Entente Cordiale - April 18th 2004
A group of French BMW owners from Europ' Touring in Arras came to England for a day trip and Claire and I offered to meet them and act as tour leaders on a trip around Kent and East Sussex.
I planned quite a long route that would take in some scenic roads, a trip on the Kent & East Sussex Railway and then lunch.
After a very warm and sunny spring week, Sunday dawned to almost torrential rain! The short run to Dover was against gale force winds and it rained mostly all day. First hassle was an accident on the exit to the Dover Docks that had traffic held back through Customs to Immigration. Then when they finally arrived half an hour later we wouldn't have made the Tenterden section in time for the train.
We adjourned to the Little Chef at Seabrook to re-group and decide what to do. It was still raining quite hard and so after a short break we togged up and set off.
We met Lol at Tenterden but had missed the train we had hoped to get and the next one was a diesel and didn't go all the way to Bodiam.
As we couldn't go on the train we decided to have a scenic ride to the White Dog at Ewhurst, where Claire had booked us the dining room. As we had slightly more people than originally planned we had to overspill into the main restaurant. Lol kindly sat with a group of the French participants out there and Claire and I hosted the dining room "experience". Everyone was pleased with the meal (Egon Ronay was right!) and an amazingly large number chose roast lamb.
It was still raining when we left the pub for the short ride to Bodiam Castle.
As we didn't want to pay to park the bikes we parked up outside the pub across the road and walked in. If we had been there any time, a quid wasn't too bad, but we had about 20 minutes to walk around the moat and take a photo or two and then set off to Rye and back to Dover.
As it was I led them all to Rye where we had a walk round and then back up the Brenzett bypass to Ashford and there I put them on the M20 southwards!
Many thanks to Lol (650GS Dakar) from the GS Club/UKGSer for coming along and making the English side of the Entente to three!
