Autumn 2004 French run

OK, I've found my tuit, and the autumn French Run will be the weekend
before the EOSM: that is, Friday 3 - Sunday 5 September. Arrive
Friday, depart Sunday, 2 nights as ever.

Venue - probably the Ardennes. Still working on that.

Costs - as before. Roughly ukp120-130 per head, based on 2 people
sharing, including ferries and four-course dinner both nights. Booze
extra.

Small print: once I've confirmed the booking with the hotel and P&OSL,
no refunds. Positively zilch. If you hand over your dosh and find you
can't go, then too bad. Dinner is based on what I choose for everyone
to eat. Special dietary needs (veggie, kosher, etc) can be handled but
"I don't like fish" or "I only eat vegetables if they're stir-fried"
will be treated with disdain.

There may be some single room space available. Otherwise we're looking
at a maximum of about three dozen. If the Ardennes hotel blows out,
I'll find somewhere else: possibly somewhere we've been before. Max
distance from Calais will be 200 miles.

First-come first-served basis. Email me at chateau dot murray at dsl
dot pipex dot com if you definitely want in. Not "I'm definitely
interested" or "I think I can make that" but "Yeah, I'm up for this".

For anyone who hasn't done a French Run - they can be quite fun.
There's always someone to take the piss out of (Big Tony for his epic
Petrol Muppet award, Prawn for breaking down and not flagging down one
of the 20 bikes that streamed past him, Tim for managing to get
stranded on the wrong side of the Seine, in full view of the hotel on
the opposite bank, and no immediate means of crossing the river....)
and the food and drink are usually quite good.

 

Yes, though to be fair, P&O are more then happy to refund, even up to day of
sailing.
The problem was that the request had to be from you/needed original payment
details.

I, FWIW, don't view this in quite the same way as "I can't come, do all the
work for me and get a refund".

Anyway, lesson learnt, water under the bridge etc.

 

WorkTOG bored us all completely to death with wittery prose along the
lines of:

I'll email you tonight, if all is okay and once I confirm that I can
change the call out rota in work.

--
Cab :^) - almost as fast as Ginge.
GSX 1400 - 'Tarts Handbag' (tm) Bike, dead 550/4 Rat
UKRMMA#10 (KoTL), IbW#015, Bob#4, POTM#3

P.S. Remove your_head from the cab. ICQ: 83023471

 

I´m tempted. Quite a run from down here though. What´s the price for
hotel only_ (damned spic keyboard) ?

 

Damn. No chance of another Petrol Muppet award as I am at a wedding that
weekend. Someone else will have to keep score until next year.

 

Come with us you fooker. You're not old enough for a TOG run.

 

Sounds good - might make it up there - not quite as far as Normandy
last year. Maybe one or two folks[1] might like to combine it with a
second[2] party down here?

Presumably you'll post again when you've got a definite venue in mind?
I'll need to take advice[3] on this.


[1] Looking at Adie, if she's reading.
[2] For me, not neccessarily anyone who might come.
[3] == get permission

 

Mmm, so that's the following weekend, is it? I might be tempted.

I doubt it. Certainly not for me, going in the opposite direction, as
it were. Oh, you mean you'd be sticking around in France for all that
week? Possibly, then. Check with TOG.

 

Hell, I´m almost as old as the man himself. I´ve been on several
TOGTours already. And you know perfectly well, I´ll be in England when
you´re jollying out here.

Back to the pool.

 

<emailed> you should know about my food awkwardness by now.

--
Adie
(replace spam with nickname to reply)

UKRM FAQ: http://www.ukrm.net/faq/

Triumph 955iSS / GSF600 bandit
MRO#11 BOTAFOF#7 BOTAFOT#130 DIAABTCOD#17 MIB#24 YTC#16 BOB#15 ex-UKRMMA#22

 

I asked them. I emailed them. I got no reply and no refund. Life is too
short to spend my time chasing somebody else's ****-up, or somebody
else's problem, so I didn't bother after that. If you have a problem
with that, tough shit.

That should be clear enough for anyone contemplating coming in the
autumn.....

 

No

 

One phone call was all it took me. Email stuck me as an utter waste of time
<shrug>

As you say though, tough shit, but duly noted - lesson learnt.

Indeed - don't injure (aka '****-up') yourself, or have anything totally
unexpected happen to you because it's "tough shit".

BTW, is booking it in your company's name good for tax reasons, or just
handy? ;-)

 

If it is, and there's a room free, Pat and I will stay the Saturday
night only. It's the last day of our fortnight round western France
and the Pyrenees and we'd planned to stop overnight in or around the
Ardennes en route to the Amsterdam ferry.

 

All my correspondence with POSL is done via email with one particular
person who puts together the tickets for me. The occasional phone call.
But mainly email. Phone calls often entail waiting ages....

Look, if this were a profit-making venture or anything like that, then
fine. I'd shift heaven and earth to sort it. But it isn't. All I do is
book the feries and arrange a hotel reservation for people, negotiating
(I may add) a bloody good price for both.

I have a helluva lot to do. I have people dropping out at the last
minute, people promising they're coming and then deciding against it at
the last minute, people moaning because they're not coming and they
think they are and that "definitely interested" should mean to me that
they are. The last one was supposed to be the Ardennes.

We had too many people said they were coming for the hotel to
accommodate, so I switched it to a hotel that could handle the larger
number, in not quite such a nice location. But after people had stopped
faffing around, the numbers dropped and it turned out we could have all
got into the hotel in the Ardennes after all.

I'm sorry if someone's forced to drop ,out at the last minute. I will
apply for a ticket refund (although in the past POSL has charged a ukp35
fee for that and the ticket itself this time was only 52 quid IIRC), but
if POSL forget, or screw up, or whatever, as seems to have happened this
time, I simply am not going to chase it. I'll try once, as I did, but if
I don't get a result, I'm not going to get sucked into trying again, and
again, and again, for whatever reason.

I don't have a company. All bookings are made in my name. I use my
office address as the address to which tickets should be sent because
they come in a very big envelope which won't fit through my own
letter-box. As I'm always at work when our postman arrives, this means
either that large post gets dumped on our doorstep or I have to go down
to the PO to retrieve it. Having it sent to my office gets round that.
If you have a point to raise with that, do so Otherwise, this exchange
is beginning to irritate me rather. So that's my last word on it.

 

you expect me to read?

Thanks for the offer, but if I do come over to the UK during that week
I'll prolly look up my mate in Leicester and my family in Derby.

Yeah, I guess. TBH I didn't really give it that much thought when I
posted it. Now I've got to work out whether I can take two weeks off
for biking stuff this year before I can commit any further. Gotta find
some good holiday to send Jude off on, then I'll be OK

 

The Older Gentleman wrote:

Heh-heh-heh... "When DFVs Explode!"

 

Indeed, I kind of expect a "**** off", not a fully detailed explanation...

 

All right - look, I've emailed POSL *again* today. If that produces
results, well and good....

If not, then consider yourself in receipt of a "**** off" ;-)

 

Jeez.. I can't get this one off the hook...

But thanks