwerk for an extended factory tour in English … except the English-speaking guide couldn’t do it, so the German one press-ganged a Polish(?) tourist into translating for him, which sort of worked but was a tad unsatisfactory.
Thursday morning after a workout and brunch we headed off to Eindhoven, seeing 207km/h or 129mph on the autobahns. Well that was irritating! One minute, you’re on an unrestricted stretch of dual carriageway in Germany and the next moment it’s the same road in the Netherlands with a 100km/h speed limit! The next morning was the same when we left the Netherlands and hit Belgium: the same road but now with a 120km/h speed limit.
The Park Plaza in Eindhoven was again comfortable after a really long ride but it featured the slowest lift in the world ever!
After breakfast we packed and headed back to Calais and then on to home. We’d booked flexiplus on LeShuttle so after ordeal by UK Border Agency as usual – including the jobsworth insisting we took off our crash helmets for no reason at all – we had lunch in the lounge before getting on the next train back to the UK and home by mid-afternoon on Friday: four countries in one day!
So yes: 1,418 miles with a maximum speed of 129mph and still averaging 47.8mpg for the trip.
At the last minute I’d added a Kriega US-40 Rackpack for our shoes and heated vests to go in, fixed to the frame and rack and sitting on the top of the top case (plus we had the top case and pannier liner bags to use).
So, May 2024 was a continuation of FulGaz’s challenge over the course of the year, the FulGaz Ironman Sprint Series which I had started last month.
There was also a quick work trip to Madrid working long days, but with the chance of hitting our boutique hotel’s gym … which was utterly shite with only a prehistoric treadmill to use. This had the potentially lethal feature of speeding up and slowing down randomly, coupled with a worn surface which made it like running on ice … and then there was the abrupt emergency full stop shortly after I’d started going full tilt. Nice…
So, here are May’s stats:
May 2024 Stats
Activities: 33 Distance: 425.73 km Time: 19:32:24 Calories: 17,398
Turning to my weight, at the end of April I weighed 85.0kg and at the end of May I weighed 83.4kg, which is down 1.6kg. Today, I’m down again to 83.2kg.
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