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.

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?