Everywhere Virtually

I was all set to ride back to Austria and because of the fact i was bringing some things back for M the loading didn’t and couldn’t take place until the day of departure. There was not enough room in my folks garage to man handle a heavy bike. Well perhaps not really heavy but certainly with bulky protrusions.

Eventually I was ready for the off.

My first port of call was Hertfordshire and I was hopelessly behind schedule. heavy traffic and an indicator fault, followed by a luggage problem slowed me up each time. Eventually I reached Weston at midday. Not good. “I should be on a ferry now” I thought.
Still it is always worth a detour to see and catch up with friends I say.

After I left Simon and traveled through some more of Hertfordshire things became a little nasty…

Time was ticking by and I was mindful I should really get past London before Rush Hour. All was well until I hit some major traffic near the Dartford bridge. Never a problem for a bike but it slowed me down nonetheless. I reached Dover and amended my ticket for the 20:30 crossing. I returned to the bike to find two women keen to have a sit on it. They asked in French and I said “Bien sur”. Then a chap in a car beside the bike called out to me and asked if I wanted some cider from a plastic cup. I said sure.

It transpires one of the ladies was his Argentinian wife with her friend who’s origins were originally from the Basque country. He was originally from the North East in the UK and lived in the Picardie region of France and was visiting England on a day trip. We talked of travel, work and life and it was a good exchange. One of those many moments on the road where you realise people are essentially good in the main.

Dover Castle

I passed through customs and passport control with the minimum of fuss. For some reason customs seem less of a hassle at Dover port compared to the channel tunnel where it is verging on the Orwellian. As I rode onto the boat I met the only other biker on the ship. Gary from the Leeds area on his R1200 GSA. I told him I was a GS’er on pause and that I was under cover on a CB500. Turns out he was the president of the Honda Pan European club and had recently got the GS so was not aware of UKGSer and all of the goings on of that forum.

I chatted with Gary on the 2 hour crossing and time went quickly. Of course by UK time it was 22:30 and because we were in a new time zone it was actually 23:30. Both of us had planned to ride off into the night but that was when it was sunny and by now we had lost our resolve it would be harder to spot hazards and find somewhere in the small hours so we went halves on a Formula 1 Motel.

There are lots of these places or similar. They are very basic. ETAP hotels have a toilet and sink attached to the room but the formula 1 motels have shared toilets down the hallway. They usually come with a double bed and a single bunk bed. I opted for the single bunk as I’m young and athletic. Hah! After getting past all the gay jokes and “those are not pillows” banter that straight blokes have to do when sharing a room we crashed out. I was pretty tired as I had not slept the previous night and had covered 300 meandering miles on this day.