A few more hours on the road and it felt like time to stop and set up camp for the night. Everyone was knackered and we were making good time, so the search for a spot to stay the night was on. As luck would have it, the French have rest stops by the toll roads at regular intervals. I’m not sure if you’re actually supposed to camp at them or not, but we did on numerous occasions on this trip and no one said a word to us. They even have clean and well–maintained bathrooms, which somehow are not full of doggers or George Michael wannabes like they would be in the UK. This makes the whole roadtrip experience far easier and less stressful than in the UK in that respect. The logical thing to do would have been to get to bed early, after all, the drivers had been awake for about 36 hours by this point. Of course that didn’t happen and we ended up sat around drinking beers and chatting shit well into the night.

Come the morning everyone was feeling suitably refreshed and spirits were high, until we stopped at a service station for breakfast and found a major downside to roadtrips in France. In the UK a fry up in the morning is an essential part of any roadtrip, in France this turned out to be nigh on impossible, pretty much all you have on offer in service stations is baguettes. A few days in we did manage to track down a supermarket and stock up on bacon and sausages to cook on the camping stove, but by the end of this trip I never wanted to see a baguette again! Now rested and fed, the collective mood of the minibus was far higher and normal roadtrip behaviour was in full effect, shouting at vaguely attractive girls in cars next to us and shaking the bus during the queues for the tolls whilst belting out Pat Benetar at full volume. Jimmy even got the finger off of some middle aged French woman, deservedly of course. I think it’s safe to say that we did the ‘English lads on tour’ stereotype proud. This renewed enthusiasm made the driving experience much more pleasurable, and added to that the temperature was picking up and the scenery had taken on a distinctly Mediterranean feel, it now felt like a proper holiday.

By the time we made it down to Penyier it was a beautiful sunny day, nice and warm, so it was on with the shorts an down to the trails. We spent the rest of the day chilling with a few beers and watching some top BMX riders shred a massive set of trails during Kill the Line qualifying. It was while doing this that we discovered that there was to be an after–party that evening, which was a little odd as there were still the finals to go the next day. After a bit of a debate it was decided that we should probably go along, helped by the fact that it was taking place about 100m away from where we’d decided to pitch the tents up in the woods. This turned out to be a very good decision. The night is a bit of a blur, but essentially we got pretty pissed up, hassled a load of pros (hopefully the photo of us with Chris Doyle has made it in) and danced about like dicks. Along the way though we somehow managed to make some useful contacts. Jimmy got talking to Jeremy Muller, who builds the trails at La Source, near Toulouse and recognized Jimmy from riding his spot when he was over in the UK a while back. I’m not sure how it happened but we also got talking to a chap by the name of Luis, who lived and had some trails not too far from Paris. So in one drunken night we’d somehow managed to plan the rest of our trip. Got to be a lesson in there.

The next day everyone was in varying states of hungover–ness and it was decided that a trip to the supermarket was in order, as everyone knows the best cure for hangover is a massive intake of bacon. Once that was all done with it was down to watch the finals, which as could be expected, was insane. Particularly impressive was that Mike ‘Hucker’ Clark was even on a bike, let alone doing well, having seen the state he was in the previous night. I don’t know how hot any of you are on geography, but Penyier isn’t very far from Marseille, which happens to be the location of a concrete bowl set–up that’s well known around the world, in part due to appearing in the first Tony Hawk’s pro skater game. Although this was supposed to be a trails trip it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up, also it happens to be right next to a beach, so with the possibility of a dip in the sea and checking out some girls in bikinis it just had to be done. It turned out to be a good call, the sea was refreshing, the bowl was fun, although horrendously slippery, and as the sun got lower it made for some nice shots. Phil and Jimmy in particular were killing it, blasting the hell out a hip. After that we sat down and had a nice civilized meal on the beach, which really rounded off the day nicely, despite our piss–poor attempts at ordering in French, apart from Jimmy that is who just pointed and spoke loudly.>>