A Chateau in Bordeaux

We had a rainy night and it was still lightly raining in the morning. We had been invite to stay with some friends in a Chateau near Bordeaux. We had first met Anne and Peter at “the end of the road” in Ushuaia. As we were leaving the park I saw the Canadian flag on one of the bikes and yelled out Hey Canada! So we stopped and made friends. They have been touring in the UK and head home from Paris this week.

We rode the secondary road north, which from here is an almost straight shot to Saint Emilion and with very little slowing for towns. We thought we could make the 270 km in less than 4 hours.

About an hour out we stopped for a coffee. As Sara pulled in to park on the curb outside the café they Yellow triangle of death was flashing and the bike was dead. Taking out the GS 911 we confirmed our fears that the stator was burnt again! The last was replaced in Ecuador almost 90,000 km ago, but it is always when we are meeting someone and it is raining. The job took longer than expected since we had to take off several extra parts including the foot peg and rear brake since we could not get the one bolt out of the “this is crap” Touratech crash bar. Dan is getting pretty good at this now after 4 times. It is still stressful to have the engine open on the “side of the road” and have only one shot to fix it. After putting it all back together the test of the 911 was ALL GOOD! This got us back on the road at 130 after 2 ½ hours.

Arriving at the Châteaux our friends were not too worried since they had followed our SPOT and saw us finally coming.

Anne and Peter had been invited here by the owner Jean-Philippe who in turn had welcomed us to stay at the Châteaux.

We managed to get in walk about the village of Saint Emilion before dark.

Our GS 911 came in handy two days in a row since this morning Anne’s bike would not start either! It turned out to just be that the battery was toast. This was easily fixed by a drive to the nearest bike store 10 km away.