Our budget definitely could not stretch to a night in a hotel in Monaco so we decided to head west and find somewhere cheaper to stay. Unfortunately we timed our exit of Monaco to coincide with rush hour. Entertaining to say the least. We had thought that the traffic was bad enough when we had arrived but this raised it to a whole new level. We had to negotiate the underground roundabout again, but second time lucky we took the correct exit, our tunnel climbed up, and we emerged into bright sunlight heading in the right direction.

We kept heading westwards until it was starting to get dusk, which coincided with us being on the outskirts of Cannes. I saw a hotel up on the hillside overlooking the town which looked easy to get to, and we decided to give it a try. The place was your typical business overnight accomodation type establishment, but was cheap and clean and offered everything that we needed. The guy on reception was very helpful and in no time we were booked in. He also said that we could park the bikes next to his Saab convertible in the secure staff area where he could keep an eye on them overnight. Bonus 🙂

The next morning it was very hot and we were soaked with sweat before we had even finished loading the bikes. Nice! We decided that we wanted to get some miles under our wheels and elected to jump onto the motorway rather than fight our way through the urban traffic and bake. It was a good choice, as travelling at motorway speeds made the 38 degree C temperature feel much cooler.

We had food that needed to be eaten as it was not going to keep in our tank bags in the heat, and so we stopped for a very late lunch at a motorway service area that had picnic tables in a wooded area at the far end. Very nice. It’s a shame that we do not have similar facilities at motorway services in the UK, but then I suppose that our weather would preclude their use for most of the year.

The downside of such a warm sunny climate though is the number and size of the insect life. Not usually a problem unless, as I discovered, you decide to picnic with your feet on an ant trail (well more like an ant motorway actually given the number of the things!), and they are about an inch long and take exception to my size 10’s causing a traffic jam. Thankfully my bike boots are motocross style and my bike jeans were tucked into them so, in spite of their best efforts, they couldn’t get inside my trousers to bite me. Sarah had gone off to find a loo, and the locals must have wondered what on earth the strange English biker was doing dancing around amongst the trees slapping his legs. It must have looked like Oompah meets Morris Dancing!

Once I was ant free and we were back at the bikes we started chatting to a Harley rider from Denmark and a Greek guy who was riding a German registered chopped Kawasaki EN500 to Spain for a couple of weeks of Spanish language school. Luckily he spoke good English as our Greek is marginally less fluent than our Italian.

We  had covered a good distance and were quite tired, so started working out where we were going to stop for the night. Sarah found a suitably priced hotel in a booklet that we had picked up when we had stayed at Le Boischaut in Chateauroux. The Greek guy, Pasquali, was also looking for somewhere to stay and so we agreed to join forces and ride together to the hotel.

We easily found the hotel Prime, which was situated amidst a forest of hotels on the outskirts of Montpellier. They had secure parking for the bikes at the rear of the hotel and a lockable store for our camping gear so that we did not have to cart it up to our rooms.

Their restaurant and bar was closed and so we all went a wandering to find somewhere to eat and chat over a drink. There was very limited choice and we settled on ‘The Buffalo Grill’. This was an American style diner which served, yes you’ve guessed it, Buffalo, in various guises. It was very tasty, but the French waiter looked horrified when we ordered more wine instead of coffee at the end of the meal. We had a good time chatting with Pasquali who was getting used to riding his first chop. He loved the laid back comfortable riding position but had found that the forward controls had taken some getting used to, particularly in traffic when he had kept on trying to put his feet onto footrests that were not there!

We had decided to stay for an extra night as the weather forecast for the next day was rain and high winds. It wouldn’t have been too bad, but the storm was scheduled to follow our route westwards for a couple of days so we thought that it was best to let it go on ahead without us.

The next day was spent sorting things out, buying provisions, washing clothes, etcetera. Not very exciting but necessary considering that in order to cut down on luggage we only had three pairs of socks and pants each (S: don’t tell Tony but I have a few more than that!). If we don’t wash them every day or so then we have to resort to the old inside out and back to front trick (S: refer to previous comment ‘cos that’s a man thing!). Not something I’d recommend as a lifestyle choice in a hot climate. The visit to the supermarket was entertaining. The guy ahead of us at the check-out insisted on very neatly and very slowly packing each of his purchased items into his bag, rearranging them until he was totally satisfied. Having generated a substantial queue he then decided that he was going to pay by cheque which he took absolutely ages to write out. Aaargh!

I relieve the boredom of foreign food shopping by looking for products with interesting names, such as ‘Bum’ biscuits and ‘Plopsies’, a Coco-pops style cereal. This visit revealed a cat food that is apparently Rich in Rabbit… Rich in illicit cat drugs more like from the picture on the tin!

That evening we didn’t need to eat out as in order to keep costs down we had already eaten some of the food that we had bought at the supermarket earlier (we resisted purchasing any cat food). As Pasquali had also decided to wait out the storm, we decided to all go out for a drink. We found an interesting bar restaurant and had an enjoyable time talking and learning about each others lives and cultures.

We said our goodbyes to Pasquali as he had decided on a very early start the following morning so that he could make up the kilometres that he hadn’t ridden that day because of the storm.

We retired for the night hoping that the forecast for sunshine the following day would prove to be accurate.