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Tour des Trois Vallees

By Erik van Dongen on September 28th, 2010

A little trip to Belgium
About mushrooms, Lego and a buzzard

Last chance
This year has been quite disappointing for me concerning motorcycling… Not only did I not finish my Scott in time for two of my favourite long distance rallies, in September my two speeder and I had been fully packed and ready to go to a motorcycle weekend twice and both times we were not able to go in the end… So when I read in the journal of the VMC (Veteran Motorcycle Club) about the Tour des Trois Vallees (Rally of the three Valleys) on September 26th I did not need to think twice. This rally was in the south of Belgium and was combined with a visit to the largest Live Steam Festival in Belgium. It could well be my last chance in 2010 to do some decent milage…

Of course I would ride the bike to and fro the rally as this is what it is all about. Because it was about 160 miles I was in need of a place to stay for the night. I was not too keen on camping in the Ardennes at the end of September so I looked around for an affordable hotel in the neighbourhood. After consulting my good friend Google I found a small hotel in a village only 3 miles from the starting point of the rally and despite the predicted bad weather I booked anyway…

Waterleak
In the weeks before the rally I had been working hard on the Scott. The cylinderblock had been leaking water between the two cylinders for years and I wanted to fix this for good now. For that (and some other things) the engine had to come out of the frame… again. While it was on the bench I did some Moss style tuning on it. I flowed the casing, ported the pistons and filled the unneeded space around the cylinder spigots with Devcon. With the engine being pretty worn already there was nothing to loose anyhow. Even with the devastating experiences of my last tuning job in mind…

Just like a few years ago the first testrun only lasted a few hundred meters… Deja vu! Three of the four holes in which the cylinder holding down bolts screw in had lost their thread… I knew these threads were not that good and the clearly noticeable extra compression due to the tuning had taken it’s toll… After an extensive search on the internet I finally found someone that could supply me with inserts in the rather obscure size BSC 3/8 x 26. Just before the rally these arrived in the mail. I was now able to assemble the engine again with some new cylinder bolts and could tighten these up nice and evenly using 20 Nm all around.

So I was ready to leave for Belgium that Saturday on an untested bike.

Left lane
All I had to do that Saturday morning was packing, install the luggage carrier on the Scott and tie the lot up. The weather forecast was not that good and when I stepped out the door to leave it promptly started to rain. I decided to give the online shower radar a quick check and decided that if I would wait for about 30 minutes I would have a good chance of staying in between to shower fronts the whole trip… And so I did! I did not get a single drop of rain during the 5 hours ride while being chased by a shower the whole time. A few minutes after I arrived it started pouring…

The first part of the trip was not very exiting. Those of you that have visited Belgium might know, the top half of this country is downright boring to ride through. Hardly any interesting scenery and lots of straight roads. Therefore I was extra happy that the tuning work on the Scott was very noticeable. I really enjoyed the extra 10-15 miles top speed and the overall much more powerful feel of the bike. I noticed being a lot more in the left lane (remember, we ride at the right side of the road!) than you would expect from a 87 year old machine! Yummy!

After about 80 miles the ride became more interesting with the first hills, nice scenery and twisty roads. Just the place to be with a Scott. With 5 hours and 160 miles behind me, I arrived at the train museum in Treignes. This would be the starting place of the rally on Sunday and I hoped to see some VMC folks there already but no luck.

In the last few miles to my hotel I suddenly found myself in the middle of a “Brocante”. This is a sort of car boot sale that went on in the narrow and steep uphill streets of a little village. And the two speeder riders amongst you will now what that means; you have to keep on going… Pretty hard as it was very crowdy (I was riding my bike between the stalls which was not exactly allowed…) and I do not have any experience in starting a two speeder uphill… But somehow I managed and made it to the hotel.

Mushrooms
The hotel came straight from the sixties but the room had all modern comfort for only 20 euros a night. So hardly more expensive than camping… The hotel was situated alongside the railroad and every 30 minutes you were treated to one of the nice steam trains of the Steam Festival, always a fantastic sight!

Right opposite the hotel there was an exposition “des Champignons”. I simply could not imagine what could be exhibited about Champignons as in Dutch a “Champignon” is just the kind of white mushrooms you buy in the supermarket… But to fill the rest of the afternoon I decided to have a look around and quickly found out that in French “Champignons” means mushrooms in general… I have never seen so much different mushrooms in one place! There must have been hundreds of them and all where nicely presented with detailed information. Very educational! And to be honest, the gigantic mushroom omelet I had there for only 3 euros was also very enjoyable! All in all the weekend had started off pretty good.

Lego
Sunday arrives very wet. It obviously had rained a lot last night and it still was not entirely dry. After a simple but nice breakfast I took the Scott out of the garage, put on my raingear and left for the museum in Treignes. Of course I was one of the first participants to arrive. In fact, I was so early that I got starting number 1, something I never had before! Slowly about 15 other bikes took their place alongside the tracks on the platform of the museum. Because of the continuing rain quite a few of the pre-entries decided to stay at home. Despite that we had some nice machines there like a D-Rad, a Dresh, a NSU combination and of course some Belgian marques.

