Belgium to St. Nazaire by motorbike

EDIT:  Bloggers editing interface is fucked up (AGAIN!), so all the pictures have to be at the top of the post.  I guess you can figure out what's what.

 Here's a fun job description: Procure two 125cc off-road bikes and bring them to the Daphne. Bart, being the speaker of the local language, got on the internet and promptly found two Honda Varadero 125s in good condition. The only slight "problem" was that they were both in Belgium, which meant that there was suddenly a sizable road trip on my calendar. I set off at six o'clock Wednesday morning, and subsequently spent twelve hours in the public transportation system, finally arriving in a small village close to Mechelen to survey the first bike.

All was well, so Bart (who had joined me at that point) and myself set off yet again for another little village, the name of which has escaped my memory, to have a look at the second bike. At that time I was getting well and truly tired of sitting on the train, a tedious exercise only interrupted by the odd railway station. Luckily, the Belgians haven't succumbed to the malady of reconstructing all their old railway stations in glass and concrete, as is the fashion in Norway, so at least there was some interesting architecture to break up the boredom. I especially liked the one in Antwerp, with four sets of tracks stacked vertically either side of a spectacular central gallery, all capped off by a lattice girder roof fit to put the Eiffel tower to shame. They sure don't build 'em like they used to!

When both bikes were finally bought and paid for, it was high time to get to bed. I spent Thursday making a trip to Oostende (which I'd never thought I'd see again), where Bart met me with the paperwork for the registration and insurance. Thanks, dude, without local support I'd have been helpless in the grasp of bureaucracy. While in town, I also paid Ludvig the engineer for the radar parts we need (the old Decca has fried its power supply board). Even though I started out at six o'clock the next morning to get my hands on the number plate for "my" bike, it was five in the afternoon before I finally disentangled myself from Brussels and started making serous headway for St Nazaire.

It quickly turned out that I'd badly misjudged the ambient temperature at night. Except for a helmet and gloves, I totally lacked proper motorcycle gear, riding in jeans and my trusty leather coat. I'd initially been a bit worried about getting too tired during the projected 12 hours of riding, but as the sun went down and the air temperature dropped to five degrees, lack of sleep was my least concern. I cut the ankles off a pair of socks from my backpack and put them around my wrists to lessen the amount of wind blowing up my sleeves, put on my dirty T-shirt for an extra layer and tucked my pants into my socks. Still, it only helped so much, and I was shaking so bad that the bike took a zig-zag line down the road. When I finally stopped being bothered by the cold and started entering the don't-give-a-fuck state, I realized that I was being irresponsibly stupid, and put up for the night in a B&B in Longeau, close to Amiens.

At that point I must have mad a serious dent in my core temperature, because when I woke up at six the next morning, I was still feeling cold and my legs didn't really work well. I jumped on the bike and kept going south-west, stopping for coffee at every service station, trying to preserve some heat. Still, the chill was absolutely brutal, so that when the sun got up and started heating the landscape, it was like the most wonderful gift I'd received in ages. The Varadero has the best chassis of any 125 I've ridden, but it's also by far the slowest, and really doesn't like to go faster than 100 km/h. Thus, I stayed off the highways, following the N- and D-roads, an ever widening grin inside my helmet as I finally started feeling at ease.

Even with the stopover, the trip to St. Nazaire made for a long day of riding. Sadly, I was a bit too preoccupied with making good on my goal to really enjoy the beautiful countryside rolling by, and it was with relief that I finally put the bike on its stand next to Daphne, thoroughly plastered with bug spatter. This morning, the sun rose into a deep blue sky on my beautiful Sunday, and since the trip from Belgium had been such hard riding, I decided to make a little trip purely for the pleasure of riding. The Varadero really is a fantastic little bike, and aside from the all too obvious lack of power, it feels like a much bigger machine. Not only did it keep me semi comfortable for the run down from Belgium, but it eats up bad roads with all the competence I've come to expect from a Honda off-roader. I picked a route around the marshes north of town, sticking to the smallest roads I could find, and took it easy all the way. I even took the time to stop for pictures, a small selection of which you'll find below: