So the day started early in Folkestone.

Dinner the previous evening at the Holiday Inn Express was surprisingly good, only the wine poor. Not because of the Holiday Inn. The staff told me when I booked for dinner that there wine selection was abysmal, apparently Brits who stay there are not prepared to pay anything for wine and will drink any rubbish so long as it has an alcoholic content above 12%.

No, the reason the wine was poor was that I went to the Tesco next door to buy something better and nothing better was available there either. Tesco today announced a massive profit warning on the back of a series of poor results. Based on their wine selection more bad results are on the way. Call this Richard’s wine barometer of crappy financial results. Any supermarket that can list and display the shit that they had on their shelves is assuming that their customers have zero taste or brains. Even in the UK a selection this poor is difficult to get away, with except in Luton.

So we survived the night and set off for the Euro Tunnel express train to Calais at about 07h30. This is a great service and for those of you who have not used this service yet, do so! It is a testimony to all that is good about Europe. Arrive, get your number on a card, this denotes your train which goes under the English Channel to France. There are vehicle and freight trains every 15 minutes in addition to the passenger trains every 20 minutes from London to Paris and vice versa.

About 300 cars on each train and all loaded in 20 minutes. we had over 100 motor bikes on the train ahead of us and ours. Effortlessly on the way to France and out the other side in 25 minutes. All you have to worry about is riding on the right side of the road or else a huge truck will use one as a mosquito mush!.

Before setting off we had decided that Dave Murphy, he of Cambridge Theater Pantomime fame would lead our little riding group of three. In the middle would be “Granny” Bloch, who had never ridden on the right hand side of the road and I would act as the ” Sweeper”, to pick up the pieces if Granny or Panto went astray. At this point I might add that Panto is a superb rider, physically ideally equipped for it, short and with a sling gut of note which gives him an extremely low center of gravity which in turn is a perfect amateur’s build for motorcycling.

So tall and chiseled “abs” homo sapiens such as myself are at an extreme disadvantage when compared to Panto, simply because of our higher center of gravity. Also if he falls off the bike he tends to roll and bounce out of harms way, whereas we continue to slide into the fence at high speed.

So Panto rides FAST and WELL but is extremely difficult to follow for a number of reasons, the most important relating to simple mathematics, something which I had to explain to him a few times today and the result of which is that anyone following him is almost certainly going to end up in an out of control accident. This is exactly what has happened to his son Charley, who in the past two months has crashed twice while following his vastly experienced and competent father – Panto!

So the reason, as I say, is simple mathematics and was only deduced today after I was on the receiving end of the theorem.

It goes like this. You are riding together in a line with about 200 meters between each rider. So the last rider,being me was about 400m back. You enter a village and have to drop your speed from 130 km/h to 50 km/h, this being the speed limit. As Panto exits the other side of the town, he opens up fully, as he loves to “floor it” and roars ahead to 130 km/h again. Given that I am still in the village at 50 km/h, the “gap” now opens to 1000m before I exit the village and that is with no slack or vehicles holding me up, all of which only serve to exacerbate the problem.

Now, once I exit the village I have a deficit of 1000 m to make up and Panto is already travelling at 130 km/h. So even if I accelerate to the same speed the differential extends to 1200m. To make up this difference in say 5 km I have to travel at an average speed of about 190 km/h. This is hair raising to say the least and after a few villages and one pull over by the police, more about this later, I eventually explained this to Panto who told me that he was not very good at Maths. But it is the reason that Charley has pranged so often – he is always trying to catch up and at some stage Panto will work it out, or Charley will or his wife, Charley’s mother, will. Or Charley will do more serious damage to himself.

Our problems were further exacerbated by the fact that amongst the three of us, Panto had the only GPS that that was functioning properly, so we were forced to follow him. I had three hours of Granny moaning in my ear through the intercom about his Garmin problems and there was nothing I could do about this. Only the Irish could and eventually in the form of Gerry did fix it. It never ceases to amaze me that Garmin, a hugely successful company, can continue to produce such rubbish in the form of the flawed user interfaces and software. The new BMW Navigator V produced by Garmin is a disgrace and a poor reflection on both companies.

Over dinner I found that we were not alone and a number of other people on the trip had also been affected. On Monday I updated my old Navigator IV and the update caused it to crash to the extent that it was unusable. So needing a GPS for this trip I rushed out to buy a new Navigator V. You have to register it on line. This triggers and automatic update, the same one that bombed my Nav IV. Low and behold it also bombed my Nav V. This time however, in the face of desperation I consulted a whole number of forums on the internet and found a work around and a temporary fix, which as I found out in the middle of France, was not perfect and it had me going around and around to the same place, hence the need to try and keep up with Panto!

To night we are in a little town called Conde Northen near Metz, in the middle of France. The scenery today has been magnificent. I have been constantly reminded that these are the battle grounds of the First and Second World Wars, an area in which over one million men died. Often contesting a few hundred meters of territory whilst their Generals sat and drank champagne and had lunch served to them. We have ridden past the Maginot line. France’s ultimate defense against the BMW’s which two nice Jewish boys are riding through their on through this very area. The irony of it does not escape me. Beautiful military cemeteries dot the horizon as eternal memorials to the folly of leaders and to a generation of young British, German and French men lost forever. Wasted.

Panto, our leader, has one instruction from us. Only one! Find cafe’s with good coffee. He fails miserably and near Vouziers in a little shit heap called Bourcq, produces a cafe presse with the worst cup of coffee that we have ever had, plus a waiter with the worst attitude and then a toilet which came straight from Libya without being cleaned.

So tomorrow we are freeing him up to ride with Kevin “all ears” Hinton and Gerry the IRA general – so that they can all go flat out whilst Granny and i bring up the rear at our own pace. What I know for sure is that we will find great coffee. Also now that I have temporarily suspended my DB inspired Grain Brain regime, a croissant or three will be consumed with this.

Given Garmin’s that work, tomorrow we will be in the mountains and end up in Switzerland, on the lake at Biele near Bern.

Today I was exhausted following, tomorrow I will be back in front with my long time riding partner in close pursuit. We will meet panto and Ears for dinner in Biele. I will also tell you about the Gendamerie hauling Panto off the road for speeding and watching a Brit learn French in one second!

Till then. Good night, good luck and good bye.