I set off at 05:21 on from home, meeting with Chris just off junction 3 of the M6, who told me that the police had already pulled him over (clearly out of boredom) on his way from Birmingham. When they asked where he was going and got the reply "Monaco", they were probably a little taken aback, but sent him on his way, and so we headed down to Dover, picking up a nice bit of heavy rain just as we got into Kent, which meant that our rain ‘resistent’ bike gear was already wet when we boarded the ferry at Dover.
A short hop over the channel and a cooked breakfast later and we were in Calais… and it was still raining… heavily. We continued heading southwards; our plan had been to get somewhere between Dijon and Lyon by the end of the today’s riding, and we took the autoroute (and toll) option to get as far south as quickly as possible, but we had constant driving rain all day and were completely wet through, so, at 17:39, we decided that we’d had enough and sought out a local hotel, Le Grand Val, in the nearby town of Chaumont and managed to get the last available twin room. Putting our bike gear next to the radiators to dry we went to the hotel’s Wild West themed restaurant for our dinner and a couple of drinks. After the day’s riding and weather, we were both pretty exhausted after dinner and so we turned in.
Distance: 521 miles
Route: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=http:%2F%2Fwww.johnchivers.com%2Fkml%2F2010-09-08.kml&sll=47.958701,4.693685&sspn=10.685695,19.753418&ie=UTF8&z=7