The British Isles, km 110620 to 118350

- 110620 km on the bike

I have been so many times at the Internet "Cafe de France" in Decazeville, that I am treated as a local - at least as far as that is ever possible for someone who wasn't born and bred here.
I have parked my bike on the sidewalk, to save the proper parking lots for the cars. The "cafetier" tells me to move it to a legal spot - apparently the local police has changed their mind and they won't tolerate any vehicles parked on the sidewalk any more. Probably a new "chef de police", fresh from the academy. I leave it to the local bikers to get the new broom now heading the coppers house-trained. I am certain that if I'd return in a few weeks all would be back to normal, i. e. the usual French chaos will have been restored.
I plug my notebook into the network and immediately receive a notification from Mark Shuttleworth, informing me that a new version of my Linux operating system has become available. I check out the size of the upgrade; 630 MB. Well, the access speed of the Internet cafe is good and I will have that downloaded in just over an hour. That gives me plenty of time to sample today's "plat de jour", which is fried turkey with beans and potatoes.
After that excellent lunch I call Nouria, to let her and Nick know that this certain unemployed, homeless gipsy is squatting on their property again.
Then I call The Healer of Bikes and tell him about my encounter with Spanish "mechanics" and my need to get the bike fixed. He suggests that he will order a new alternator, just in case. If the old one can be fixed, then he can return it to Triumph free of charge. We agree on next Tuesday as a suitable day for him to fix my bike and repair all the damage done to Kitty by those muppets in Oviedo.
This also means that I can stay at the barn until next Sunday - four splendid days of just doing nothing, improving my tan and enjoying sundowners with a pipe.
I charge my laptop with a few good books from my online-library of currently roughly 19000 titles - I shall have plenty of time for reading during the next few days. Then I fill my panniers with enough foodstuff to last me a few days at the local Géant superstore - the dirtiest supermarket in all of France, but it is the only one open during lunchtime for many miles around.
By 3 pm I am back at the barn. Summer has finally arrived here, the afternoon temperature is about 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The weather also saves on the need for washing - as all I am wearing are short pants, nothing else.

- 110680 km on the bike

The next days I do almost the same schedule every day; waking up around 8 or 9 am, because the caravan is warming up in the morning sun. After a quick wash I retreat to the barn's first floor. There the two-feet thick stone walls keep the heat at bay, though outside it is around 90° F. every afternoon.
I read a book, smoke a pipe and just enjoy doing nothing at all. On Thursday Nick joins me, having travelled from Clermont in his newly acquired Mini-Cooper (the proper one, not that BMW clone).
That red car parked under a tree at the barn has not been missed by the neighbours. Nick's mobile rings - we are invited for coffee and cakes by the people living on the opposite side of the valley.
We have a nice meeting with the friendly local people. Nick has to leave on Friday morning again, this was just a quick visit.
The weather is still fine, but the high pressure system is old and the hot air on the ground is slowly burning the inversion to bits - in other words, we are having big thunderstorms in the evenings.
I have been warned several times by the locals to watch out for snakes in the grass around the barn. But I love the feel of grass under bare feet far too much to bother with shoes around here.
But Nick's vivid description of last summers hailstorms bombarding the place with golfball-sized ice-cubes makes me move Kitty into the barn's ground floor - no hail can do any damage here.
The evening thunderstorms also bring a nice drop in temperature. I sit outside the caravan, just enjoying the wind and the rain dropping off my skin. Lots of lizards are living underneath the caravan. They got used to me by now, and as I am giving them a warning shout whenever I want to enter the caravan (they just love to warm themselves up on the concrete doorsteps of the guest caravan), it seems they by now have classified me as harmless.
One of these little buggers is so cocky, he even walks up my right leg while I am sitting on the doorstep with a pipe in the evening. It seems he likes lazing on my warm thigh, but he is obviously a dedicated non-smoker; once a whiff of my pipe-smoke reaches him, he races away for cover with incredible speed.
Hanging out at this lovely place day in and day out is fantastic. I haven't had to talk to anyone in days (except during Nick's brief visit), which I always find is a good way of cleansing one's mind.
But after four days of relaxing I am ready to tackle the road again. The batteries have been fully charged and the remaining distance to my Healer of Bikes is just about 800 kilometers - a distance I can easily cover on country roads in two days.

