One week in France

Currently on a ferry and in three hours, all being well, I finally enter Morocco - both an exciting and slightly intimidating thought. The past week has been a fast trip down through France.

Start of the week saw me arriving in Cherbourg from where it was a short ride into Normandy where I stopped in Bayeaux one night intending to see some of the D Day beaches and sights and the famous tapestry . The former was successful and very thought provoking, the latter unsuccessful as the tapestry museum, like many in France as I later discovered, was closed for January (in fact the whole of the north of France gave a feeling of being closed for the month). Bayeaux cathedral also turned out to be a magnificent sight.

My My hotel for the night 

Arrowmanche beach and remains of the Mulberry Harbour

After that it was a quick trip cross country,avoiding the auto routes and using the backroads so I actually saw some of the towns, to Lyon where I caught up with Duncan.

 It was ingreat seeing him again after 6 months or so. We spent the first night wandering around the town and then next day hopped on a train and went to Geneva in Switzerland. Duncan really wanted to see the exhibition at the Large Hadron Collider ( Google it) there and since it was only two hours away it seemed to good an opportunity to miss. The exhibition was good but do was just wandering around the edge of Lake Geneva looking at the Alps in the background, all together a great day.

The next day we both headed down to Marseille (him by train, me on the bike) where we meet up again for another two days. We both really liked Marseille - it had a really lovely feel about it with energy that had in winter been missing elsewhere in France.

 It was a great four days that I spent with Duncan and I think we both were sorry that it came to an end to quickly but we both had our separate plans. He was seeing of to hitch to Spain, hopefully Barcelona, and I for Morocco.

Having used up a week getting across to the south of France, I decided to abandon my original plan of riding down to the tip of Spain to do the crossing as that would have used up another week and instead have taken the weekly ferry that runs from Sete, two hours west of Marseille, direct to Tangier. It's a thirty hour trip, but it's been smooth and comfortable. It's also passed quickly as there are two other traveling motorcyclists onboard, also Australians, and so we have spent much of the time comparing notes and plans and it is likely we will now travel together for the first day or two.

Wish me well in Morocco.