As I rounded the corner before where our photographer had positioned himself I remember thinking, 'I don't remember seeing that large yellow and green flower in the ditch before.' Which was a strange thing to think because I neither care, nor indeed know, anything at all about botany or French roadside shrubbery. It's odd what pops into your head in a moment of confusion.
Anyway, as I got closer it became obvious that the yellow flower nestling amongst bottles of piss discarded by passing cars was in actual fact Jim, and the green leaves were a very second hand looking ZX-10R. A view which, to be fair, didn't come as much of a surprise considering how things had been going so far on this test...
No matter how much planning you put into something there is always the potential for the unknown to jump up and bike you on the arse. The plan was fairly simple. Daryll would van the four 1000s down to Montpellier while Whitham, Jim and myself would fly down. Once there we would all meet up, spend a day at Dunlop's test facility track testing the bikes on identical rubber before riding them around the roads the next day. What could possibly go wrong? Plenty as it happens...
The first hiccup happened before we had even left UK soil. Waiting to board the ferry a man in a uniform (he probably also had a hat on, most officious men do) spotted the jerry cans and informed Daryll that these were potentially lethal and couldn't be taken on board the ferry. Daryll politely informed him they were empty, which, according to the man in a uniform, was even worse and made them have roughly the lethality of an atom bomb. Two hours later a more than a little pissed off Daryll eventually boarded a ferry having been forced to fill the cans with water from a petrol station forecourt in Dover.
According to the man in a hat there was no access to water at the dockside, despite the six ferries floating in some suspiciously wet stuff directly behind him.
It was about two hours before James, Jim and myself were due to board the flight to meet Daryll that a sheepish Whitham confessed that he had forgotten his passport, which meant a trip back to Huddersfield for James and a flight out the next day. So we were down to three. Then Ryanair decided to divert our flight via Bergerac (I'm still to find out exactly where this is) because one of its planes had broken down and it needed to get a mechanic to it.
So two hours late, and one man down, we met up with Daryll at Dunlop's test facility in Mireval to group test the latest 1000cc bikes for the July issue of Two Wheels Only magazine.
