As far as this year's BBOT tour was concerned everyone was in agreement, wherever we toured this year it would be tough to top our 2009 Dolomite Tour. We were unanimous though, we were going to return to the Western Alps and Chamonix Mont-Blanc for our annual biking holiday. It's an area we visited on our first group tour to mainland Europe back in 2006 and just as we did five years ago we decided to stay in the village of Taconnaz, near Chamonix, at Chalet Le Bois Rond.

We'd use the chalet as our base again, this time for five nights, and revisit many of the Alpine passes and roads we'd ridden before, while adding a few new passes to our bagging list. To be honest most of us couldn't remember many of the passes we'd ridden back in 2006 so it would almost be like riding them for the first time.

 

The ride down to Chamonix would take a couple of days and our route this time would take us through the Black Forest rather than down the French autoroutes. This had two advantages. Firstly it took us near Nurburg where we all intended to ride at least one lap of the infamous Nurburgring. Secondly it gave us the opportunity to ride the B500, possibly one of the finest biking roads in Europe.

 

For our stopover on the journey down we decided to stay at Hotel Blaue Ecke in Adenau, conveniently located only a few miles away from the entrance to the 'Ring.

 

Our route back home would take three days. It would see us leave Chamonix from the north and take us over the Vosges mountains along Route d’Epinal and Route des Cretes. The first of our two stopovers would be in Lapoutroie, in Alsace, at Hotel Restaurant du Faude, with our final stopover booked at the now familiar Le Clos du Montvinage in Etreaupont. Our final day would be the usual every-man-for-themselves-free-for-all-mad-dash to the channel crossing and then up the motorway back to Bewdley.

 

Well, that was the plan anyway.

 

This year Chris P and Mark couldn't make the trip due to other commitments so for our fifth tour - and our second tour down to the Western Alps - the riders were Bobby on his Honda Fireblade, Pete on his Kawasaki GTR1400, Kyle on his Suzuki GSX-R1000, Phil on his BMW S1000RR, Cat on his Yamaha V-Max and Gaz on his Honda Blackbird.

 

 

In the end the trip would be 6 riders, 8-9 days, a paltry 10 mountain passes and roads, but more than 2,500 miles for some of the riders.