Today has been mixed as all these days are. I got off around 10. It takes a good hour and a half to break camp. My cunning route across 20miles of country to near where the Mosel branches off from the Rhein took me to exactly where I wanted to be and I spent the day riding the road alongside this beautiful river. I stopped at a so called cafe in a less popular and less pretty town for lunch to be reminded that German food is not good. My salad was a mush of prawns with some curry powder thrown in for luck. Some French arrived by bike and made an entrance in reply to my greeting one asked whether the food was very good. I had to tell the truth. Then on the bike again. As the Mosel winds down towards Trier it is not as beautiful as further downstream and added to this it started to rain though lightly. I decided to keep to the river all the way to Trier and look for a hotel and to cut a long story short I stumbled on a place and seemed to get the last free room with a garage for Bertha to herself after alarming a young man with a motorbike who rents the garage next door by trying that one first. Once in the room which has a door that is one foot thick, I showered and fell asleep so deeply that when I awoke I had no idea where I was. I had a walk round this town and found a place to have a pizza and glass of wine and sat outside in a square in the sunny evening. Service is slow here in Germany so far. You need to settle down with a good book. My plan is to make a push south tomorrow to find a place from the cool camping guide with a car free tent only area. It’s 180 miles.
Today’s miles: 125 miles average 34.3 mph max 71 mph moving time 3:37 hrs

6th august
So many trips have started with the ride through three counties over to Harwich, just over 60 miles from home. This morning forecast was for rain so I was prepared for a rather muted start to the trip. As it turned out today was glorious and the ride joined the catalogue of sunny evening trips arriving with the sun low over the sea but still bright and warm. Thank goodness for Morrisons Harwich where I go and fill a carrier bag with a cabin dinner and bottle of wine. This trip it’s Morrisons sliced pork pie with egg, Morrisons pea shoots, port salut cheese yoghurt and Morrisons strawberry shortcakes which if they don’t disintegrate will make a fine breakfast for a couple of days. Accompanied by Morrisons Beaujolais villages.
In the queue waiting to board is the usual dozen or so bikes of all shapes and sizes with riders to match and enjoyable conversations with a few Germans all on BMWs of course. The most notable being a highly camp police Harley Davidson complete with flashing lights and siren. I thought the HDs looked a real handful to ride slowly stop and go up the circular ramp to the back of the boat.
This trip I am trying out my just bought Redverz Adventure tent, so big and tall you can actually keep your adventure bike inside it. I bought it more thinking about being able to stand up inside it than sharing it with Bertha though I might try that if I get melancholy. What better than non human company at night? Accompanying me is the following literature: where angels fear to tread by E M Foster, The elephant vanishes, Murakami, a collection of essays and interviews by Paul Auster plus a slim text book about narrative analysis.
It is 10.15, late already. I think the unwary stay up drinking on this trip. The savvy realise that the clocks are one hour ahead when we are rudely woken at a round 6.30 so get their head down even before the boat leaves dock at 23.15. So many times I have caught this ferry. I remember the first time clearly when I had only recently learned to ride and was the proud owner of a blue Triumph with only a tank bag and something small strapped on the back for luggage. Now I carry around probably about five times as much stuff.
I went up on deck for a cigarette and bumped into German biker Frank with amazing English but I was in the shower heading for bed as I felt the ship move off.
Tomorrow is a 400k ride to just south of Koblenz (stress on the first syllable I learned this evening ) to a campsite on the bank of the Rhein. So nearly all on motorways, but after that much nicer roads. Tomorrow evening I plan to scatter my mum’s ashes in the Rhein.

