Well, I made it... just. I dropped the bike off at BMW Bavaria in Faro this morning for them to change the knackered clutch, do a service and sort out the valve clearances (to cure a top end which has been clattering like a very clattery thing for the last 2,500 miles). They suggest that I'll get it back tomorrow. I hope not to be disappointed...

I'm not going to backdate this post - it'll only screw up people's friends pages, and I'm not in a position to post any pictures yet either.

Last Thursday night seems like a very long time ago now. I made the ferry port in plenty of time for my 11pm sailing, only to join a huge queue. Eventually the queue moved, but not before I'd struck up a conversation with a number of members of the Vincent Owners Club - including one guy on a Black Shadow with a full Givi hard luggage kit mounted on the back. They were off to a weekend rally in France. After further faffing about, and some judicious queue jumping to get past the stack of caravans we had been directed behind, we boarded and I was able to get to the pursers desk and upgrade my 'club class chair' to a single cabin, for a very reasonable £32. One dead dog burger later, I hit the sack, and awoke just as we were docking in Le Havre.

My objective, as I rolled off the boat at 6:30am BST, 07:30 CET, was my mate Paul Minton's new Biker's Gite at La Daviais (sp?). But not before lunchtime, since he was up to his ears in building work before then - he's got 5 weeks to substantially finish off the last two years of intense building and renovation work ready for his first paying guests. http://www.jthebs.com to see how he is doing!

First job was some juice, and I filled up with sans-plombe 98, practicing my rather limited Francais on the bloke behind the counter, and then I followed the nose of the GPS as it led me out of Le Havre port and towards Caen, while I acclimatised to being on the wrong side of the road. I decided to stop at the first Aire I came to to sort out the distribution of kit, and peeled off the Autoroute into the carpark just before the Peage at the start of the Normandy bridge (http://www.carte-postale.com/postcards/honfleur_eng/pontdenormandie.htm, http://havre.cci.fr/ponts/normandie.asp). A hugely impressive structure, I was never the less surprised to have my first 'we're not in Kansas now, Tonto' moment when after reprogramming the GPS to work in kilometers and trying but failing to get my homebrew power bus working to charge various accessories in the little bag screwed down to the top of the left hand top-case, I headed for the building to purchase a can of something wet.

Immediately I was surprised to note that nothing had been vandalised, that there weren't a forest of CCTV cameras looking at the area I was walking through, and that it was actually 'Le jardin des Ingénieurs' (http://havre.cci.fr/ponts/Situ2.asp), a garden built in tribute to the engineers who had worked on the Normandy Bridge itself, and boasting among other things a footbridge over a pond constructed as a miniature cable stayed bridge (the worlds smallest to go with the world's largest), and a giant concrete caisement section with its reinforcing rods deliberately partially exposed, as a monument to the efforts of everybody whose names were listed on a plaque thereupon. In the UK, the place would have been daubed with hideous grafitti and swathed in litter in a week, then vandalised out of existence. Not that we'd have built a garden for the engineers, of course. We'd be too busy telling them to piss off out the way of the grand opening and not to put their muddy boots on the red carpet reserved for the real dignitaries on their way. I don't remember seeing anything like this at the Humber Bridge, or the QEII bridge either. But then, neither were half as nice...

Then I went inside, and found a whole exhibition, science museum style, complete with giant working model of the bridge construction methodology. Back outside, I found the glass elevator that takes you up to the specially constructed viewing platform to gaze upon the beauty of the bridge, and indeed beautiful it is. Etc, etc. And then the final surprise, when I headed back in to the service area, past the exhibition, and found not the plastic sarnies and soulless canteen I was expecting but a little French cafe, complete with a bar and a terrace overlooking the canal, and a young couple running it. Vive Le France.

In due course, I made my way across the bridge and along the Peage towards Caen, my objective for the morning the Pegasus Bridge museum (http://www.normandy1944.com/index_content.php). I finally found the place and went around it at length. A very moving exhibit. On the way out of town after my visit, I passed the cafe which was the unofficial museum and focal point of the memorial to the events (the first action of the liberation of europe) for many years. If you are ever in the area, well worth a visit. I was particularly impressed by the section of Horsa glider they have their, where the fabric is missing and the underlying structure is revealed to have been nailed together from old orange crates! The thought of being towed behind a bomber in this thing at 30,000 feet across the channel and then released to glide in to crash-land in a field somewhere behind enemy lines would have filled me with absolute terror!

From there, time against me, I struck out for chez Minton on the A84, arriving early afternoon. After a quick cuppa and a guided tour of the estate and the works in progress, Paul showed me my room and went back to his travails, working with a friend to lay patio slabs around his recently commissioned pool. I couldn't let him work while I slobbed about, so I got changed and went out to offer my assistance. In due course we'd reached a convenient point to call it a day, and then we hit the pool for a swim to cool off, followed by a ride out to a nearby town to meet Paul's wife Sandy and to enjoy a meal. Our original plan was to stay and watch the Bastille day fireworks, but by the time we had eaten I was exhausted, and with an early start planned, myself and Paul hit the sack. The next morning, we planned to be on the road by 10am...

I'll post the next thrilling installment when I get the opportunity...