¡InvictaMoto!

With all the planning for the Awaycation in the Summer all sorted, It's just a matter of getting the van from storage and a little cleaning, then going on the trip. It seems that the sealant that Elddis use on the body is especially sticky and gets dirty really quickly.  So, we need to give it the once over before we set off in about 11 days. It seems quite easy to clean but there is so much of it. We took it to the jet wash in Seabrook before our last little break to Mersea Island, and got the front cleaned.  The bulge over the front cab was particularly horrible and I have no idea where the yellow and brown stains came from! So back to the subject in hand. The trip to Germany looks to be still at the top of my pile, Although, I like the idea of some Autumn sun.  Wil l we get that in September in Germany?  So another idea is to head to Spain again. maybe this time taking us through the north and making the most of the weather as long as...

 And end of season game and 5-0 to the Arsenal. https://www.arsenal.com/fixture/arsenal/2023-May-28/arsenal-5-0-wolves-match-report

With the weather bad for a long time I barely got out on the bikes in April and so didn't bother sending the mileages for the month.   I have done a few rides out in May so far and tomorrow should be once again riding up to London for the Arsenal game. I did a run up to Canterbury to have the V-Strom serviced but that was only about 45 miles return. Currently 74th in the table. It seems that there are many members from previous years not doing it this year. Full table.

With a few strikes on the railways and possible engineering works I decided to ride Vera up to London for the Arsenal match against Brighton and Hove Albion. The best part of the day was the ride home!  Arsenal decided that maybe with only three games left in the season, and this being the third from last, that maybe the beach beckoned and they would go through the motions.  To say losing 0-3 at home was a disgrace is an understatement! Anyway, enough of that. The ride up went well enough. Most of the road works on the northbound M20 had been dispensed with except for a small bit at east end where the movable barrier is being parked in time for the bank holiday this weekend!   There was an accident or something before the Blackwall Tunnel and we had to go through under the Thames at walking pace. After that Hackey was awful. The smell of marijuana in the air overwhelmed the smell od fumes from the buses and cars..... Not that the anti-motorised transport Mayor, Sadiq Khan, would know a...

May 21st and the third Sunday in the month - so it must be Meldrews' Sunday again. As a non-club group of motorcyclists we tend to meet at a variety of places across Kent on the 3rd Sunday. There are other meets during the month, but this is the main one. Or rather was. Despite membership of around 35 on the Facebook group, we are lucky to see more than 6 and most usually it is me and Cal on our own. This month we decided to have breakfast in the NAAFI Cafe at the RAF Museum at Manston in Kent.  There are actually two museums, this one, and the Spitfire and Hurricane Museum nearby. Cal and I were honored by the presence of my brother neill in his K16 BMW.  I was on the V-Strom and Cal in his Honda Forza 350 scooter. On the way up I had set the Yamaha My Ride app to record my journey. As usual it failed to work. If I didn't have loads of rides recorded I would be deleting it. After breakfast we went across to look at the new installation in the Spitfire & Hurricane Museum,...

Part 1 An early morning as Reggie needed to have his ablutions... I had a lie in for a few minutes and Claire took him out. He was a little out of sorts but still ate his breakfast. After breakfast we had a few false starts on our walk. The idea was to check out the dog walk. Firstly we forgot a poo bag. Then treats for Reggie. Both sorted. We still forgot his water bowl... In then we walked on the beach to West Mersea. Past hundreds of beach huts at the neighbouring Park Dean Park and then the privately owned ones that line the coast. Sometimes on the incline they are four deep! The highest number I saw was 602 and there were quite a few more that we didn't walk past .. We decided to have a coffee. The Two Sugars Café was cash only. I had none. 😮 Claire hadn't brought her purse. 😲 We checked Google Maps to see where the nearest supermarket was and set off. It was mostly on road but not much traffic. It was a Co-op. Cash machine raided and I bought a meal deal. As it was bare...

I got back from the greyhound rescue a little earlier than usual and had my breakfast. Even though we are only away two nights, there is still quite a lot to pack in the van. Clothes of course. All the bedding. We tend to favour sleeping bags and have one each. These are more comfortable when the outside temperatures are low.  Of course, we need stuff for Reggie. His bed. His food and essentials, his noo-noo and some toys. To calm him he has a licky mat with peanut 🥜 butter. So it was1229 when I pulled backwards off the drive. This manoeuvre do much easier with the rear camera. Molly is a little longer than Suki at 7.02 metres. We made good progress upto Dartford. The traffic for the tunnels under the River Thames was quite heavy and we joined the queues before the A2 junction.  With everyone swapping lanes and almost three lanes of nose to nose HGV's it left only only lane for private vehicles, cars and us! Eventually after 25 minutes we were free and in the right-hand tunnel. We...

