InvictaMoto's On The Road Again!

So the months and months and months of campaigning all across Europe by motorcyclists with the support from the national Governments seems to have had an effect. At last an EU body has taken some notice. A victory for MAG in the UK. Click here to read the full story

Some of the artwork inside the station at St Pancras. The clouds overhang the Eurostar part of the station; this is in the original Victorian building.    ‘Cloud : Meteoros’, by Lucy Orta  The other is a statue of the poet John Betjeman, a champion of the railways and who wrote quite a lot of rail related poetry. John Betjeman More info...   

It had to be done. Too fat to get into my biking gear apart from my old Hood Jeans and my Frank Thomas jacket. Slimming World.  "Like a sack of potatoes" as my Gran used to say, and I wasn't even the portly geezer I am now! Claire has been doing it for a while and so many of the evening meals were cooked with SW's focus in mind; cut out fat. But it is in the day that I can easily fail. The fatal £1.99 burger and fries vouchers for McDonalds's, trips to the café a couple of times a month for "All Day Breakfast No5" with toast and milky coffee, sandwiches from Harry's on Upper Street, plus the bags of crisps and chocolate that so very easily goes in the pie-hole. Oh, and not to mention the occasional visits to Manze's and Clark's pie and mash shops and Piebury Corner. In comes the new regime. In fact it isn't as odorous as I had imagined. It was hard at first. In our office there is always food. Like many places across the gl...

Actually fewer ducks. At the weekend the magpies managed to kill five of the original seven ducklings leaving just the two I managed to capture here. Once they get a bit older they'll want to get out of the water more often and will have to be netted and taken away.

The confirmation of the excursions came today. We leave Dover on the Wednesday and cruise up the North Sea until on the Friday we arrive in Stavanger early morning and we have a half day visit to the Flor & Fjaere Gardens. The gardens are on an island so it will mean a boat trip. http://florogfjare.no/english On Saturday we are in Jondal. Here the trip is up the Folgefonna Glacier. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folgefonna Both trips are in the morning leaving us to see the towns and surroundings in the afternoon before the boat sails again. The rest of the visits will be to Olden and Bergen where we can get into town for a look around and relax a bit. As it will be June, it looks as though the sun won't be setting that far north.  Let's hope the windows have decent curtains!

Whilst on a cycle ride along the canal we had a little ride down by the Port Lympne animal park and we got lucky today, the giraffes we down by the southern boundary. Giraffe on the Roughs Can't be many areas with sheep, cattle and giraffes. Further along the path back towards home Lympne Castle and below it the remains of the Roman town that was built around AD290. It's sometimes known at Stutfall Castle. Stutfall Castle I took a picture of the information board that shows the layout of the area. The Sanyo CG10 that I have been using is not a bad piece of kit and although it has a pistol grip it is still a little strange to get used to. Here's a video I took of the giraffes:

I wasn't going to go and then decided as we were going out in the car maybe I could drop in and have a look at the Ducati Road Show at Laguna Performance in Ashford.   As we arrived one of the rides set off leavng two Diavel Stradas behind. I had a sit on one and Claire hopped on the back. Diavel Stradas Fits like a glove It fitted like a glove. But  a 17 litre tank is simply too small, but it is one hell of a beast. Impractical and also £15000!!!   I do like the Multistrada though and it is a less impressive £12.5k!!  

Mother Nature can be cruel sometimes.  Five of the seven ducklings have been killed by magpies.  The mother and the remaining two are being looked after.    

Not long now - http://devallcruising.blogspot.co.uk/

Got home and the tickets were there. It all seems to be happening quickly now.   What next?  A packing check. At least we can take two big cases and not have to worry about the weight limits like we do everytime we even think about flying!   There are a few other things that need to be bought for the trip. Like a shirt or three.   Two weeks and a bit.....

Mum and babies Not a case of minding your head but the feathered sort! This little family of mallards have taken up residence in the brick fishpond in the garden of where I work. It's not that it is that close to a river or lake and the Regents Canal is maybe a mile away. The female and her consort were visitors earlier in the year and we suppose they were checking out the neighbourhood. The water is about two feet deep and the brick sides are sheer and a good eighteen inches above the high water level. So they should be safe from rats and foxes. Only human predators and the heron might prove to be a problem. She nested in one of the large pots housing some shrubbery. All seven (OUCH!) eggs hatched and they have emerged into the pond. Adam the premises manager has built a floating duck house - the green tarp keeps the weather out, plus a floating platform for the ducklings to rest on. They can't bob about in the water all the time. Today the dr...

Have been in touch with a few travel agencies about flights to Florida for this trip. It's a little under a year before we go and all the main agencies still don't have fares to Miami on their websites. Might pop into Thomas Cook and see what they have on their books whilst we are in town tomorrow.  Currently, on Virgin, they have April fares listed at about £690 each, and one agency has given us an approximate price of £790!  Will have to wait and see. Any advice appreciated.

Finally it looks like the Oxtars have become unreliable in damp and drizzly weather. The other day they leaked. Horror!   Wet Sock  Okay it might not look much, but it is the beginning of the end for them! They've done okay. I bought them at Sondel Sport on 22nd September 1999 and they have lasted well. It was the evening that Arsenal played AIK Solna in the Champion's League at Wembley. I remember it well as it was the first game Claire came with me. We had free tickets courtesy of one of the schools I visited back then.

Okay so we haven't won a trophy for eight years. Not since we embarrassingly beat Manchester United on penalties in the 2005 FA Cup Final.  Embarrassing as they had all game and we robbed them. Shame. So this year after another bad start we had ten games left, three points for a win and we were seven points adrift of our North London rivals, the almost laughingly named Tottenham Hotspur. The race was on to see who could realistically finish 4th, and qualify for the lucrative Champions League. On Sunday, all the Premier League games were being played at the same time to avoid any cheating! We went into the game one point up after a fantastic run that meant we had overhauled them. All we had to do was match their result and we would win the 4th place..... We scored at Newcastle and led 1-0 before they scored and won 1-0.... Status quo restored.   They haven't finished ahead of us since about 1986. So we won this prestigious cup..... Pre...

The list of optional excursions arrived and after blanching at the cost and complexity of them we opted for two that we can afford and that Claire can realistically complete without too much of a problem.   One up a glacier and another river trip to a garden on an island. More later.

Monday was the first time I have ridden to work this year. Such has been the longer than usual winter we have experienced in the UK, that my riding has been heavily curtailed. Despite having a train season ticket until June 6th, I needed to get the bike to Neil Harrison, aka Steptoe, for its annual service. It also needed the alternator belt replacing.  BMW have service intervals of 6000 and 12000 miles and recently as the bike has got older I have dropped the ones at 6k. For a first ride I was a bit uncomfortable. This may be due to my Hood Kevlar lined jeans being a little baggy under my arse after the best part of 10lbs lost on a Slimming World programme. Although it might be that I have ridden 75 miles nonstop since last year! It may also be something to do with having to wear Held waterproof over trousers as it was drizzling all the way to London. After a fine dry weekend Monday was not very pleasant. Luckily, traffic wasn't too bad and I was at work prett...