On the Road Again!

With it being Easter Sunday we had been unable to secure a day trip with Eurotunnel. We could have had a short stay trip for £94.50. Instead we decided to go with P&O for £34.50.  So to make it to Dover for the 8.25am meant getting up early. It's Sunday after all. So when the alarm went at 5.55am it was a struggle. I needed to be at Dover at least 60 minutes before sailing.   So I was away by 6.25am. The V-Strom starting first prod and we were away. It was foggy on the M20 and A20 but luckily the holdups over the holiday weekend had mostly gone. Getting through French passport controls took around 30 minutes. It would have helped had Dover Port have had some staff on duty to marshal the queues. It was chaos. I met up with fellow travellers in Team Meldrews' members, Phil on his R1250RT and my brother Neill on his K16. We were loaded quite quick, and first on. We retired to the lounge for the 90 minutes crossing. It was foggy until a couple of miles off the French coas...

Hurrah!  I am not Billy No-mates for this trip.  I added it to the Meldrews' and the Old-SOCS Facebook pages to see if there was any interest. Canadian Memorial @ Vimy Ridge Old mate Phil, who came with me to Czech last year, has signed up to come along and booked his tickets for the same boat as me and also booked himself into a B&B he used last year to save the long ride back to Cheltenham! I have had a few knock-backs with places to have lunch replying to say they won't accept groups as it is  Pâques - Easter. We are hardly a group!  Unless in France TWO is a group!  At this rate it looks as though we will indeed be eating at the McDonalds' by Lens football stadium! So any more?

This year the Vimy Memorial is on Easter Sunday and that might be a problem for many riders. I have booked the P&O ferry to go out at 0825 from Dover returning around ten hours later. I have shared this with my club mates in the Meldrews' MCC. Whether anyone will join me is doubtful. It's Easter after all. The offer is there. https://vimyfoundation.ca/learn/vimy-ridge For previous Vimy Memorial Trips please click on the links at the bottom of the article.

Photo courtesy of the Canadian Veterans website I have had confirmation that the commemoration will take place on April 9th as usual. This year it is 105 years since the Canadian troops assaulted the ridge and captured it. So unless Covid restrictions come into play the trip is on. https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/memorials/vim y More about the battle can be found on a variety of sources but Wikipedia seeks to have it covered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vimy_Ridge

Today should have been the 104th Anniversary Memorial at the monument at Vimy Ridge.  Public attendance wasn't allowed during the pandemic and the lock down in France. Instead there was a small socially distanced memorial.  I will look to see if I can find any footage. Vimy 100 - April 9th 2017 https://www.facebook.com/CarriereWellington/videos/1107579159761139/ A little historic footage from 1917 Hopefully Covid will be defeated by next year and we can once again go to Vimy to show our respects.  As usual. It will be April 9th.

It looks as though the memorial at Vimy on April 9th 2021 will fall victim to the pandemic again.  It was cancelled for the same reason last year.  It's a bugger as I was looking forward to this again. I suppose we should look forward to 2022 when hopefully we can all meet again under the towers of the monument and pay our respects to the Canadian troops that took the Ridge in 1917. RIP. Heroes one and all. Previous Vimy trips can be viewed here:   https://rocket3man.blogspot.com/search?q=vimy  or  https://invictamoto.blogspot.com/search/label/Vimy%20Ridge

I am going to have a quick solo day trip to Vimy Ridge for the Centenary of the Battle of Arras. All along the front the allies attacked entenched German positions on the high ground around Arras. Despite terrible losses the Canadian assault on Vimy Ridge was a success. Many Canadians call this the battle that created their nation. A hundred years later we gather to pay our respects for the thousands of young men that came so far from home to fight and for many of them there is a corner of France forever theirs. Oh Canada. UPDATE: 10th April 2017 http://rocket3man.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/vimy-100-report.html  

The original plan for Easter was to spend the day in Belgium with the GS Club UK at the GS weekend at Kasterlee. As it was only a week after coming back from the US, I had to cancel those plans. But the bike needed a 20000km service before the Czech Trip... and so I decided to see about a service in France and use the ferry ticket for that instead. I searched on the BMW France site for a dealership in the north of France. Purely to see if it was cheaper than in the UK. In the end I booked in to Europ' Touring in Arras. In France both 6000 miles and 12000 miles services are about 40% cheaper than the UK. Even with the cost of a cheap crossing over or under the channel it would be cheaper. And as I was less than happy at the standard of the service done at SPC at 6000 miles, plus the place was in the middle of nowhere and had no loan bike on offer (to me at least!) despite buying the GS from them! SO, a dealership in a town had to be better. Patrice, the owner, lent us a Scarver 650 ...