DR1

Really. Weren’t we told to be nice? I made a valid comment about something that I read in this forum why is that unacceptable?

To be honest I haven’t got a clue why you offered to educate me about something that I had never commented in and that you had know idea about my knowledge of. I suppose you are one of those men who believe racism and national stereotyping is harmless banter and if so poor you. You also seem to be misrepresenting what I said. I’m allowed to express my opinions and have done so. If you don’t like it that’s your problem. Personally I don’t think that the post that I was commenting on was particularly nice, it’s the sort of thing that’s best left in a primary school playground. Accepting something you don’t like and believe us wrong is not being nice.

About 10 years ago I went to a museum exhibit about Operation Frankton in a village very close to where I was today. The two British servicemen were holed up on a nearby farm for 43 days. As part of the exhibition there were life sized photographs of the farm workers who were transported to concentration camps after the two British men had moved on but their existence discovered. Most were older men but there was also a ‘simple’ teenager who had not been called up but worked on the farm. Most of them, including the boy didn’t come home. Later I went to a talk in the village hall and there there were three women, then in their late eighties and nineties who had been there at the time and met the British pair. Despite the awful consequences of what had happened to their small community they talked about those two British men with respect, admiration and love. They had gone through hard times together and were bonded by that experience. I’m sorry if I find jokes about white flag factories and surrender cheap but I’m not ashamed of it. My feelings have been highlighted in recent times by the horrible xenophobic comments made on this forum and others by arrogant travellers who visit other countries and gave no respect for the population, rules and regulations. Brexit of course has brought this to the fore. I’m privileged, I’ve been able to spend large parts of my life working in foreign countries and getting to know the people, their history and their experiences. My neighbour when I first moved here to France spoke perfect German, (we talked together in German much to the amazement of his friends and neighbours) he had learned it when he was taken as a forced worker from 18 to 24 years old. He was shelled by the British while working at the docks in Boulogne and bombed by the RAF (possibly even 617 squadron) when in the Hartz mountains. He didn’t have a bad word to say about the British or the Germans, he had seen a life that few of us would understand but appreciated that the people involved were just other individuals of other nationalities doing what they had to do. Another Frenchman I knew very well left his family home in Compiègne and with his family and many of the others in the town walked to the relative safety of rural Normandy when the Nazis arrived and walked back when they were driven out. He too accepted such things as part of his life experiences. I’m sorry if you find me woke or lacking in a sense of humour but if I think someone is being cheap, naïeve or simply childish I will call them out. I have that right just as much as you have the right to say I’m a sensitive fool, a bed wetter or whatever your chosen insult of the moment might be. I’m happy with my position. I’m riding my motorcycle regularly getting involved in the country I live in, it’s history and its people. Thank God I’m not just one of those armchair experts who talks about taking the GS or whatever powerful KTM they’re polishing every Sunday on a 600mile a day two week tour of Europe to tick off the standard must do must see to do list along with their clones. You might not like me or my attitude but I don’t give a shit, I’m here, I’m doing it and I do know what I’m talking about.

I went out for another fairly local ride today. I stopped off to look at something I visited many years ago but if I didn’t know it was there I’d never have found it, I’m sure it was better signposted before. It’s a WW2 German hilltop position, simple earthworks like the WW1 trenches just there in the woods. It’s actually very close to where Blondie Hasler and Sgt Sparks(?) hid in a village for over 40 days between The Cockelshell Heroes’ Operation Frankton where they attacked German battleships in Bordeaux after kayaking up the Gironde and escaping with the help of the Resistance via Lyon to Spain. It’s also quite close to where the demarcation line between Free France and Occupied France lay. Having read the ‘humour’ in the War in Europe thread I think some people need to get a bit of education and to find out more about life in an occupied country before making cheap jokes. O

I can remember my father commenting of the skill level of the typical professional footballer. He claimed that they shouldn’t make so many errors. He used circus performers as an example as said that they practise, practise and practise again until the chance of error is as near to zero as possible. I imagine these riders are the same, they are rarely out of their comfort zone and their comfort zone is a quite different place to where the rest of us live.

I did wonder if he’d bought it from the person whole stole it.

This looks pretty useful and that Fiat is more than two years old.

I think that you could save yourself a lot of grief if you got somebody who actually knows what they’re doing to look at it.

Are up you planning a two day trip down the autoroute?

I must admit that I do like the gear indicator on my new bike.

I always found it easy to know when my Pan was in top gear because the speed and the revs went together. 2,500 was 50mph, 3,000 was 60 and so on.

Cleaned and adjusted the chain this morning then as there was no wind and the yellow thing was still in the sky I decided to go looking for some cemeteries about 40 minutes away. I’d once driven through a bit of countryside where all the hamlets and even some individual houses had their own small graveyards by the roadside. I found them using satellite images then went for a look. A lovely ride and some interesting almost local history. It turns out that they are Protestant burials in what was a predominantly Catholic country.

I’ve got a 2004 car that I’ve owned since new, it’s still got its original rear brake pads. On most vehicles the rear brakes have a very easy life.

I never consciously used the rear brake on my Pan European so was surprised that when the pads were first changed that the rears were worn more than the fronts. The linked braking system obviously worked.

This side of the Channel it’s very straightforward. When a vehicle changes hands a Certificate of Cessation is signed, timed and dated by both parties. The buyer cannot register the vehicle in their name without it and the seller uses it to cancel their insurance and it can also be used as proof of exactly when the vehicle changed hands. These days it’s all done online on the ANTS site, very quick, very easy.

But it would still only be a Euro 3 bike.

They got EU 4 compliance in 2016. A 2012 bike would be EU 3.

It was another sunny day so I went an parked it in front of a few old stones.

My father used to have a boat with two Dolphin 2 stroke inboards. You ran them forward to go forward and backwards to go astern. Great little things but thirsty. The two props were 14 feet apart, if you ran one forward and the other in reverse the boat would spin on the spot.

My first bike was a 1954 Bantam D3. I can still remember my first ride on it. I gently let out the clutch lever and it moved, backwards! In never did that again while I owned it.

When I imported two vehicles into France from the U.K. they both had errors in the VIN on the V5. The motorbike had a digit missing and the car had a 5 instead of an S. Both caused delays of at least a month. A second car brought from Germany was fine but its new registration document was recorded as starting with WWW instead of WVW. That was picked up the first time I took it to be serviced and was put right by return of post.

The problems start much earlier than importing the bike into Britain. Registering a vehicle in Spain as a non resident will be virtually impossible. Any vehicle being imported into the U.K. must not be driven at all, not even out of the port of entry, until it is registered with the DVLA. A U.K. resident driving a foreign registered vehicle in the U.K. is illegal except in a handful of cases (commercial drivers, hire cars, some students, some cross border workers). Any vehicle being imported into the U.K. from the EU is now liable for import taxes and duties. The good old days have gone.

As I read it you need an insurance cover note if you apply at a post office but not if you do it online. If your insurance isn’t on the database I guess your online application will be rejected. It sounds as though a post office might be the quickest way.

I’ve still got two cars that I bought brand new without test driving either one. I bought the first in 2004 and the second in 2006. The newer one is my everyday car approaching 200,000 miles and still as much fun to drive and as versatile as it was when I first got it, the older one has done less than half the mileage but only gets used on high days and holidays. Sometimes just buying is the right way to go.