Friday night we caught the late night ferry from Dover to Boulogne in order to give us an early start on our journey through France - our destination, and base for the event, was Llavorsi in Spain.

We managed to get split up circling the Arc de Triomphe but re-grouped at the Eifel Tower (a useful and obvious landmark!!!)

A quick visit ot the Palais de Versailles and then we carried on to our overnight stop in Limoges.

Sunday morning we visited Oradour-sur-Glane, site of the tragic massacre and destruction of the village by the Nazi SS in WW2. The village has been left as a memorial to the inabitants....

After visiting some of the pre-hestoric sites in the Dordogne, Steve decided it was time to practice his off-roading techniques. He managed to fall over into a tree. Tim and Martin stood him up, and on his second attempt fell into a second tree!!!

Note that my job is offical tour photographer and so I do not have to help pick up bikes!!!

An overnight stop in Toulouse, and then on to the Horizons Unlimited Mountain Madness event itself - a two-day, no GPS, orienteering event in the eastern Pyrenees of Catalunya, Spain. A test of map reading and navigation skills, attempting to find checkpoints scattered in obscure (off-road) places.

A lot of competitors had taken small enduro bikes in vans or on trailers, but there were enough GS's, KTM's and Africa Twins etc to reassure us that the bigger bikes should be OK!

Day 1 started OK. Maybe our route was a bit ambitious (a lot of very long and sometimes difficult off-road sections), but it all went wrong when we couldn't find a checkpoint. We must have circled it several times and eventually Steve and I began to run low on petrol. Service stations a few and far between, so we had to abort. We lost approx 3 hours and a lot of competition points.

Day 2 called for a new strategy, try to visit the checkpoints closer to tarmac roads and use the speed of the GS's on the road to move quickly between checkpoints. But we still covered a lot of off-road sections...

... and Martin dropped his bike in a particularly muddy section, meaning a quick visit to a service station to clean up was required.

(Note I am photographer again and avoided the worst of the mud)

My uncanny ability to remain upright came to an end when Steve shouted to say we had missed a checkpoint and I attempted to stop too quickly (so I blame Steve for this one)...

Now this is how GS's should look. Much better once covered in dust and mud than all clean and shiney!

Cooling off on the route home Tim finds the goretex layer in his suit and boots is not up to the job....

We stopped in Millau to visit the bridge, truly spectacular ...

... and the Gorge du Tarn where we were caught in a serious thunderstorm.

Not sure where we finished in the event, we certainly didn't win, but it was a lot of fun and gave a purpose to off-roading.

Would we do it again - probably not. Some people took it very seriously and the fact that many of the checkpoints were common to last year gave a big advantage to those with previous experience.

Some video clips from the HUMM event...

Nick...

Tim...

Steve...

Martin...