This was our second day of our motorcycle/" rel="tag nofollow" > motorcycle tour from London to Santander, Spain, via France, Andorra and Barcelona. The day before we had completed the 360 odd miles London to leMans, where we had stayed the night. Today we were pushing on down through France to Montlucon.

The previous day had been spent mostly on motorways to cut through as much as northern France as possible to keep the 2,200 mile trip down to 10 days, and give ourselves more time in the more picturesque southern region, the Pyrenees and Spain. However, today was to be a combination of motorway and country roads, and I was excited to find out how my Triumph Rocket 3 performed on more twisty roads.

Looking out of the hotel window that morning I noticed an angry looking sky and wet roads; it had been raining overnight. Given that my bike was new and had lots of polished parts, I chastised myself for being so pathetic as not to want to get it dirty!

As we were waiting outside the hotel for everyone to get ready, we noticed an ambulance crew wheeling out a dead body from one of the flats adjacent to the hotel. It was a sobering reminder of our own mortality.

No visit to leMans is complete without a trip to Mulsanne to ride down the famous 3.7 mile Mulsanne straight.

The whole track is comprised by mostly public roads. In fact the straight itself seems nothing more than a fairly wide public road, the only thing that marks it out as a race track is the Armco barrier that lines the roadside.

From there we headed off the main roads and onto the country lanes, to a town called Richelieu. The town was founded in the 15th century and home to the French Prime Minister, otherwise known as Cardinal Richelieu, the bad guy in the fictional “Three Musketeers”.

The town is entered through a number of arches set in the external walls that form a defensive square around the town. We headed for the cobbled main square where we parked and had lunch, probably the best mushroom soup I have ever tasted!

By this time the sun had decided to make an appearance, and the temperature was around 25 degrees, which made riding pleasant.

The Rocket had behaved well around the lanes. We had been going at a good pace and I had lost ground to some of the guys on the entrance to some of the sharper bends, but the Rocket can flatter to deceive, as you can simply open the throttle out of the bends and make the ground right back up again. No one notices! It has to be set right for the bends however, so concentration is essential as the sheer weight of the bike gives it a lot of momentum, even after the excellent brakes have scrubbed off excess speed.

Much has been made of the enormous rear tyre, and there’s no doubt it affects the handling. It can move around quite a bit on seams and ruts in the road surface, but the bike is so heavy and planted one soon gets used to it and ignore it.

We arrived that evening at our hotel in Montlucon, stored the bikes in the underground garage and had a beer. It had been a good day.

But an “orange” weather warning had been put out by the French government for the next day, when the roads would be more “interesting”.

Although he was on his Triumph for this trip, Zac also owns a Harley Davidson, which he cossets using Harley Davidson motorcycle covers . These covers are of excellent quality, and cosset the bike when stored. Visit www.harleydavidsonmotorcyclecovers.net .