PHILinFRANCE wrote:Gentelmen please !!!!! this is getting heavy !!!!
Lets just get out there and ENJOY OURSELVES
By the way
Good to hear from you Paul and all the best for the future mate.
Phil
Thanks Phil - wise words from a wise man
But some 'unfinished business':
Paul, I've been puzzled by some of the things you said that you seem to have taken as referring to you - last night posts were happening quick fire so it was difficult to keep track and it's only now I've been able to read back properly and make some sense of this.
Firstly, I repeat that when I mentioned you, anonymously, as an example it was meant as a warning to potential organisers of the kind of thing that might happen and was not personal at all. I recall vividly when we both found the 'small print' in the so-called adventure the travel insurance that you had bought, thus making the whole repatriation process so much more complicated, and costly in the end.
Of course your missing EU card was an accident, but my point was that these things happen. For example I should also point out that one of the reasons I couldn't get to Phil's rally, and missed meeting Darren again
was that when I checked my own EU health card, having posted a reminder on Phil's topic, I found that
mine had expired - taking a week to replace! Then I found that my bike's ITV (Spanish MoT) would expire while I was there - then the b*****y bike failed the test and then I lost three days running around getting parts that I should have ordered months before! So, we're all human - erring being core to our very nature!
You're accident was really bad luck and had no reflection on you're riding skill or any recklessness on your part. Mr X and I did an 'autopsy' later in the week and saw how your skid had led to an inevitable fall on a very treacherous surface - and despite the rotten luck you've had since (which I didn't know about, the last time I remember that we were in touch you appeared to be well on the road to recovery), you avoided a much worse accident -not dropping on the other side of the trail, over a fifty metre drop into impenetrable forest - as it struck me at the time that you must have 'downed' yourself and that takes some guts!
None of the rest of my comments referred to your example at all - and I wrote them in separate paragraphs specifically because of this. Although it might have been more clear if I'd used bullet points or paragraph numbers, etc., I write for a living so as of habit I to stick to the rules and conventions. (In parentheses: Russ, take it easy on Britfrog, he was perfectly correct to write his comments in one big paragraph as it was all about the same subject. Although it does make things harder to read on computer screens, at the end of the day grammar is grammar!)
Now the other stuff: you seem to have taken Russ's mention of someone being a 'knob' as referring to you. Well, that was Russ's comment but I'm
absolutely certain it was referring to something that happend later in the week, after you had left and so you couldn't have known about. OK, I didn't make that comment so over to Russ perhaps.
Likewise, the bit about people driving without insurance was Britfrog's comments about ex-pats driving their cars/bikes in France without legal liability insurance. Obviously this was nothing to do with you but this is becoming a terrible problem here, and not just the Brits - thanks AndyB for putting that one into perspective - the latest example here in Spain, which occurred just a few miles from my home in Tarragona a week or two ago - was when a French driver in an Andorran plated Porche ran down and killed one young cyclist and leaving another seriously injured. Once apprehended - he trashed the car, it was that bad! - the driver tested positive - very positive! - for both cocaine and alcohol. As the driver was resident in France none of the paperwork added up and he got off with the legal maximum 'bail' of €15,000 - i.e. buttons to someone who has a spare Porche and a coke habit - and needless to say has now skipped the country. In the process leaving the cyclists or their families with little or no recourse for compensation.
I hope that puts all these comments into a better perspective
Meanwhile, this is how bad it's getting here in Spain: I've already had to suspend my planned HISS in Aragon next October due to more stringent application of trail riding regulations - imposed after the terrible rate of forest fires last year - which takes roughly half the trails in Aragon, which is pretty much the size of Wales, out of bounds. The outcome for me is that I have had to wave goodbye to about €500 that I've already spent on reconnaissance visits. What have forest fires got to do with ABR riders? Well, I'm not going to start that one again - see below!
Finally, phew!
Spud, aka Redmurty. Thanks for your comment about Phil, Britfrog and me being 'ambassadors' for the Brits - certainly the case in the former two. But I think 'ambassadors' need a certain level of diplomacy - not my strong point to put it mildly - but I'm on a learning curve of sorts
Regs
Simon