Posts from my other blogs
Just 582km to get us home from Luxembourg via Belgium and France. In total, Eurothrash 2024 was 1,904 miles or 3,064km and averaged 54.3mpg.
The RT was battered and bleeding but got us back. What a trooper!
Battered and BruisedSo yes, the bike is excellent. But the BMW Connected App is simply awful. It falls over all the time. It drops in and out all the time. Give us CarPlay!
France to Switzerland to France to Luxembourg.
We left Aix-les-Bains in bright sunlight and 32°C and 571km later we arrived in Luxembourg having endured an absolute deluge (and the temperatures falling to 22°C).
The weather forecast was good for our homeward trip the next day. Another cheeky upgrade to the room in our hotel, the Sofitel Luxembourg Le Grand Ducal, which was lovely, and as for dinner, well that was excellent stuff washed down with a bottle of Luxembourgoise wine.
Sofitel Luxembourg Le Grand DucalSo, 506km and one litre of oil later (the latter to replace the new waterproofing for our boots, trousers and the RT itself) we got to the Mercure Aix-les-Bains Domaine de Marlioz Hôtel & Spa
A relatively short day was planned and that turned out to be a very hot 275km and one crash: a road sweeper doing a left and taking us out.
There was some damage to the RT: both cylinder heads as it hit the sweeper on one side and the floor on the other. I couldn’t avoid the sweeper as there was too much high road furniture on the left. so down we went. And with all the luggage it took four of us to haul it back up onto two wheels.
I was completely unscathed as I pretty much just stepped off, but Alison got her ankle pressed a bit by the rear footpeg (pushing on her boots). She’s obviously not used to this crashing malarkey! But at least we apparently achieved a lean angle of 66º on that side…
It was then that the SOS button might have been useful, but of course that hasn’t worked since very early on with the ownership and BMW were taking way too long to release a fix for it.
So we continued on to Cannes and after more 38ºC temperatures and crawling traffic all the way along the seafront, we stopped at our booked hotel, the JW Marriott Cannes where just one night cost us over €1,150! . When I booked it, I had included instructions that we would be arriving on a motorcycle and to ask them to make sure we had a reserved parking space in the car park underneath the hotel. When we arrived and parked up outside the front next to a Ferrari and a Bugatti, I asked how to get to their car park and was told I wasn’t allowed to. No motorcycles allowed there, apparently! They instead said I should use a public car park a kilometre or so away or take my chance parking on the road nearby. And then they made us wait over an hour for our room to be made available.
Avoid!
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.
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.
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.
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