HUMM 2008

[iswoolley]

A few folk from this forum made the trip to the Pyrenees a couple of weeks ago for the Horizon's Unlimited Mountain Madness. Matt and I made a week of it, taking in a few days trail riding before the HUMM, and visiting the Millau viaduct on the way home.

As ever these trips begin with a ferry crossing, in our case an overnighter from Poole to Cherbourg with Britanny Ferries.



Then there's a 950km blast down the autoroute to the old town of Pau. Niort is about halfway there, and a surprisingly pleasant place for a spot of lunch.



From Pau we headed into the French foothills of the Pyrenees, intent on crossing over into Spain via a trail to lake Irbia. However we heeded the barrier banning vehicle access, and instead skirted along the border.





Eventually in Spain the scenery upped the ante.






It's not what you think!





We headed for the small city of Jaca for an overnight stop, but instead chose to stop in a nondescript hotel in a dead end village. Unfortunately it was the least hospitable and most expensive hotel and restaurant of the whole trip.



The next day we headed out on trails, paralleling the border and roughly in the direction of Lavorsi and the HUMM.







Pretty good backdrop for a gentle trail ride. The backroads weren't hard on the eyes either!







For anyone else heading in this direction, the road you need to look out for is the N-260. This is surely a contender for the GOAT road. As Matt said at one break; "please... stop... brain... can't... take... any... more... corners..."

We rocked up in Lavorsi around 7pm to find the hotel and campsite chock full of bikes and bikers. The rooms at the Riberies are well worth their 4 stars, so it was time for a quick change and a beer by the pool. Austin delivered a rider's briefing a bit later on, then off for a typically Riberies-style unusual meal. A few (okay... many) beers later some teams were still pooring over maps and the checkbooks.

Next... the HUMM...

[iswoolley]

Day 1 broke nice and clear, and at 8am the bikes started heading off. Grant zipped around getting footage for the inevitable DVD while Austin traded banter with the competitors. I was doing the off-road event with Ian (from last year) on his GS1200, while Matt went off to find his teammates for the road event.

Ian and I left at 8.20am having made a few final bike alterations. Unfortunately I quipped to Susan that we were giving the other competitors a bit of a head start, to make it fair. Oh, how those words were going to come back to bite me!

Unfortunately day 1 did not go well for us at all. We cocked up some of the early navigating, and spent a fair time looking for a signpost checkpoint that eventually turned out to have been nicked/removed. The trails and roads though were amazing. We worked our way down the west side of the map not seeing any other team until late in the day. We came to a point where we had to decide whether to return to the hotel, or do a trail loop that'd bring in a couple of hundred points. We went for it, meeting a couple of guys on KTM525s coming the other way, who both said the trail had been tricky for them.

Committed we had to carry on, and boy was it tough; steep hills strewn with grapefruit sized rocks. Bouncing up one climb I suddenly lost drive, to the sound of metallic clattering. My chain had come off the rear sprocket, and the clock was ticking. Eventually we reached the TV transmitter at the checkpoint and headed downhill to rejoin the road and race back to the hotel. Unfortunately the rozzers had other ideas, and we ended stuck behind a police car cruising almost all the way back to the hotel.

So at the end of day 1 we'd picked up just over a thousand points, but lost a hundred due to being late back to the hotel. Three or four teams had racked up fifteen hundred points, so we were effectively out of contention. Ah well, to the bar then!

[Sharribee]

I am envious, looked like some fantastic riding roads

[iswoolley]

Making sure we started day 2 bang on time we motored down to Tremp at the far south west of the area we would cover. Yesterday we'd done about 210 miles, with maybe a 60:40 onff road split. Today ended up being further, with the split reversed. Having managed to stay on track up until lunch time we stopped for a burger and a clara (lager and bitter lemon mixed 50:50 - very refreshing!). During the afternoon we only had one major navigation cock up, when I took us down a 2km spur trail by mistake. One interesting checkpoint was on an island in the middle of a river. The trail we wanted crossed over, but looking at the speed and depth of the water we decided to go around rather than risk drowning a bike. Heading to our final check of the day we entered a small mountain top village to find a construction crane completely blocking the road. A Dutch holiday maker eventually led us through what appeared to be someone's back yard to regain the trail.

Back at the hotel, on time for once, I double checked the roadbook before handing it over to Lois and Susan for the final count. Grant was looking over their shoulder and whistled as the total appeared. 3130 points. We'd managed to score the highest tally of all the teams. But then Lois pointed out that the time penalties from day 1 hadn't been factored in... bugger!

So, of the 36 off-road teams that entered, Ian and I came 3rd. As Susan gleefully pointed out, if we'd started on time on day 1 we'd have got back on time, and incurred no time penalties. Ah well, to the bar!

[iswoolley]

After five long days of riding we decided we should do something different. So we spent the next morning white water rafting. Damn good fun, although the river water was initially very cold, and we almost left Matt behind after I'd pushed him off the raft!

Loaded up we skirted to the south of Andorra, then north west towards Millau. We passed through Carcassonne, which is well worth a long visit rather than the drinks stop we made there.





We stopped in Quillan, which was having a very bad folk music festival in the town square. So bad we had to move to a bar where we couldn't hear the music.



Finally we made it to Millau and the viaduct. Very, very impressive bit of engineering. The concrete pillars were built first, then the roadway, complete with metal towers and wires, was built on terra firma and pushed out over the void onto the pillars. The whole project only took 3 years, which is less time than some of the roadworks around my way have been there!





From Millau it's just autoroute all the way back to Cherbourg. We met this guy on his BMW at a service station. We had to help him push the bike back out of a parking space! Whilst we thought he was moving house, it turned out he was on a 6 week trip.



Matt and I parted ways with Ian at Cherbourg, and as we had a later ferry went to kill some time at the hypermarket, as you do. We got the fast ferry back to Portsmouth, and were in Matt's local curry house before midnight. Job done.



The trip ended up being about 2'500 miles for me. The bike ran great apart from the chain issue, although the trails really wrecked my back tyre. There were big chunks of knobbles gone on both mine and Ian's bikes, and the winner of the off-road HUMM had to change his TKC80 before coming home as he'd lost entire knobbles!

[digitalcaptive]

Fabulous report, wonderful pictures sounds like a great adventure!

[boboneleg]

Great stuff Iain, that Riberies is a cracking hotel isn't it

[Whealie]

So mad to have missed this. Had it my diary for ages but family duty called and I had to be elsewhere.
As every Iain, superb photos make an interesting report outstanding.

[Dee Duble Yuh]

Looks great, guys. thanks.

[Steve C]

Inspiring! I'm green with envy
Brilliant report and outstanding pictures.