I decided to take a short trip over to France, I got a late afternoon boat from Dover, not really an ideal time as you are limited to the amount of riding you can do before dark. It was a lovely evening and I set the ‘Tomtom’ for Boulogne and the ‘winding roads’ option, and settled down for a nice pleasant ride, after a while I felt a slight twitch from the back-end of the machine and at first thought nothing of it as I was loaded with camping gear, a while later the same again, so I stopped to investigate and yes, a rear wheel puncture, had one before on this bike in Wales and remembered the difficulty then, Avon roadriders are great to ride on but don’t give a lot of feedback when deflated. I had what I thought all the tools needed to sort this out myself and firstly I tried to re-inflate the tyre with the electric pump but it would have none of it, so I removed the wheel and then the fun started, I could not ‘break’ the bead of the tyre from the wheel rim.
I realised I was going to need help and phoned the European recovery firm whose cover I get via my Carol Nash bike policy, my problem was giving a location, Tomtom said I was on the D232 heading towards the D238, I even gave the longitude latitude co-ordinates and was told assistance would be approximately 90 minutes and they would help fix roadside, now that would make the time around 2200hrs and it would be pretty dark by then, so I sat on one of my pannier boxes to begin the wait.
After sometime I saw what I thought was a ‘Mirage’ approaching from about 150 metres away, it was a Ural sidecar outfit, they pulled over to me and what was more astonishing was that both rider and passenger were both wearing the Royal Enfield France club badges! It turns out that both Rene and Noel are Belgians, and also know Henry Price and Tim from the UK British Bulleteers forum! With Noel living in France, Rene was visiting him from Brussels, now between the 3 of us we got the tyre off the wheel and found a hole in the tube, the job was done mainly thanks to the large hammer! And long levers that Rene carried, the job was completed at about 2245 and just as I was refitting my panniers the recovery assistance turned up!! It was said that there was no campsite for me to go to and Noel said I was welcome to camp in his garden, when we got back to Noel’s house I met Noels and Rene’ wives Michele and Bridget, I was given a couple of beers, bread and French cheese and Michele offered that I could sleep in the house, I declined in favour of an open fronted storage shed in the garden, Noel put a camp bed in there for me and I fell asleep star gazing, before bed Noel announced that breakfast would be at 9am where the 5 of us tucked into croissants and baguette along with fine coffee. I am very grateful for the help and hospitality I received from these folk and hopefully they will let me repay their kindness at a rally or meet in the future as they would not allow me to do so at the time.
If you read this guys………………..Many thanks!!