The plan for this trip started about this time last year after myself and 5 others went to bardonecchia for a week riding the trails, we hired 3 vans, loaded 2 bikes per van and set off, we based ourselves in a Bnb called pensione Bianca in the town and rode out from there each day, after spending best part of 1200 quid each last year we wanted to go back but make it a lot cheaper this year.
I was in the market for van which I could convert into a camper for myself and the girlfriend to use anyway so it became a challenge to find a cheap van that we could convert to fit 2 bikes in as well when needed,
There was only myself and Jon caveman (on here) able to make the trip this year so we made a plan to travel further south and stay in different campsites and ride different trails on the way,
First part of the plan was to find a van, one of the boys found the perfect van for me, a 2004 fiat ducato lwb, hardly run in at 188k miles
By Christmas time we had a numberplate to start looking for ferry crossing prices for Wednesday 20th till Friday 29th August, our options were-
Portsmouth to Caen -£460
New haven to dieppe -£120
No brainer we booked it straight away, not sure why it was that cheap but it was booked, now was the challenge of getting the van ready, this was the van stripped out ready for work to begin,
After months of cleaning, insulating, cutting panels, carpeting,flooring, lights, sockets, 240v hookup, solar panel to help re charge the leisure battery, a bed that would take a double memory foam mattress and as I work as a stonemason I had to have silestone work tops , not only was the van ready for the girlfriend and myself to use as a camper it also had room for 2 bikes when needed,
I re-registered it as a camper with the dvla so cheap Severn bridge crossings as well :cheer:
This is the van finished to a standard ready to use (thumbs)
Four weeks before the trip whilst in chris tee dee emm (on here)'s house talking about our plans, chris's girlfriend says- " why don't you go as we'll chris?"
I replied with -" I've got a 1 bike collapsible trailer, book the ferry, you can ride your bike on to the ferry, we'll put the trailer in the van for the crossing?"
An hour later he was booked on the ferry and coming as we'll, (good times)
To the trip, the plan was to rock up at the ferry with 3 of us in the van with the bike on the back on the trailer, hand over the 2 bookings and passports and wait for the question-- Er...you haven't booked a trailer and why is there 3 of you in the van?? We explained we were carrying chris's clothes and gear and traveling together and we can collapse the trailer and chris can ride his bike on the ferry after we had booked in and gone through security, after she'd spoken to her colleague she says- it's fine to leave it on there, I've altered your booking free of charge as there's room on the ferry (excellent result). (This tactic also worked on the return journey) (thumbs)
We landed in dieppe at 4am and spent the day working our way to Grenoble , then onto the smaller roads planning on finding somewhere south of briançon so we'd be in a good place to ride the parpaillon tunnel route the next day, we found a campsite in jausiers just as the circus was in town,
Next day up early we rode to the parpaillon tunnel, down the other side to Embrun, had a bite to eat there and decided to head back down the d902 over the top to Vars as we'd driven that way and it looked a good road to ride
That afternoon we drove from jausiers to tende, going through the tende tunnel, small roads and stunning scenery everywhere we got to tende, found a campsite late afternoon which didn't look overly inviting so we deployed Chris and Boris, (his xr280) to look for another site, an hr later he came up trumps with a cracking site in La Brigue just east of tende.
Next day the plan was to ride up the the col du tende and Fort Central and if time allowed we'd ride the Lgks as well, at the parpaillon the day before we'd met a few Belgians on 1200 gs's who told us they had turned around on the lgks the day before due to a big landslide but small bikes might be ok, so we set off to the fort Central hoping that we hadn't come all this way to have to turn around on a trail we'd spent a year planning for :unsure:
Turns out all was of although the landslide section was a little exciting, maybe due to being so far away from civilisation,
My fave pic from the trip-
The landslide area
Sunday was chris's birthday so we decided as we were so close and always wanted to visit, we'd ride from tende via sospel to Monaco, another excellent biking road through sospel and as we got closer to the Med the temperature was rising, we felt a little out of place here what with bikinis and budgie smugglers everywhere and us in full bike gear :laugh:
Getting back to the campsite that afternoon there was nothing to do but strip off the bike gear and have a dip in the lovely and fresh mountain river that ran alongside the campsite, at about 4 degrees takes ur breath away
Met these guys doing a charity run
Next day we set off in the van from tende to cuneo, pinerolo,sestriere,and finally got a campsite in beaulard just outside bardonecchia, this took best part of the day,next day the plan was get to the top of the sommelier (we'd been stopped by the snow last year)
It was bitter cold with the rain like falling ice at the top so we took a few quick pics and headed back down, on the way we stopped for me to change the card in the go pro and decided to go up passed Fort bramafam to have grub at the Bar punta Colomion which is run by an English woman,it's at the top of the ski lift and has the best 20min track ride up through the woods there can be to get to work (thumbs)
Getting back down to the valley around 1 we had 2 choices, 1- back to the site for a hot shower and a quiet afternoon with a few glasses of wine or 2- as we couldn't get any wetter we could make our way to the top of the jafferau, powering on to the top of the jafferau in the cloud with no stops got us there quite quick, we decided to come back down on the ski run track, we'd done that route last year so we knew the way, just as we dropped off the summit my bike started coughing, (can't be out of fuel as it does about 100miles to a tank full and we'd only done 75miles) I thought, must be the altitude, few sharp corners later- on to reserve
hmy: Few more corners and chris looses his front brake, 100 yards later I lose my back brake, not the place to be not having brakes we stopped to have a look, nothing weeping anywhere, half a dozen pumps on the levers and the brakes are back, (strange, maybe the steepness of the run?) we eased the bikes back to the campsite and warmed up with a nice hot shower and the few glasses of wine we thought about lunchtime 
At the top of the jafferau
Wednesday it was head north day, through the Frejus tunnel we set the satnav for dieppe planning on stopping on the way somewhere, we stopped in a little village called Bligny-sur-ouche, just west of Dijon which gave us about 300 miles to do on Thursday as our crossing was 6am on Friday we had to be close to the port in the morning, we booked into a Formule1 in dieppe and had a few bad hrs of sleep due to a dozen workers also booked in and drinking, singing and generally making a noise until 3.30 with our alarms set for 4
Landing back at home mid afternoon on Friday we'd covered:-
2000 miles in the van, giving a very good 40mpg
500 miles of fun on the bikes
Total costs of the trip including ferry, fuel,camping, tolls,food.........oh and wine was just under 400 quid each.
Bargain trip and an excellent time was had,
Oh and I've still got the van to go camping with the missus :woohoo:
Hope I haven't bored you too much and excuse any typing errors (I ain't going back through that lot) :laugh:
Cheers (thumbs)
