Two Wheels move the Soul

Just a Little 40th Anniversary Kiss! Gran San Bernardo Summit Aosta Castle Great Supper x As we left Levanto and headed north that mindset of the trip is over and we’re heading home starts to set in. But when we got to Aosta Italy we were excited by the fact Pat and Belinda were going to meet us there. We hadn’t seen them both together since ‘06 and Pat in ‘09. Our time was going to be short again, only 3 nights but we made the most of it. After a great tour of one of the Aosta castles, we headed out the next day up the Gran San Bernardo pass to Switzerland. It was spectacular, and when we got to the top we became the centre of attraction for a lot of other riders there since we were from Canada. First we chatted with some Swedish riders then 2 German riders one who had the same make model year and color Vstrom as ours. Lots of video was shot on the way up and down as it is a very scenic ride. From there we decided to take some back routes to our destination and

RioMaggorie, gorgeous in every photo Each year there has been one common element to every trip and that is our visits to the Cinque Terre in Italy. Harbor Boats This year has been no exception other than about 6 weeks after we left last year two villages, Monterrosso and Vernazza (The crown jewel), were hit by a flood that devastated their towns. When we caught news of this last year we had emailed our friend Cristian in Levanto where we stay how things were. For 3 weeks we did not get a response to several emails. Finally he replied by saying that for awhile power was out, then while Levanto was OK he was busy helping the other villagers in those two communities dig out from the terrible damage.  Dredge Crane in Harbor No doors? They are 10' down in the mud and debris As we hiked the 5 villages this year, yep we still did the cross country 15 km hike in 5 ½ hours, we saw first hand the damage that was done as not all of it can be repaired within such a short t

Hope it doesn't fall on us! Wanting a day outing that would keep us from the sun, we had been toasting a bit too much on the beach, we decided after breakfast t head for a day trip to Pisa. All the Old town buildings Down the coast on SS1 after La Spezia to Pisa it took us over 2 hrs to cover 100 kms. And on arriving in Pisa we realized how small it was compared to it’s reputation for the Leaning tower. Making sure it's Steady Inside a walled city component we had parked the bike and walked in. Along side the area were small shops set up like Morocco with tons of trinkets for sale. We walked around, took our pictures then bought some Panini’s ( salami) for lunch and then got post cards and gelatto and wrote post cards home in the 35C heat. Whew it was hot. After filling with gas we decided it was worth it to head back on the autostrada , It was just after 3:17pm. At 4:00pm we heard the bells of the church in Montale ring as we passed by off the autostrada.

Sculptures abound in Andorra We left Huesca by 9:00 am Sunday morning and it was absolutely gorgeous, 26C at 09:00. Our trip took us on some more back roads up into the Pyrenees on the way to Andorra, a small principality between France and Spain, very high up in the mountains. We spent more time with the helmet cam in this area due to the scenic beauty and didn’t take a lot of photos since they would look a lot like Highway to the Sun. IBIS and Porsche, hmmm On arrival in the city of Andorra de Vella we went to the Ibis which had a ½ price promotion on during the summer. A gorgeous room overlooking a waterfall and the mountainside, with a Porsche dealership on the lower floor; easily the largest room yet all for 59E a night. Then I noticed that the sister Novotel a 4 star hotel located in town had a seafood buffet on including a bottle of wine and sparkling water for 15E each. Sandra really wanted to go there since she reminded me that it was Father’s day. It was a sen

St Jean de Luz from our bedroom window The Basque region is an area located in the “Crux of the Elbow” formed by the Iberian peninsula jutting west from France. It is an area that encompasses both territory that is part of France and Spain and has had a ‘separatist’ movement for many years. It also has it’s own language and has had terrorist activists trying to create a separate state. With the Euro zone in crisis this seems to have subsided. It also sits along the Atlantic coastline and straddles the Pyrenees mountain range. Our leaving the Perigord/Dordogne region of France was ‘through the backdoor’ with some very small roads and towns explored as we left. I’m pretty sure based on the lack of vehicles we saw that not many people use this set of roads to head to the Basque area. Our weather has vastly improved and quickly we were peeling off wind liners, and any extra clothing, now experiencing the 30+C temperatures that we enjoyed almost all of last trip. Again, the Tourmas

Town Centre Sarlat, known for Fois Gras It’s amazing what you can learn from a book. I like Michael Crichton as an author, a Dr. by training he turned to writing and generally wrote technical sci-fi type fictional books, the best known were the Jurassic Park series. He would extend the realm of possibility by making a technical advancement available, like in Jurassic Park that we could extract DNA from the age of dinosaurs and clone it and remake them adding the missing chromosomes. So what has that got to do with France you ask? Well one of his later novels was called Timeline, an account of a company that was restoring ruins in the Dordogne region, only it had an inside edge, it was able to travel back in time and see the ruins when they were still in use during the 100 years war. The book was so interesting that I was able to picture the area. Later when Rick Steve’s ‘discovered it’ as he claims, I recognized the regions just by the word pictures from the book. Crichton was

What we saw from our Bicycles - Chambord Fougere Leonardo's Double Helix Staircase The Loire valley is well known for a plentiful selection of chateaus built by various royalty through the middle ages as hunting retreats. Some were only attended a few times by their original owners and others became the spoils of wars. Bicycling in the Loire Fougere is located close to Mont St Michel and St Malo and isn’t in the heart of the Loire but it is a grand old castle fortified with a moat and drawbridge in classical style. One of the best to just walk around. Blois’ chateau has become part of the downtown core of the city and our hotel was about 75 metres from it. Sandra and I have wanted to bicycle some of the paths here ever since we took the kids over in 1991 and this time with Heiko we took 1 day and cycled from Blois to Chambord and back approx. 36 kms. It was a breeze going, literally, but we sure paid for it coming back with winds near 45 kph. Chambord’s stairc