We had left England 3 days earlier; eight of us middle aged men, to ride through France, crossing the Pyrenees Mountains via Andorra, then crossing Northern Spain from Barcelona to Saragossa.
Earlier today we had left Montlucon in France on our way to Millau, of Millau bridge fame. The French government had put out an orange weather warning for our part of France, and indeed, earlier in the morning on the motorway we had experienced torrential rain, making it almost impossible to see. The bike I was riding however, a Triumph Rocket 3, was superb. The massive 2.3 litre engine delivering relaxed, but firm power gave absolute confidence, and the sheer weight of the machine, 800 lbs plus, keeping the bike firmly planted on the road, no aquaplaning and minimal buffeting when overtaking large trucks.
If fact so far on this trip the bike had been ideal. We had ridden a combination of motorways and rural country lanes so far, and the Rocket had taken all in its stride, delivering blistering pace on the main roads, and remarkable agility for such a big bike on the back lanes. I had been particularly pleased with the rider’s back pad I had had fitted. On such a powerful machine, and with an upright sitting position the back pad really makes you feel part of the bike, and takes the pressure off your arms and wrists when accelerating or riding at high speed.
However, as we left the motorway in the afternoon to head into the Massif and tour around a gorge things started to change. The road started to climb and get narrower. Given the nature of the terrain the road is obviously very twisty. This is when the Rocket became hard work – very hard work.
The problem with mountain roads is that they are a series of bends with a few straights thrown in, the opposite of the roads we had ridden on so far. The thing about the Rocket is that it is not exactly “flickable”. Therefore one has to set the bike up before entering a bend, and give a bit more thought to it too. However, any ground lost when following another bike is soon made up by the sheer acceleration. The problem is that on these mountain rods, where when one bend is closely followed by another, and these are bends around sheer rock faces so one cannot see whether they open up or tighten, not only does one get progressively slower, but the muscles in your forearms start to ache.
This is because the foot boards on the Rocket work differently to foot pegs. Whereas foot pegs allow you to help control the bike with foot pressure, the floor boards leave your feet rather uninvolved and cornering the bike is achieved by leaning the bike, (as normal), but to do so one has to literally push down on one handgrip and pull up on the other.
The mountain roads were not the Rocket’s forte. It may also have had something to do with the riders limitations in fairness, but nonetheless, whilst journeying around this gorge the spectacular scenery had to be largely ignored whilst all concentration was focused on getting the Triumph out of the mountains and back onto roads to which it was more suited.
Similar Posts:
- French Motorcycle Trip – Day 4
- Motorcycle Tour Through France and Spain – London to LeMans
- A Motorcycle Trip Around France
- French Motorcycle Tour – LeMans to Montlucon
- A European Motorcycle Trip – Andorra