7th August
After a very tiring ride on motorways I arrived at Loreleyblick camping at about 2pm. I lost my trip data from the gPS but it was about 260 miles, not that much but tiring roads to ride after being woken up at what felt like the middle of the night but was 6.30. I think I am at the prettier end of this long campsite by the very fast flowing Rhein. It is dominated by motor homes and caravans apart from a few intrepid cyclists with tents. The Redverz it’s good so far. I spent ages putting it up. There is such a huge amount of space to be untidy in.
I walked up the road and found a gate leading down to a footpath down to the river and it was there that I scattered mums ashes from my hand into the river just as a barge piled high with coal sailed by, appropriate as her father was a miner. I then lay down in the tent and fell asleep as I always do. Motorcycling leads to sleep. I’ve been too tired to open a book so far.
Reviews say this campsite is noisy at night with trains running all night on both sides of the river. In fact we’ve just had stereophonic goods trains and it is loud. It’s somehow reassuring that all this stuff is getting moved around.
Later I did read the first few chapters of Where Angels Fear to Tread. One of EM Forsters early readers said she felt she needed to take a shower after reading it and I agree. It’s nasty not a very positive view of humans so far at least. I am sure a film has been made of it.
I slept very well apart from beings awoken by the predicted thunder of freight trains. At one point in the night I started counting the intervals between them and they were very short. I finally awoke just before seven.

A rare Saturday spent in London found me and H taking the riverboat from Bankside to Greenwich (£10 or so with an Oyster card – they hurry people on and off and move at high speed making the point they are definitely not a tour boat) and taking a short hot walk down the Thames path towards the east in the direction of but not going anywhere near the Thames barrier. A few of the photographs are below.

A gem we found was the Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich, cool and uncrowded inside, but it turns out with variable reviews.

My mum is in Hospital at the moment. Here she is a few days ago.

Tuesday 10th September
I made it! I am on the ferry, now just less than one hour into our voyage and we’re definitely swaying.
Last night was the usual sleeping and dreaming and waking but the alarm on my watch, followed shortly by my phone went off when it was still dark and felt like the middle of the night, just after 7 and with the aid of my trusty head torch I was packed up and ready to ride out as I heard the campsite gate being opened just before 8. But it was dark and raining on the road and really difficult to see, out of town and up onto the motorway for a 35 minute journey to the port just this side of Bilbao.
Laredo to Bilbao in the rain at EveryTrail

It was difficult to find the way to the boat, as the whole portside area was under an inch of water so all the road markings were invisible and I rode around in and out of cones and lanes to finally get to the route to get into the Brittany Ferries queues. Phew. Please take queue number 43, said the woman in the booth. By this time I was soaked. I joined a queue of riderless bikes and wondered what shelter everyone had found. A lorry driver called to me that all the other bike riders were sheltering in the café and I walked over and squeezed into a small bus shelter like space already full and a half dozen or so bikers came before we got the call ‘now the motos’. Someone there was sharing his experience of travelling the middle East: ‘I went to Dubai airport once. I thought I was at a shepherd’s convention’. Much laughter. Interesting. When you are new to a group or on the edges its always the vocal members that you notice and assume they stand for the whole.
Driving on involved a steep decline down to the very bottom deck, which with the wet weather, caused widespread fear as I could tell from the rider in front of me and the comments of others. I stayed to watch Bertha get tied down then managed to get into my cabin just after it had been cleaned, saving waiting around in wet clothes.
After showering (with the ship’s many times laundered and barely there towels) I made straight to the restaurant and watched from the window as the last trucks drove on down below and we moved away, diagonally it seemed, from the quay. A lone remaining worker in bright orange stayed in the rain to see the boat leave, then got into his van and drove off. All the immigration police had already left a good half an hour before.

I ordered full breakfast in French (its ‘full breakfast’ but to be said in a slightly artificial way). I normally avoid all that but after a fortnight of crouching over a stove eating various varieties of pasta (they were all delicious – I am not complaining) I was not going to skimp on comforts for this 24 hours.
So now in my rather swaying cabin (I have a porthole this time), with the heating turned up and my clothes hanging on anything available to dry, I am going to start looking at some documents for the university’s Research Excellence Framework. I’m hoping the 130 mile ride back up to Cambridge tomorrow morning is dry.

Pictures so far are here.