Rain Rain and Barnard Castle

Saturday 21st August

I had left the bike pointing toward the way out so no awkward heaving around today once loaded up. Unfortunately I had to pack the tent away wet after rain in the night (I just read Adventure Spec’s advice about packing wet tents which is to unclip the inner from the fly sheet and pack them each in separate dry bags. That would have really helped me on this occasion) so my bag ended up really heavy on top of the rack leading to a wobble and moment of nearly dropping the bike at the first little junction after a few minutes ride.

That wobble dented my confidence for much of the day the bike often feeing uncertain on uneven road surfaces or tar banding. But I spent most of the day on large roads travelling north eventually stopping to get into my rain gear more from cold than the rain which just held off till I got to Barnard Castle to buy dinner for the night in the Co-op – and to check out my eyesight obviously. But from then on it rained. I ate a co-op sandwich standing in a bus shelter – not nice.

Earlier, I turned off the A1 to drive through Beadale which was a beautiful cobbled small town and Richmond also beautiful but only in places.

So when I arrived at the farm which will be my campsite for two nights it was raining quite heavily. (it had a steep stoney entrance but I wasn’t phased with this light bike.) But with the welcome from the host and her horse who licked my bike (maybe recognising a fellow traveller) had me feeling chipper. This didn’t last though. I sheltered in the tiny washroom looking out in dismay at the rain.

I was feeling desperate about what to do at this point as all my clothes were completely wet and in the tent there is barely room to lay everything out next to the space I need to sleep. Eventually I ventured out joylessly into the rain and I struggled to put up the tent looking for anything heavy to pin it down as a wind was blowing. I think the low point was unzipping the tent to find that inside was wet from taking it down wet in the morning (here’s the value of the Adventure Spec advice). A couple of expletives followed but in the end with the advance warning in my mind that these two days would be a test of my moral fibre I mopped up with my towel feeling a sense of taking some control instead of collapsing in front of the challenge. Apparently, as the hosts told me, in many anecdotes of unprepared campers, quite a few just give up and leave summarily, even some throwing their gear and clothes away in the dustbins before disappearing for ever. At least I did not join this list.

Only 137 miles today but in nearly 4 hours

Riding around Derbyshire

Friday 20th August day 2

I slept as I usually do when camping. Asleep by 9 when it is just getting dark and awake for some hours in the night. The combo of my new inflatable pillow made by Trekology, my folded sheepskin and my Thermarest sleeping pad blown up properly was probably the most comfortable I’ve been. To avoid the many DoE participants I was dressed and showered by 7.30 and enjoyed coffee made with my GSI drip using a filter paper to avoid a tricky washing up challenge. It was a little weak but good. I need to work on getting it better.

I obviously had not built up trust in the bike as when it refused to start this morning i.e. nothing at all happened when I pressed the starter – I imagined, in panic, myself calling for a breakdown service wondering if they would find the way here.  But I had just left it in gear and it spluttered into life though after three goes. It’s clearly not a start on the button machine – even when not in gear. I got a couple of recommendations from men here who ride bikes but I started off without a ride plan and enjoyed the mostly lovely lanes. Even the bigger roads were more enjoyable than what I’m used to. Searching for Snake Pass (one of the recommendations) was a little futile as it was packed with heavy vehicles with great jams. So I turned off. I had lunch of tea and a sausage sandwich in a lay-by watched by a field of cows. I would never do that but I was hungry and life on the bike seems to lead me into down market culinary choices.

The bike is easier to manoeuvre on the stoney ground here at the campsite but not effortless – but then what is? It is good to ride, responsive, but dives on braking to a quick stop. The usual thoughts today: am I enjoying this? It’s a different headspace to the rest of the year so yes. I had another shower and a shave. Feeling slightly less grubby feels good. I fell asleep when I got back from this ride. 

My weather app shows rain tomorrow and all night and most of Sunday so it will be the toughest part of the trip morale wise. I shouldn’t bottle out for a motel… unless something really good appears out of the mist. 

I think I missed the best parts of Snake pass

Cambridge to North Lees Derbyshire

There’s nothing like a safe arrival and a welcome shot of a spirit to give some optimism. The events of today started (while I was still in bed at home) with the welcome arrival of my insurance refund reminding me that all will be well and all manner of thing will be well. A train trip up to Cambridge and a Baron Bigod sandwich in the garage there before packing up into my bright yellow roll bag.

I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with negative feelings and wondering whether they would engulf me as years go by. On the open road though they tended to evaporate. I am getting more familiar with and confident about this bike. It is happy on the big roads. I noticed that I could steer it just by shifting the weight of my thighs. It rained. I pulled into a lay-by and climbed into my Klim waterproof gear. Very much easier than my previous overall. Result. Everything is working well. The GPS got me to Waitrose Sheffield where by trudging through the isles in my noisy rain gear, I stocked up for dinner and breakfast – though forgot noodles. After that, the short ride up to this campsite in the lovely moors just took off. The road was amazing and the bike was so easy and confidence inspiring with sheep all over the road. And on this site it is so easy to move around and park on slopey gravel. There is a huge difference between the Beamer and this. The are on opposite sides of a barrier.

My tent is up and crowded with my stuff. My riding gear especially and other necessaries takes up half of the floor space – and, without metal panniers, I don’t have anything to sit on any more. This is possible but alternating between kneeling and crouching and getting up with stiff toes is not fantastic and does not make for relaxation – so maybe some thinking needs to happen here for future trips in a tent. The weather is cloudy and cool but fine. We also have a few dozen (actually many dozens of) youths doing a Duke of Edinburgh event.

