Paris...and loads of country roads

Its been four days since we last wrote to you and by jove a lot has happened in that time, lets explain where we have been.

We succesfully made our trip down to Dover in time for "The Pride of Kent" which sailed us over the channel with consumate ease. To be fair, it took a lot longer than we expected to ride to Dover, mostly due to our inexperience. Our heavy packs made it pretty difficult to negociate petrol stations, but we were already making friends...including a chap who used to build C90s.

On arrival in Calais we got the map out to remind us of the route to our couch surfers house in Wissant. There was more wind than kansas city and our dorothy's struggled courageously along the coastal road as we were almost driven back into the sea. It took no time at all to reach our destination however, despite numerous 25mph moments up hills with aformentioned wind trying to thwart our every move.

Our couchsurfers Tiphane and Mattheu gave us a warm welcome and showed us to a garage to house our steeds. We were greeted with a beer, a sofa and the promise of a barbeque, more than we possibly could have hoped for. Several glasses of wine later we were challanged with 'chest o' booze' which naturally we rose to. A couple of burning contreau's later (Jamie still bears the mark upon his throttle hand) we were shagged and sent straight to bed. During the night Bon not only spooned Jamie but also talked in his sleep all night "what are we selling, why are we selling it" stuff like that. He has done this every night since.

We woke up late and with booze coarsing through our veins so didn't get our packs sorted until about midday. We only managed to get to Amiens, instead of our proposed destination of Paris. Nevertheless that did involve about eight ours of riding through desolate farmland in oppressive weather conditions (waterproofs on!). Highlights included Liam running out of petrol where every village we passed had no petrol stations or they had been closed for thirty year. We camped on the edge of Amiens and were grateful for our stubbies from a nearby garage.

Off we go to Paris the next day nice and early. While it didn't take long to reach the outskirts once inside the living beating heart of the beast we risked life and limb on several occasions. We were carried through ring roads of death and junctions of doom against our will. We tackled the formidable Champs Elysses and the Arch de Triomphe out of choice savouring the challenge and enjoying riding the bikes for once in their element. It appears if you have a scooter in Paris you can do whatever you want; mount pavements, navigate one way streets (the wrong way) and ignore pedestrians. Our desired footage of all this mayhem is actually Jamie holding a camera zoomed in and sideways, which pretty much represented the feeling of the entire afternoon as he clung on for dear life instead of risking it for fame.

Thats it for now...of to Forest d'Orient today!

First we have to escape this labaryntine city