As usual it takes a while to get all my stuff together after several days at the barn. Taking the camping-kit along with me is out of the question - the big auxiliary battery at the rear end of the bike is using all the space normally used for the baggage roll with the camping stuff.
At 10.45 my wheels are rolling again. It is seven kilometers from the barn to the N122 - the road which I already know so well.
I stop at the Géant supermarket in Aurillac (a much cleaner and nicer one than in Decazeville) to fill up my tank. Of course the station is not open, because it is Sunday today. And fellow bikers who know France will know, that the 24 hours credit card service available at most of these petrol stations will work - with a French "Carte Bleue". Any foreign cards are routinely rejected by these machines. This means that a foreigner in France can get petrol on a Sunday only at those hand full of stations that are "manned" on Sundays.
But I know how one can bypass this predicament: I just wait two minutes until the next biker with local number plates pulls up at the pumps. A brief explanation of the problem and he accepts a 20-Euro banknote and just hands me the pump nozzle after he has filled his big Honda, and I fill that value into my tank on his "Carte Bleue".

At Massiac some guy with a Renault is just pulling out on the road in front of my bike, completely ignoring me. Kitty's tyres are screaming nearly as loud as my horn - sodded Sunday drivers! I see the bloke; he is old enough to have been around when Monsieur Renault built his very first car.
Half a mile further on a Mercedes with Paris number plates just slows down ahead of me and then comes to a complete standstill in the middle of the road. My horn wakes up the second geriatric emergency case within one mile. At that rate my batteries will die far too early simply because the horn has sucked up all their juice.
After a quick dash north on the A75 I turn eastwards onto the N89 south of Clermont towards Thiers and Roanne. The medieval town centre of Roanne is very attractive. One day I have to spent some time here to explore that town. I cross the Loire river via the old bridge on Rue Jean Jaurès right in the centre of the city.
The road climbs up again after Roanne through the easternmost section of the "Massif Central", in the Rhône-Alps region.
But then the broad valley of the Saône river opens before me; that valley is much broader than the Loire valley at Roanne. I am looking down on the Beaujolais region of France. For centuries the Beaujolais was a very remote region where people tended their own ways. But for the last few decades the quality of the local wines has spread far beyond this relatively small area. Beaujolais wines have become famous, and their reputation has brought considerable wealth to this fertile land.
The mountain I am bypassing beyond the small town of Beaujeu is called Mont Brouilly - a rather insignificant looking hill, but the grapes from its south-facing flank are worth a fortune for all wine lovers everywhere.
This is Burgundy, one of the prime wine producing regions in all of France. Aside from that it is an excellent country for motorbiking.
My fuel gage indicates that it is high time to find another place where I can get some petrol.
The next town ahead is Bourg-en-Bresse, about 30 miles north-east of Lyon. And because it is also getting late I decide to combine my requirement for petrol with the search for some decent digs - and a chance to charge my batteries.
I find an open petrol station, replenish my fuel, and then let Silent Sally guide me to the "Logis de Brou" hotel at the south-eastern end of the town. I explain my need for electricity at the reception desk, and the lady "patron" offers me the use of one of their lockable garages free of charge. By 5.30 pm Kitty is all sorted, in a cool garage and connected to the Burgundy power grid. The charger is just feeding 2.5 amp-hours, which means that I still have plenty of juice left in the batteries.
In spite of the late hour it is still sweltering hot and humid. I find myself a bar just a quarter mile away from the hotel and have a pastis and a cold beer, plus a chat with the locals. The thermometer outside still shows 29 degrees centigrade by 8 pm when I leave the place.
There is a restaurant nearby on Boulevard de Brou, "L'Authentique". The place offers all their food on three separate buffets; starters, main courses and desserts. It is unlikely that many tourists will venture into such a weird restaurant, but I read the impressive list of recommendations by various French culinary institutions in their window and I can also see that the place is full of local people.
My decision to have a hearty supper there proves to be a good idea; the food is excellent and the patron apparently likes my choice of food and wine - am I turning from a "gourmand" into a "gourmet" after all? The least I can say is that I lost at least a stone in weight since beginning this journey. So motorbiking is obviously a very healthy way to control your weight without a diet.

- 111200 km on the bike

It has rained a bit last night. The streets are still wet when I load Kitty next morning. But the rain has done nothing to keep the heat in check; it is already uncomfortably hot and sticky by the time I set out at 10 am in the morning.
The batteries are completely charged and my target for today is the little town of Rapperswil-Jona, just three miles away from the magician I call the Healer of Bikes. The road continues eastwards into the department of Ain, named after the river flowing from the north to the south through it before merging into "Le Rhône" east of Lyon.
After crossing the south-eastern fringes of the Jura mountains at Nantua I am well under way to reach Geneva in Switzerland. From there I just take the motorway A1 eastwards - Switzerland just isn't any good for motorbiking.

