Sunshine in France, flooding in Oxford

It’s not very often that I actually have to cancel a training course because of bad weather – I can only think of a couple that I’ve cancelled in advance, and one that we abandoned mid-session, but the floods that resulted from the storms on Friday forced me to call off the training for this weekend. It’s obviously a bit disappointing for the trainees involved, particularly as they booked some considerable time ago as they wanted this particular weekend, but I think they were also relieved at my decision.

It’s always a tough call but ultimately, it’s the safety of the trainee, other road users and myself that has to be considered. There’s also the fact that if the trainees are fighting the weather, they’re not going to get as much out of the session as they could do.

Meanwhile, I’ve been running quite a few sessions over in France in (mostly) blazing sunshine. It got a bit threatening on Thursday with the beginning of the thunderstorms that went on to dump over the UK on Friday, but generally the weather has been exceptional.

The course we did on Thursday was the “Double” Bends second day of a two day Bends course, with the first day getting the basics in place in the UK. I’ve also done several Bends courses for people heading off to the Alps or the Pyrenees for a first-time holiday up in the mountains – the selection of hairpin bends on the route I use makes it an ideal way to extend basic cornering skills to the more technical alpine bends.

Just to make it even easier for trainees, I’ve now got access to some excellent B&B accommodation not too far from the tunnel. At the moment we’re doing an overnight stay there for £35 including an evening meal. So we can put people up the night before heading over the channel for our courses over there.

Although the forecast is still a bit variable for the next week or so, there’s plenty of summer left and hopefully we’ll have a better autumn. Plenty more time to run some more training over there!