Blog Post Title One
Belfast to
Biarritz
/
Wheels &
Waves 2015
After watching the footage and pouring over another years images form the 2014 Wheels and Waves festival in Biarritz there was no option but to attend the 2015 event.
So began what is now called the 'BMW No.3' R80 project. After a late start and what seemed a constant wall of problems, the bike scraped through it's MOT just eight days before the depart date, giving me very little time to have a shake down before the 1600 mile round trip. The following days brought a full electrical check to find an intermittent ignition problem, and then a snapped clutch cable before we headed off to France on the 1600mile round trip regardless. A 6am start gave us a fresh yet enjoyable ride through Co. Down to the Border, with only a brief stop as someone forgot to tighten their battery cables.
The good weather saw us to Dublin, through the Wicklow mountains and to Rosslare in good time, and after the overnight boat we landed in France. Another warm sunny day saw us set off south full of the joys of motorcycling and adventure. After 50miles or so, as I approached another of France’s fine roundabouts, I found I was unable to change down the gears, no resistance in the shifter, nothing. I pulled to the side hoping for a quick fix as I’d broken the linkage before and had a spare with me, unfortunately it was all intact, I had a serious problem, and at the worst possible point as we were already in France and Ireland was a boat ride away.
There was nothing else for it but to try and struggle on, in 5th gear. But we were in France and we had cool motorcycles to see. So we set off with a burning clutch and a shuddering bike I hoped to make it all the way down France, but after another couple of nerve wrecking hours and as we took a fuel and food break it was obvious that continuing on in 5th was madness. But before throwing in the towel and calling for recovery, I called Billy McCutcheon who had given me plenty of advice and guidance as I built the bike, I told him the issue and my location, he responded with “this is going to sound crazy, but you have to turn the bike upside down”, he further explained that there was a spring in the gearbox that held the shifting mechanism up and it had probably snapped, allowing a lever to drop out of position, and that was the source of my problem. The only way to get it to re-engage without replacing the spring was to invert the gearbox and allow gravity to do the work of the spring. A tale he had heard 25 years before from an old biker but had never actually had first hand experience of. Well I’d nothing to lose at this point and set about stripping the tank, seat, mirrors and gauges off the bike in preparation for rolling it over. 3rd. was chosen as the gear I would have to spent the rest of the trip in, right in the middle, low enough to get moving and yet maintain a reasonable speed. With a few strange looks from the locals we wheeled the stripped bike across the road to a flat piece of grass and flipped her over, changed down 2 gears quickly and put it the right way up again, unfortunately no photos where taken as all hands where required at this point. I let Billy know it had worked and promised him a nice bottle of French Red.
With “3rd”. engaged and the bike restored to it’s former configuration we headed south. Arriving in Nantes at about 8pm we looked for somewhere to crash for the evening only to be told there was a festival on in Nantes and the whole city was booked out, so it was back on the bikes and on the road again for another couple of hours to find a room. We made it to the small town of Challans at 10, which was the original overnight destination before the my gearbox troubles, but we had hoped to be there hours earlier to relax and unwind for the evening, but a room and some greatly need beers were quickly sourced.
A 7am start the next morning saw us to Biarritz, but only after 12 slow hours in 3rd. gear, another short ferry ride and the last 3 hours having to put in some motorway miles with some very heavy rain, quite scary lightning, not to mention, some pissed off truckers having to pass a struggling r80 in the slow lane who generated great clouds of spray as they went, some very wet toll booth struggles with gloves, change and surface water that made it feel like I was riding in the sky. All in all a day I’ll not easily forget.
The festival was cool and we saw some awesome bikes, had some beer and a little wine, but couldn’t fully participate due to my bike being hard to ride.
We tried to find the ‘Punks Peak’ hillclimb on the Friday but had to give up due to some steep inclines and my smoking clutch,
going into the town centre was ruled out by the very hilly and narrow streets of Biarritz and the Saturday ride out was deemed a bit too much for the stricken machine.
After a couple of days at the festival it was decided to leave a day early to allow the ride home to be a little more relaxed, so we set off a day early on the Sunday and headed for home, the ride back was less eventful, although there was a 2 day search for some replacement spark plugs as my shuddering bike was beginning to shake the ceramic loose on mine, but a little tape held them together just long enough for the Motor-rad in Rennes to help me out. So after 1667 miles around 1400 of which were in “3rd” gear we made it back to Belfast looking to source a reconditioned gearbox and a new clutch. I’d definitely do it again, only next time, in a van.
