Developing the idea

We now knew what we wanted to do. The question was " is it achievable " in the 7 days we had allowed.

I first created a general route plan, not worrying to much about the exact route taken. After all at this stage it was still a preliminary investigation. To be honest I just guessed what I thought would be achievable, but with the main idea to get to mountains as soon as possible and leave the last day as fairly relaxed so the lads going back to the UK would not need to be stressed about getting to the ferry on time.

Despite, varying the different days I could not get the overall trip of roughly 3000km to fit the seven days we had allocated. Well, not fit with the kilometers I considered to be achievable and still enjoyable.

The lads from the UK had agreed that one week for a bike trip was the most available not only with their Boss's at work, but of course the Boss at home (their Wives). I needed an extra day and still keep all parties satisfied.

Luckily, the ferry from Hull to Europoort had a last boarding time of 7.30pm so I won the extra day by planning the ferry for the Friday evening arriving in Holland on the Saturday and planning the return ferry for the following Saturday and arriving back in the UK on the Sunday morning. Thus I had my eight riding days on this side of the North Sea.

The skeleton of the plan was :-

Friday           Newcastle upon Tyne - Hull and the ferry
Saturday       Europoort - Hoeven (NL) - Dole (FR)
Sunday         Dole - Chambery
Monday        Chambery - Castellane
Tuesday       Castellane - St Maxime
Wednesday  St Maxime - Uchaud
Thursday      Uchaud - Brive la Gaillarde
Friday           Brive la Gaillarde - Arras
Saturday       Arras - Europoort
Sunday         Europoort - Newcastle upon Tyne.

The price of our overnight stops was the next question to be answered. However the partners of Kevin/Ian/Bob and Paul had decided to come along. Plus in my enthusiasm for the trip I was planning I had convinced Bram a friend of mine and fellow biker (not that much convincing was required) to join our merry little band.

We were ten people on 6 bikes.To leave hotels/B&B's to last minute was in my opinion running the risk that the group would be split up in the evenings and that time would be lost looking for suitable accommodation if we didn't book. Plus the guys wanted an idea of what this was going to cost. Looking on the Internet at hotel prices at that time of the year it was realistic to work with a provisional cost of between 80/100Euro per double room on average.

It was at this point we had our first major problem.

The trip was good, the price was good, every one super keen to do the adventure...... But..... trying to get every one to have the same week free for the 2011 bike season just wasn't possible. Commitments with work, commitments with families always got in the way. We didn't want to loose any of our group so reluctantly the adventure was postponed till the summer of 2012.

While disappointing the extra time was needed to create a day by day itinerary and detailed route plan.

At this stage I had the trust of the group to plan the route and book the hotels. I had also trust in the group that if I made bookings at hotels that they would honour the commitments I had made on their behalf.

We now had a skeleton of a route, a budget to work to and an agreed date that every one could work with.