By 5 pm I reach the youth hostel in Jona and book myself in for two nights. They have a couple of school classes staying in the hostel, but as usual the senior visitors are given rooms in a different wing of the building. I end up in a four-bunk-room with a skinny Swiss doing a 12-day hiking trip along the "Jakobsweg", which is the Swiss translation for the very same pilgrimage route Christians take to Santiago de Compostela, which Guntram from Northern Germany was doing whom I met in Decazeville. The other two guys in there are a very seclusive Swiss chap from Basel working on the refurbishment of the Rapperswil ice-rink and a much more interesting chap named Roland, from Bautzen in the former East-Germany.
He is the same age than myself (i. e. he is a fairly old fart) and as such has lived more then half his life under the communist regime in East Germany. As I have been several times to that place prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain, you can imagine that we have an interesting exchange of the very different stories of our lives this evening.

- 111550 km on the bike

My three roommates all have to get up between 5.15 am and 6 am. I think it would be impolite to just turn around in my comfy bunk and snore away until noon, so I get up as well and sit in front of the hostel and enjoy the rare pleasure of a pipe before breakfast.
This day will be another scorcher, that much is obvious. Sitting at sunrise out here in the open is just about bearable.
They serve breakfast from 8 am onwards. 8 am is also the time Hans opens his workshop. I decide to leave before breakfast in order to be at the workshop as early as possible.
The difference between Spanish and Swiss mechanics becomes obvious within 5 minutes of me arriving there; all bikes parked over night inside the workshop have long been moved outside. Roman, the senior apprentice, is given by Hans the task to write down on a sheet of paper the exact details of all my technical problems. Next I am given a bike - a Triumph Trophy - free of charge for use as I see fit for the entire day, so that I can run my other errands.
And other errands I have. I jump on that Trophy and off I go to Hinwil to see the chaps at Motorama. These guys are pretty sharp when it comes to all those additional components like GPS, comms and other electronic additions a modern biker may have.
I tell them about Sally. Their workshop is extremely busy. I explain my situation (i. e. unemployed, homeless gipsy) and they agree to have their expert having a close look into my problems either this afternoon or tomorrow morning, depending on when Hans has Kitty restored to working order.
Next I take a ride to downtown Jona to the local offices of Kitty's insurance underwriters. I explain my situation (you've guessed it, homeless, unemployed etc.) and they take that very easy. They readily agree to continue our further communications via e-mail - and by 9.15 am I have achieved more success in my errands than I could ever have hoped to achieve in Spain in two weeks.
I return to the hostel and enjoy a hearty breakfast.
By 10.30 I am back at Hans' workshop; Kitty is already inside, and Hans shows me his diagnosis. The wiring coil of my alternator has shorted out and shows zero resistance against ground negative - which is another way of saying that the alternator is busted. For this diagnosis Hans required exactly the same tools than Pepe did in Oviedo. The difference is that Hans knows perfectly well how to use his tools, while Pepe is just a fitter who just presumed to know what he was doing.
Needless to say that Hans already has a new alternator, cover gasket and any other imaginable spare part that might be responsible for my problem ready at hand.

In less than two hours the new alternator is fitted, the wiring left in shambles by the Spaniards is sorted and re-done to Swiss standards, various other problems I was completely unaware of have been sorted out and even the worn out rubber gaiter on my gearshift lever has been replaced.
Hans shows me the voltmeter after he has replaced the alternator; the charging voltage is 14 volts. This is the proof to me that from now on all will be well. Hans tells me that mine is just the second Triumph he has ever seen with that problem. Mind you, if one considers that the average Swiss biker is doing in an entire season the mileage I am doing in a week I am not surprised.
Being that exceptionally meticulous mechanic that Hans is, he has of course kept that alternator from that Speed Triple he had to replace a long time ago; that coil just looks as burnt and wasted as the old one from Kitty.
I have been invited to a noontime barbecue at my former employer headquarters in Jona. It is nice to see a lot of familiar faces again, but I am eager to get my next problem sorted; Silent Sally, she has to be convinced to talk to me again.
By 2 pm I am back at the workshop - and miraculously all is done! The problem is fixed, the additional 62 amp-hour battery has been removed, the ripped-off bolts and the shoddy Spanish wiring have been brought up to Swiss standards and all is ready to go. That is unbelievable. These Swiss can put into an eight-hours day about as much work as those Spaniards can perform in a week.
The final bill for all the work comes to 700 Swiss Francs exactly - meaning that though the main part to be replaced (i. e. the alternator) did cost the same than the perfectly sound regulator replaced by those incompetent Spaniards, the overall charge for the entire repair is still much less than those 520 Euros I paid in Spain.
But the day is not yet finished; by 2.30 pm I am in Hinwil at the Motorama. As promised I am guided immediately to their workshop and their ultimate expert, named Dani, examines Kitty for what other damage those muppets in Oviedo may have done. It takes him just 15 minutes to determine that they have dealt my comms system power supply a deadly blow by connecting that dodgy charger to Kitty to prevent the alarm from going off every 30 seconds.
Though in the end Dani tries to fix the damage for the best part of an hour, they charge nothing for the labour.
I am given a new connector cable from the GPS unit to my helmet, its length perfectly fitting for my Tiger.
I return to the Jona youth hostel by 5 pm and install the new cable with the help of some cable ties and insulating tape I got myself from a local builder merchant market.
In the evening I am finally able to upload to "Talking Sally" the next bit of my voyage - a trip to the United Kingdom. However, I am interrupted by Roland - he is completely knackered. Originating from the cooler Saxony region in Germany and having to work today for 11 hours in conditions very much resembling a sauna, that working day has really done him in.
We have a few ice-cold beers on the shady terrace of the hostel and continue our chat from yesterday.

