Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Count Down... France 2011

Not long now, and getting organised.
Chip embedded credit card ordered and ready to pick up at the bank, pretty much universal requirement in France, for getting fuel anyway, cheapest and 24 hour at supermarkets.
Cash machines pretty much everywhere, railway stations etc.
Am getting the hire bike, Suzuki GFS 1250 Bandit, from an outfit in London, Raceways. Been a couple of horror reviews on Google about their service, so fingers crossed.
Put the Europe SD card into the GPS (Garmin Zumo 220) last night. Raceways are letting me wire in my own unit, which is blue-toothed to my helmet, taking that too. Entered my first night's stop-over in France, a village a couple of hours from Calais, and it popped up straight away, so things look cool in that dept.
Also got a Michelin Road Atlas of France off Amazon, A4 size, spiral bound so it lies flat, interesting plastic spiral binding I think will work better than metal. Its a bit bulky, and I think I only need the first 30 broader detail pages, should be OK in conjunction with the GPS.
Wiki-Travel has a great guide to motoring in France, rules of the road and other tips, and a pictorial of the road signs, so printed that off.
Accommodation's all booked. I used first off www.anglofrenchbedandbreakfast.com/ a network of english speaking B&B's of mostly rural flavour and some very charming looking places at that. Some are openly pro motorcycle tourism offering covered parking, others are indifferent, or appear targeting upper class clientile, but I've no problem with that.
Where I couldnt get a location that fitted my travel map, or the nearest candidate was fully booked, I used http://www.booking.com/
Dont even know how I came across this site, probably a side-bar pop-up on an unrelated search, but its a good one. You can get a little Google map, flagged with hotels around the target locality, or just use the default listing according to things like price, wifi, or parking, pics of the hotel and bedrooms incl.
Booking is a whizz, and you can register as a user and it remembers your details, except for the credit card which you input yourself each time.
I tried Wanganui to see how good it was internationally, lo and behold it worked for here quite well too.
Helmet bluetooth all charged up, phone/camera OK, all the adaptors ready to pack, netbook too. Wifi coverage not so flash all round my proposed route.
The Tour de France is going the same clockwise direction this year, but I'm 10 days ahead of it roughly.
I bought a Travelsim for the phone, $50, and hugely cheaper than global roaming, .50-.60c/min as opposed to $2.97 but dunno... there's the inconvenience of changing sims, and a different phone number to memorise, but it works pretty near all round the world. I'm not a compulsive yap disorder person, so jury's still out on this one.
Checking the Euro weather often, it rains nearly every second day in London. Its expensive there too, and I suspect all of UK, seems to me a bit of a pariah in the topography of international currency.
Gets warmer heading south in France, and below a line through Paris, daily temps over 20C, overnight 12-15C.
Its all up to that volcanic ash cloud from Chile now...

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