Our Trip to France and the Bol D'or 24hr Endurance Race weekend
PART 3, The racing.
Saturday, the race starts, most of us attempt to watch it but its obvious the main event is the partying behind us in the campsite area, the racing is secondary for most of them here this weekend. During a rare break back at the tents we're interrupted by a Fireblade rider speaking English at us, a lone man is asking if we have room for one more tent.
[Simon_Jim2]
Jim turns out to be a 50yr old married man who has been allowed to come down at the last minute by his long suffering wife! He'd ridden all that way on his ageing 'Blade, basics on board, just for the weekend. Hardcore. He's a top fella and tags along with the rest of us for the weekends fun. We persevere and watch a couple of hours worth of racing, the commitment these guys show is clear, they aren't cruising about for 24hours, these guys are dicing all the time, really hammering the laps out, its an awe inspring spectacle when you realise that they will do this for 24hours between three of them. We had three lads drop out after two days of road riding afterall...
[Practice]
Paul joins us on Sat too, he resides in the S. of France anyway and was keen to join us if only for the day as he had business committments, he worked for Champion until recently, working a lot with F1 teams and the like, a very interesting chap, and his KTM bike is rather nice too. Sat night follows Fridays example, more mayhem, more burned out cars, more engines exploding, more flames, fire crews constantly cruising round dousing stuff down. If you ever wanted a 48hour blowout I can thoroughly recommend attending this event, the fact there is bike racing to watch in the meantime is a huge bonus too of course.
[Nightracing]
The night passes without anyone getting run over or kidnapped, its been drizzling most of the afternoon and evening so we hit the sack early figuring it made more sense to head off Sunday afternoon than wait till Monday as planned. As it turned out Sunday dawned cool but clear and got better. We still head off, afterall its better to head south and find those oft talked about mountain roads! We head for Thiers then Le Puy en Velay.
[Leaving_Bol]