Until departure for the ride-out there was ample time to visit the museum. There were quite a few engines and carts on display but the space was a bit cramped so you had very little overview. I especially liked one steam locomotive that had been outside for years and years just rusting away and was only recently acquired by the museum. The engine did not have one single speck of paint left and was green with vegetation. Try that for your next restoration!

The middle platform inside the museum was fully occupied with the largest Lego train collection I have ever seen. The Belgian Lego train club really did their best on this display!

Mastercard
On leaving the museum I was just in time to see the first bikes firing up for the ride-out already. So traditionally I left as one of the last. The ride-out was about 60 miles and was signposted with the familiar orange VMC signs (circle = go right, square = go left, triangle = go straight on). But because some of the square signs were placed with a pointed side up, these looked much like a circle form a distance… Well, let’s say I lengthened the ride out involuntarily with about 15 miles…

Despite me leaving so late I was first to arrive at the first stop. This was at a man-made lake and I found it quite fascinating to ride over the dam. On the left the water was at normal level while on the right it was deep, deep down!

Because of my unplanned detour I was practically out of petrol and the only petrol station in the ride was still 15 miles further. I did not want to risk that, so I had to wait at the stop for the support van that also carried some spare petrol. So a nice opportunity to eat lunch. By the way, filling up in Belgium on a Sunday is always very hard for foreigners. A lot of pumps do not accept credit cards (even when the stickers say they do!) so you often have to practice your best French and try to persuade a local into using his card for filling up and then refund him in cash. Well, it keeps you going anyhow!

Buzzard
The second stop in the ride-out was at Mariembourg which is the depot where all the steamtrains left. We had free entry with our bikes and were allowed to park right in between the massive locomotives. Very impressive. And it was even dry during our visit!

The ride back to Treignes had quite a few steep downhill hairpin bends and I really felt for some of the other guys on their pulley brake bikes… I had to do some hard pushing and pulling myself to get the bike to stop in time, especially as the roads were wet and muddy and it had started to rain again.

Right before the end of the ride I saw a big bird taking off in front of me. I thought he would easily make it and, having no place to evade or brake, I just went on… and hit the bird with my left hand. I hardly felt it but I saw the bird tumble down, so I turned to have a look. I found the buzzard, because that’s what is was, in a ditch beside the road with a broken wing twisted 180 degrees. I myself did not dare to take the bird out of his misery but luckily another participant helped me out. A real shame and against my nature, but letting it suffer a painful death would have been much worse…

The ride out ended in Treignes where the bikes drew quite a crowd. In between the platform had been filled with a nice collection of classic cars. From a gigantic Rolls to a tiny Dutch Daf. I noticed that the radiator cap, with the Spirit of Ecstasy, of the Rolls was missing and wondered if it had been stolen or if the owner just took it off to prevent that from happening. It made me wonder about the cap of my Scott with the Squirrel mascot on top…

Back at the hotel I went to bed very early as I was totally busted. I was not given much sleep though as at around eleven the locals started a party downstairs in the pub… They made so much noise that I finally put in the earplugs I always use while riding my bikes…

Plumbing
Monday greeted me with a cloudless blue sky! That was looking good for the ride back home. And besides some fog in the valley of the river Meuse (quite dangerous on a machine with no lighting) it stayed that way for a long time.

In Dinant I noticed after filling up that I could not get the bike in neutral anymore. I also noticed steam coming of my clutch drums… After checking the oil line to the gear I found that the jet I had put in a few years ago to regulate the oil flow had become clogged. After removing that and giving the gear a bit of oil all was back as normal.

About 40 miles from home I felt that my luggage suddenly seemed a bit loose on bumps in the road. To be certain I stopped to check and found that my luggage carrier sheared off completely at both mounting brackets! I had made the carrier of normal red copper plumbing pipe and soldered the whole lot together. This had held perfectly for quite some time but the heavy luggage roll (of course I took lots of totally unnecessary tools and spares…) just was too much for it. Luckily I was able to fix it temporary with an extra strap.

Of course the good weather could not last and about 30 miles from home it started to rain again. Welcome in Holland! But despite all extra delays I was home just in time to pick up my daughter from school.

Wishlist
After about 400 miles this weekend really proved to be the icing on the cake for my motorcycle season. Despite the rain I enjoyed every mile! The little two speeder still amazes me with it’s striking performance for such an old lady. I notice that, whenever the bike is in a ridable condition, I hardy ever use my modern bike.

Of course I have a few things on my wishlist after this weekend. In fact about 40… Big things like an engine overhaul as well as small things like replacing the battery of my digital speedo. But we all know that keeping busy on our bikes just is the sport!

This article was also published in the club magazine of the VMC as well as in Yowl (club magazine of the SOC)

Tags: 2010, Belgium, long distance, Scott, steam train, two speeder, VMC

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