What Have You Done To Your Tdm Today?

[curlylegend]

Oops

Sorry didn't mean to stir the pot

Yep Some of the Locals are just a waste of Oxygen

But I still meet the odd decent one now and again



How is living in France ?

Don't think I'd be able to keep of the Wine during the week

 

Aye, just ignore Celtic exaggeration,  it's as you've probably found just a minority.  They're either great or just total turds.  You'd think that a country like Scotland that really has nothing going for it at all except fabulous scenery once every 7 years would try and do something positive. Like get rid of the fu**ing attitude !  

For over fifteen years myself and a bunch of pals would pick two points as far apart as possible in Scotland and then run it on our bikes. Runs like from the Mull of Galloway to Tongue in the north and Longformacus to Ardnamurchan. Absolutely great runs.  But the hospitality was a complete gamble. Some of the cheapest B&B's treated us like kings and some 3star hotels more or less turned us away.

Now this was a real rare occurrence....  We'd got involved with the international MZ club who we'd met up with in Glencoe, a bunch of German, Dutch and English folk, great company !  We were booked into the only hotel in Kilchoan on the Ardnamurchan peninsula and the lot of us turned up with most of the MZ club trailing in after us.  We'd all got booked in and in those days, drinking was done.  It turned out that the hotel had recently been taken over by a Yorkshireman who was manning the bar.  Now as the MZ crew turned up in dribs and drabs he leant on his side of the bar and watched them getting settled and faffing about with German and English trying to get a drinks order together.  Now we all knew that in those days licencing times were "flexible" in those out of the way places, so we never said anything to the MZ ers. Eventually a couple of them approached the bar with a pretty prodigious drinks order and were told " Sorry, cant serve you, you're five minutes too late !"  What a c*nt !

 

As a result, the twelve of us who had booked and completely filled the hotel, and booked meals as well, all walked out to show our disgust and left him with an empty hotel and an apoplexy !

Us twelve, and the MZ ers all managed to get put up in local B&B's even if some of them were actually barns, where one of the best impromptu ceilidhs took place.  God knows where the drink came from ?  But every single one of us got a damn good cooked breakfast and it was for buttons.  

So there you go, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

 

But just to let you know how rare it was to get bad service from an incomer, I can honestly say that if it wasn't for the decent, hard working English settlers who took over some historic hostelries in Scotland, like the Clachaig in Glencoe for example, tourists would be hard pushed to get anything at all.

 

So, how's France ?  No comparison really.  Just back from a 2800km tour to Mont Ventoux, Turin, and the Pyrenees on my TDM 850, which thanks to this forum never missed a beat. Today, purely on the spur of the moment, I fired up the TDM and cruised over the St Nazaire bridge and did a wee tour of southern Brittany.  You can turn up absolutely anywhere and get decent, friendly service whether you're just having a coffee or a 5 course meal...… and the sun's splitting the sky, of course !