With a few weeks to go before we go away to France on the Awaycation, it seemed like a good idea to get the away for a few days as a shakedown! So I was looking at another short trip. I looked at some Caravan Club sites and there were none that really pushed any buttons.  We like to go midweek where the chances of the sites being overrun with kids is limited.  The Caravan Club doesn't have any Adult-Only sites. I moved my search to certificated locations. There were a few but given the uncertainty of UK weather it was hard to find any that have hardstanding.  We could have returned to one of the ones we did last month, but they were nice, but are in the middle of nowhere.  One has a pub nearby that would have been a good dog-walk with a cheeky pint at the end of it, but the pub closed, possibly due to the pandemic, and has never re-opened.   So where to? Mersea Island? I had a look at Fen Farm again. We did that in March (I think) and it was good but grass...

This trip hasn't been looked at since Christmas Day 2022. So I am having another look to see what we can do on this trip. The options are to stay once again in France or to go east and look at Germany and maybe Austria? The last blog was about going to Germany and maybe as far as Fussen and Neuschwanstein Castle. I have read a few reviews of the parking near the Castle and they aren't all that good. When I was there last June with my bike mates, the Castle had been sold out for ages to the many coach parties. Claire and I did part of the Romantic Road already and the bike lads and I did a bit of it last year on the way home. So where to go? This trip we will be on the P&O Ferry to Calais and arriving at around 12.25pm. We will of course have to do a shop and so we have about five hours or so to the first stop of the trip. I will be checking the ACSI site to see what there is available around that time and distance. Maybe limit the total distance to the Mosel and Rhein? Even...

In my last post I mentioned I had got the return date wrong.  It was only one day! Of course it would have meant turning up at Eurotunnel and them charging us an arm and a leg to change the booking on the hoof.  I am still smarting at the cost of the last time when we came back in the snow in December. It had to be done then as we may have got stuck in France! Last time it was well out of season and we only booked a few places and used the Camping-Car Park sites more than actual campsites.  This time I have opted to book ahead. It's June and apart from the first few nights on the way down to St Etienne, I have booked two nights at a time at a variety of places. Even though we live near the sea in Kent, We rarely have a trip that there isn't at least one day where we can sea the ocean or even paddle in it.  This time no different. A couple of nights in the Camargue  near to the Mediterranean and then we turn northwards and inland. France is a relatively large country compared to...

Day 2 We needed to be ready quite quickly so that we could get into Salisbury and St Osmund's Church in Exeter Street for about 1130am.  The funeral was going to start at Noon. We were early and I decided that I'd do a fly-past of the church and go around the block so that I was on that side of the road for Claire to exit. In the end we got lucky and one of the free on-street parking spaces was big enough for me to park in. I did a few back and forths to get the left tyres against the kerb. Luckily they are so tall (not low profile!). The sign said free for two hours and no return for four hours. I took a photo just in case a jobsworth parking attendant came along.  Claire got out about 1135 and set off for the church that was about 100 metres away on the right.  I sat in the van. Windows open, Right mirror tucked in. I didn't want to leave the van there as we were only just into the marked space.  In fact the wheels were but the superstructure do...

It's day 3 of this trip and we have been across the county border from Dorset into Wiltshire. With the Salisbury site not open for check-in until 1pm we had some time to kill.  Firstly I planned to head up from the coast and do a recce where the church is for tomorrow's funeral, and check out some parking.  The former easy. There is no street parking for non-residents on the street near the church.  It's almost opposite Salisbury Cathedral. As an aside the Cathedral was allegedly the reason why two KGB operatives came to Salisbury...... Not to spread a chemical weapon around to kill a Russian dissident. How lucky they were not to have arrived in  a campervan over 2.1m as they would have found Salisbury to be pretty unfriendly for motorhomes. Even the park and rides have height barriers!!! Maybe they make money from all the coach parties... No wait... One coach park... Anyway we checked out one parking. It's £8 a day. No shorter periods available. Within walking distance...

Had a lie in this morning. We were always going to have a lazy day of reading and dog walking. As it was sunny we got the chairs and new table out. We even gave the wind out awning a few minutes air time before the snapping of the wind had us rewind it. So not much to report. We had a longer walk over the fields to get a better view of Chesil Beach. The Fleet Lagoon was full. With the tide in it saved us walking along the shoreline ankle deep in mud.  So apart from that we did very little. Our 175 on pitch The last one is chicken pie cooked in the RidgeMonkey.