After ten years of uneventful bicycling in London, I have recently had a wheel and now a saddle stolen from my old racing bike. The latter has proved terminal as part of the seat post went too leaving my incomplete post siezed in the frame (its been there for years) and the bike shop telling me what I knew already but which I had been ignoring that my frame is broken in another place. The bike is beyond repair so its time to salvage the parts that I can and look for a new bike. Given my nomadic life I’ve decided to bite the bullet and order a folding bike from here.
I pick it up in 4 weeks [unfortunately my new date for the build is the week starting 14th December – that’s disappointing] while they build exactly what I want at the factory in Brentford.
It should look like this:
He went out for a few months and came back 14 years later
BBC Radio have a series of short conversations that they call The Listening Project. The key is something powerful in a short conversation often between family members though sometimes friends. Loss and love are frequent themes. I noticed this one:
Itchy Feet – Ian and Judith
last week. Its a slightly strained conversation between what you’d have to call an elderly couple – from Yorkshire. The introduction is something like: he went off travelling on his Honda motorcycle for a four month trip and returned to his wife 14 years later (can it really be true?). Now he is planning his next trip. He’s 70. He talks about getting his visas for Russia and Mongolia, sounding like he is following in many overland motorcyclists’ wheel tracks. ‘I’m fit as a butcher’s dog’, he says, ‘when my hip gets mended’. ‘I’ll tell you, I’ve spent more time in a tent than t’Indians’.
Complete Spain routes
I’m definitely back at work now, but in spare moments remembering:
The final journey home: Portsmouth to Cambridge via the ill-fated M25
Just for completeness, here are the last stages of the journey home, to be fleshed out later:
I slept poorly on the boat,
in fact I slept badly for the whole trip! Gathering down on the very lowest deck as the boat came in to Portsmouth was a nice opportunity to chat to the others with bikes.
They were a pleasantly friendly and interesting group which restored my positive feelings towards bikers. There were at least 4 other 1200gs bikes there including the new water cooled model which its owner was very pleased with though the electric suspension turfed him off the bike when his pillion got off for the first time, he said. We made it up the very steep ramp and then I sped out of the port and up onto the motorway and up the A3 to the M25 at a really good pace. The bike’s fuel gauge has not been its strongest feature and it is on its third one since I’ve owned it. Telling me I had 66 miles left, then 68 then 72 miles should have made me stop for petrol but I thought I could make the next stop apparently 25 miles away. But of course I ground to a halt by the exit to the M40 and had to be rescued and re-fuelled by the RAC – the first time I have called them out.
I also learnt that 40 minutes of leaving the ignition on to keep the hazard lights flashing drains the battery to a point where it needs an on-hand RAC person’s charger to get the engine going.
When riding in the rain in Spain, water leaked into the tiny hole in the GPS screen (caused by me dropping it a couple of years back). So the route only starts from after I filled up with petrol near Uxbridge and is inaccurate.
Coming home at EveryTrail
Eventually, after stopping for something to eat at South Mimms on the A1 – which seems more like a business meeting centre than a motorway service station, I got home by 4pm.
I have to say I was exhausted – and still am. But It was a successful trip and most of the lessons I learnt from my last trip to Sweden I was able to put in to practice.
From Laredo to Bilbao Port in the rain
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.