Tomorrow I will have my first chance to really try the KT in some lovely roads. Here’s the track as far as Sheffield. I’m not sure what happened to the last bit. Video highlights to come…

A second staycation on the bike (2021)

There’s something about these trips at home that fail to ignite the flame of real excitement – the excitement of boarding the overnight ferry, of rolling off riding on another side of the road, of not saying much because you can’t speak the language, and usually, sunnier weather. But we are where we are and for this trip I have a new motorcycle, after a couple of years of wanting something less likely to land me in it when stuck or on an incline.

But its been hard to give full attention to preparing for the trip. I booked three campsites back in April – one in Derbyshire, one in Yorkshire, and the final in Cumbria ( I think) not far from Hadrian’s Wall. But over the last week I’ve been struggling with moving all my websites from the imminently closing Webfaction to another hosting company (I’ve never had to encounter A records before) as well as getting more and more frustrated with my insurer Carole Nash who have taken payment for a policy I cancelled – on my old bike – despite assurances that they would not. So these have been distractions. Also, with my bike now stored away from home, packing has been complicated. I have been scrabbling to kit out the bike for travel. I’ve installed a new GPS and recently have a new (small) tank bag from Mosko Moto but have to stuff my luggage into a rolltop bag strapped to the rear rack. I don’t even have a map holder for the tank bag (its on order along with a large rackless luggage kit) so have decided not to take any paper maps for the first time.

My sheepskin lives again
Even more minimal packing
Even fewer clothes

New stuff to try out – apart from the bike – drip feed coffee filter I saw on tshansen’s channel about camping with his KTM 790 Adv…

…and the less exciting proper footprint/groundsheet for my new-last-year tent. But last year the groundsheet I had was too big, my Thermarest roll was too long, and there was one too few tent pegs. This year these should go smoothly. I also have an adapter to try to recharge some of my electronics via a shaving point adapter…

What could possibly go wrong?

Yikes, I’ve moved host

In quite a traumatic change, Webfaction, my trusty web hosting company that I’ve used for the last 11 years are closing and told me that they weren’t able to migrate my 9 websites and 2 WordPress blogs so I am having to do this myself. I’ve moved to London based Tsohost. Yesterday. Everyone praises their support – which is just as well because I don’t remember setting up hosting being this difficult in 2010. They have been extremely helpful but so far I have just reestablished this blog but despite backing up or rather exporting ‘everything’ and importing, I’ve lost all of my images. I will see if I can retrieve them. Of course the old site is now off line.

New bike – not quite new era

I had wanted to achieve a major life synchronisation, the details of which I won’t go into now, save to say it might have involved a relocation, the building of a new, proper workshop and giving up working for a living. The other ingredient was buying a new, lighter motorcycle than the BMWs that I have owned and ridden on a range of journeys for the last 12 years. Once I decided to decouple, or rather syncopate these life events, I found the new bike and bought one pretty quickly. The relocation and the proper workshop will have to wait.

I spent probably nearly a year deciding on a small ‘dual sport’ light-weight off-road based bike and settled on the light and powerful KTM 690 Enduro. I’d sat on one at a bike show in Birmingham (the last one before lockdown). I found it tall but I was willing to take on the challenge and embark on the many mods to get it adventure ready. The bike has a fan base, many in Australia and the United States, and a huge amount of modifications from more comfy seats to larger fuel tanks are out there just waiting to be bought. But one video from Bulgarian travelling moto Vlogger Pavlin of the 690 and his uncompromising verdict that this was no way an adventure, or travel bike, suddenly made me realise this would be a mistake to trade in my capable Beamer for such a little thumping number, even though it had proved itself capable of making it from London to Sydney. Enter the bigger but not too much bigger , a mid sized twin cylinder bike. I also sat on this in Birmingham in 2019 and remember how comfortable and comforting it felt after perching on the high enduro bikes that I had been interested in.

I do have rather a lump in the throat for my BMW years and the familiar feeling of the comfortable seat and view over the instruments, the clever way the GPS integrates into the bike’s brain…

Here is my new KTM, in Cambridge, just back from buying it :

and outside the house here in London where I will work on it for a week or so before heading back:

I’ve only ridden it twice. The first time was the lovely route from Ipswich where I bought it, through Suffolk, Long Melford and Clare to Cambridge which was great fun. The second was from Cambridge to London to do some work on it – which was OK, though the approach to London is not that enjoyable and I somehow lost the A10 without a GPS. It is a very different ride to the BMW, much more involving, noisier. Its lighter weight (its meant to be about 190kgs compared with around 250kgs of the R1200GS) puts it the other side of a border between hefty and almost unmanageable to easy to move around, to lean up against a wall and to get on and off with the sidestand up – result.

Priorities for travelling – and 6 nights under canvas in the north of England are a few weeks away – are installing a GPS and some kind of luggage. I have a new Garmin Zumo XT (Another adventure in itself is trying to unscrew the oil filler cap the design of which, as someone in a forum described it, must have been an ‘oh shit’ moment for the KTM designers. You can’t unscrew it more than half a turn because it bumps against the side of the low slung fuel tanks. So you have to take off some side panels and loosen the bolts that hold the tank and heave it upwards while unscrewing – then saw off the corners of the filler cap before reinstalling. I’ve taken off more bits in 3 weeks than I did in 6 years of owning the BMW.

Luggage is not so easy. Mosko Moto have run out of almost everything so I will improvise for my first trip.