{"id":5117,"date":"2026-07-15T20:23:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T20:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itsonlyahill.co.uk\/?p=5117"},"modified":"2026-07-15T20:23:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T20:23:36","slug":"il-fait-chaud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itsonlyahill.co.uk\/?p=5117","title":{"rendered":"Il fait Chaud"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A few days away in France on a GSXR seemed like an eminently sensible way of spending my 60th birthday. A chat with Vero earlier in the year had me booked in the diary and another trip was only a ferry ride away. Booking early and daytime crossings secured a cheap ticket. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I broke the journey up to Portsmouth by staying at Jacks, although typically he was off on his travels, no worries, Clare always provides a welcome, food, beer and conversation or two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Off the ferry early evening and it’s the autoroute to Alencon that provides the best route, like a track day with trucks and toll booths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I’ve arrived in the middle of a heat wave, the previous weeks temperatures have cooled from low 40s to mid 30s, daytime temperatures are baking hot, to be fair it doesn’t really cool down much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A day visit to the ancient city of Fourgeres and it’s @1000 year old castle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kayaking on the Sarthe, a bit different to what I’m used to, but a cooler way of spending a couple of hours, followed by a meal and light show in downtown Le Mans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Feel proud to have set off the speed alert on the way back from the shops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We head down to Stephanes place for a night and and explore, stopping off at a cafe to hydrate. Stephane cooks great food and guides me through the area, seeing the sights locally and riding the best roads, just short of meltio conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A friend of Zoe’s, Daniel staying over for a few nights and entertains us with a few tunes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I adjourn to Nicks for the last couple of days, we have plans to ride motorbikes but the ZX10 decides not to play ball, we entertain ourselves none the less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Many thanks to Vero, Zoe, Stephane and Nick for hosting and entertaining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days away in France on a GSXR seemed like an eminently sensible way of spending my 60th birthday. A chat with Vero earlier in the year had me booked in the diary and another trip was only a ferry ride away. Booking early and daytime crossings secured a cheap ticket. I broke the … <\/p>\n

Read more “Il fait Chaud”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motorbikes","category-uncategorized"],"featured_media_urls":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsonlyahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsonlyahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsonlyahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsonlyahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsonlyahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5117"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/itsonlyahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5159,"href":"https:\/\/itsonlyahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5117\/revisions\/5159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsonlyahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsonlyahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsonlyahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}