Weekend trip to Mont Aigoual on the Honda Africa Twin – Day 2 – Part 1

In this video I go on a week-end trip to one of the most windy and cold mountains in central France : the Mont Aigoual.
After trying some new camping gear in a random field, it’s time to go to our destination. Through slippery roads and beautiful landscapes, come with me to discover this great viewpoint and its weather observatory.

This vlog is divided in three parts :
– Day 1 : Going somewhere to camp
– Camping hardware and how I use it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfyqFvgQMGI
– Day 2 part 1 : Going to Mont Aigoual (this video)
– Day 2 part 2 : Going to Saint-Guilhem-le-désert

Cameras used :
– Sony A6400 with 18-135 mm kit lens
– DJI Action 4
– DJI Mini 3 pro

Music credits :
– KVARKEN – Ooyy
– Stardust in My Coffee – Valante
– Smarter – Lukas Got Lucky

so here we are I’m finally packing everything up and we’re about to go so the destination is about 1 hour away it’s called Mon igel and uh you’ll see it’s really cool I’ve already been there a couple times uh and I’ve made a vlog about it but it hasn’t been posted yet because I haven’t finished editing it it was only last year so you know don’t worry it’s going to come one day I don’t know when soon probably you know soon trademark uh so yeah let me just pack all of that really quickly and uh then we’re going to go back that way um we came from that way I’m a bit concerned about the traction of these tires like I said yesterday these tires really suck on grass or anything that is not completely dry is absolute garbage and I really mean that so now the sun has been shining for maybe an hour so it’s probably a little drier than it was at the beginning because with all the Frost everywhere I’m not sure I would have made it in one piece going down with these tires so we’ll see but I’m a yeah I’m a bit skeptical and it’s not a skill issue it’s a tire issue I’ve done this millions of times with the Right Tires it’s a breeze you don’t even think about it but with these tires I don’t know it doesn’t matter how good you are look at this look at this what am I what am I going to do with this there’s barely like 2 mm and the pattern is just too tight it needs to be more space down the knobs need to have some space in between each other so that material can get there and it can grab the ground without that you don’t really have good traction Offroad so yeah we’ll see and know I’m not making up excuses if I fall it is a genuine problem let’s go okay here goes nothing [Music] no ABS at the rear but we’re going to leave a little bit of traction control let’s go so the idea is that we’re going to go as far as possible when it’s flat even though it’s Rocky and now we’re going to go down so here not idea all right like that awesome okay now it’s just going to go down all right so far so good all right that one better than expected back to the track [Applause] [Music] so far so good we’re going to go back to the Village I think and then we’re just going to set up the GPS so let’s go [Music] so of course before I can go anywhere I need to have some bread and some other nice stuff I’m so French I dream in bread I need bread look at that nice nice sound it’s all fresh from this morning so good [Music] very nice Cho of chocolate fun fact we’re far enough North that this is called P cha here and not chatin which is the right way to say it P cha you know that’s just it’s a French thing very good and this is offu with apple it’s good it’s fantastic [Music] [Applause] [Music] so here we are at a mountain pass uh it’s in between two departments the department of Aon which we come from over here and then G which is over there and this is where we’re going and uh the views are pretty good I mean especially this container here uh very very nice no I’m joking look you know what would be better than showing you here showing you from the sky let’s fly the Drone [Music] yep [Music] there lot of gravel here super dangerous especially because there’s a drop there’s a huge drop on the right side and it’s full of gravel snippery I mean this is a very nice view but this is a very shitty Road there’s gravel everywhere the problem with Grabel is that you can’t turn you can’t stop you’re doomed to you know jump to your death and look if you are going too fast on such a road look at the amount of gravel on the left side it’s very fairly drivable for a motorcycle I should have taken the other itinerary the other road but the sign was saying that this was the primary itinerary and usually it means that the road is wider and better maintained but in this case because we just did this probably not the best of ideas but you know too late now I’m just going to go carefully and slowly [Music] [Music] I mean other than that look at the nice view look at that road so we went all the way there boom boom boom and then you have a foot path there which is totally doable maybe with the Africa twin but I would probably not try that I would rather be on a 450 like a lighter motorcycle to do that but this place is great for all things like that you have plenty of little paths that are hidden more or less hidden in uh in the forest some uh of them are for Street roads some others are just historical small paths that just go up and down the mountains and the Hills uh yeah I mean it’s nice it’s very Scenic now weirdly there is absolutely nothing to prevent you from just going down the cliff usually there’s like a guard rail or a wall or something like a little bit of a wall like that but over there is just like you know whatever inshah you’re not going to go overboard anyway very nice road but super slippery this is this is a death trap look at that this is horrible there’s nothing you can do on that you just have to go like 30 km an hour and turn flat there’s nothing else you can do and I have a friend who fell on such a such a surface this is actually worse than being on you know a non-paved road with a bit of gravel and whatever because usually there’s more stuff to catch the gravel but this this just like little balls rolling on top of a hard surface it’s awful every single time you break you feel that everything just moves and then the front want to go sideways and the rear starts to tail fish but yeah otherwise great view let’s keep going the the trick is to see where there is gravel and usually there’s less gravel where the cars go so you usually have like two lines and it’s best to have one of these lines there you go that was the how to drive on gravel tutorial side of a vlog you’re welcome [Music] and here we are not quite yet actually it’s about 10 minutes that way but uh we have a pretty nice point of view here as you can tell uh you could see far into the valley you could see some of the mountain tops over there there’s the bike yeah it’s a it’s a really cool place so it’s very remote as you might have seen in the in the video just coming here uh it’s a lot of woods now it’s a bit more Rocky but you know still lots of woods and you just have a couple tiny tiny Villages this one is a bit bigger but the other ones are really like super small you have maybe 10 different houses or something like this so it’s PR cool it’s very remote very nice the road is actually pretty good you can see it from there that is not the one I took but yeah it’s pretty nice [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so this is M’s Observatory for meteorology it’s been used also for some uh technology demonstrations and research as it is one of the places that has the coldest days in France and also the most often and it also has a lot of snow for most of the year and it’s extremely windy so it’s super harsh conditions that are very nice when you want to test some technology that needs to be operating in such harsh conditions I like the fact that this Observatory has kind of been built as a castle you know it has to support very harsh conditions and so they made it out of stone and it’s rugged and looks like looks like it’s fortified you know now normally over there you can actually see the Mediterranean Sea now you can’t see it because there’s too much Haze but in different conditions sometimes you can find it which is nice [Music] [Music] so a little fun fact about this place which is linked to me and my stupidity last time I was here it was about a year ago there was absolutely no one it was 8:00 p.m. and I just started to fly the Drone and you know I just go around like this boom boom boom bo boom and then I’m thinking oh it would be nice to have a shot with me on top of the tower and um yeah circling around that it would look cool right and so I had three options First Option bring back the Drone catch it then walk with it up here then launch it again second option just let it be in the air over there because it does stationary very well third option the one that I took the one that was stupid because it was windy tried to land on top of the tower with too much delay in the fpv feed and uh for unfortunately it kind of collided with one of the Rocks so it was going nice say I wanted to land here right on one of the stones but up there and I just start Landing like this and then wind starts to push it I try to compensate but then here one of the prop hits the side then the motor stops that’s a safety feature and then it kind of fell from all the way up there down to here obviously everything was broken I had to send it to DJI they sent it a sent a new one but I had to pay with my own money to fix that so yeah don’t be stupid F [Music] hey