Breakfast at Tiffany’s, cheap wine, Nutella spreading and a short stint of light hearted nakedness is basically the trip summed up (Oh and a bit of wake boarding too).  For what is becoming, it seems, a tradition, WakeImperial headed to France for the fourth year in a row to embark on a summer tour.  The dodgy Cypriot Gaby was the only man behind the wheel for the whole trip so constant stops were needed to fuel him up with 4 packs of RedBull NRJ to get us there in one piece.  Upfront for the first leg of the journey was Will and Edd, however, Will had to sadly leave us half way through the trip due to being a grown up with a full time job (boring)!!  Fortunately Edd was with us for the whole trip as we would have been unable to live with out him – his 20 minute jokes were just too good to miss.  Fast asleep in the back was Anni, who we came to find out had unrivalled stories about a certain brown substance. Then there was myself, Jed,  squished in the back seats!

On the first day we had the short drive down to Paris, when we arrived we found out we had a problem that was going to be with us for the rest of the trip – trying to a park a large minibus in a city, which is not the easiest task to undertake!  After finally finding some suitable parking we headed into Paris for some serious selfie taking, a meal and a “quiet” few drinks.  We ended up in a small bar and then found ourselves being dragged to a club with a woman who was probably a little too old for the clubbing scene, but hey ho she was a local so knew where was best.  After an evening with some awful dancing and a far too many pints we decided to head back to the outskirts but not till Will bought a drink that he did not reap any benefits from!

The next day we embarked on the 10 hours of travelling to get down to our accommodation for the week in the south of France!  The journey was not so bad all it really consisted of was sleeping, naming animals, eating baguettes and cheese… Not such an awful day (Gaby may think differently).  After the long journey we found out we didn’t have a key to get into our accommodation so we ended up having take-away pizza and beers then sitting on the porch for the evening,  finally retiring for a night sleeping in the surprisingly comfy minibus.

Will had a fantastic day trip planned for us to a mouth watering leisure centre in Albi, which consisted of just about every extreme sport you could ask for. From bmx-ing to downhill go carting, we tried it all!  After all this we headed back to the booked accommodation which was so ridiculously close to the lake we would be wakeboarding on, we could jump in it whenever the urge took us, (Anni maybe wasn’t always so pleased to jump in it).   We sessioned the cable on the Monday all day then unfortunately we had to give the grown-up full-time worker a lift to Toulouse Airport so he could fly back to the UK.

After 7 hours of successful riding on the Tuesday we decided it was great idea to head to Toulouse to experience the nightlife!  We ended up being taken to the infamous club “The Colour of the Panties” by some girls we bumped into, who knew their way around Toulouse (and Airbus) extremely well.  After another  evening of poor dancing on the bar we headed back to the minibus for further night of cosy sleeping in the adopted sleeping quarters.

On the Wednesday we survived another long drive to the beautiful south coast of France for a day of sunbathing on the beaches and exchanging disturbing stories of our youth.  While we lay on the beach we ended up thinking it was a fantastic idea to drive the short distance into Spain to see the great sights of Spain and get some tapas… Good idea at the time till we ended up being stuck in traffic for a bit longer than we would have liked!  However, the tapas rewarded us  for being stuck in traffic.

After the adventure to Spain we headed back to another 2 days of solid riding at the TNG cable… no wetsuits needed, just board shorts, perfection!  All smashing our trick aims and then drinking a little too much in the evening during numerous games of ring of fire.

Saturday came upon us a little too quickly which meant we were all back in the van for a another long journey back up through France, with a night stop in the very upper class town of Orleans (easily mistaken for New Orleans when one of us was calling for a taxi).  We arrived back into the UK on Sunday afternoon to surprisingly good weather, however, nothing compared to what we had been lucky enough to benefit from for the whole week in  France!  All in all a fantastic tour with a great bunch of people!  When are we booking for 2015?

WakeImperial Tour

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