- 111600 km on the bike

I am doing my route planning this morning, as yesterday evening I had no time for it. When I plug in the USB device that uploads the maps into the memory storage card of my fairly ancient Garmin Street Pilot III system, my laptop informs me that there is a problem with that USB device; the unit is malfunctioning!
I am a very complacent man, ready to put up with anything that life may throw at me. But during the last two weeks I had more equipment failures than in the previous thirty years of biking all taken together. Luckily I am currently in a country where all such repairs can be carried out easily and efficiently. But here I am; having just travelled 2000 kilometers to let Hans do his magic and then to continue with my journey - just to find that another minute, but essential piece of hardware has died on me.
I am unable to communicate with Talking Sally. My plans for today need a complete change already at just 9 am in the morning. Where can I get a replacement USB unit? Motorama may have one, otherwise the importer of Garmin equipment, Bucher & Walt, may have one.
At the Motorama they check on whether they have a spare USB programmer - but no luck with such an old machine as the Street Pilot III. This means going back to Neuchâtel, because the importer has its home just 500 yards away from my previous workplace.
I take the motorway, but it still takes 3 hours to cover those 140 miles. I visit the Neuchâtel office and use their broadband internet access to transfer the list of youth hostels in England and Wales into my navigation software. I continue with this job after having bought the new USB card programmer, but there are so many hostels in the UK that I manage just up to the letter "C" in the alphabet.
I sincerely hope that this was the last equipment failure for a while.

The new route leads roughly north-westwards. This means from here directly up the Jura mountain range and then into France. One look out of the window is enough to confirm that to go up those mountains right now would be a very bad idea; giant thunderstorms have formed up there and I can see the lightning and hear the thunder even down here.
By now it is after 5 pm anyway, so all I do instead is to ride those 15 miles south to Avenches, a small town between lake Morat and lake Neuchâtel. That town has a comfortable youth hostel. The hostel is full of groups of pushbike riders, but as usual there is a separate room for individual travellers. Unfortunately there is no other such traveller, so I have that room all for myself.

- 111800 km on the bike

The gods of the weather had mercy with the sweating humans; a cold front has passed through last night, and it was even a biker-friendly front, i. e. there was next to no rain. But it is 15 degrees cooler than yesterday.
I set out from Avenches at 10 am, via Neuchâtel on the A5 motorway and then north into the Jura mountains. A few clouds are around, and on occasion there are a few drops of rain, but nothing even sufficient to wet the tarmac.
At Le Locle I am well over 3000 feet up, and it even feels a bit chilly up here, But then the land slowly lowers towards the town of Besançon and the river Doubs, which has given its name to this French province.
The Doubs flows into the river Saône a few miles to the south-west from here and I cross the Saône river just a few miles later near Seveux.
I am now entering the Champagne region. The lower the land gets, the more vineyards appear. The farmers have put up little signboards next to each field, showing the name of the brand of champagne for which these grapes are designated. The signboards get progressively bigger the more prestigious the brand is.
My personal opinion regarding champagne as such is rather low; the whole production process was developed for the simple reason that the vineyards around here are not getting enough sunshine in an average summer to ripen their grapes properly and so to allow the production of "real" wine from them.

For me champagne will always remain what it really is: wine produced from unripe grapes. You may have a different opinion, but I suggest that you come here to the Champagne region and visit one of these champagne-making places this time of the year; the infernal rotting smell coming from those buildings may convince you, that you have been the victim of one of the most shameless hypes ever invented; all you get from champagne is an upset stomach and an empty wallet. If you really like this fizzy stuff, then try some of the Portugese, Spanish or Italian sparkling wines - they are moderately priced and taste much better than any champagne.
Droves of tourists drive around here and visit those hundreds of tiny estates producing that gassy stuff which they then sell for exorbitant prices. The majority of these places are very small and you'll never have heard their names before or found their products in your local deli. But the clever French are marketing this obscurity as exclusiveness. I can hear the salesman: "Imagine, Monsieur, except you and your lovely wife just a selected hand full of other buyers will be allowed to enjoy our famous "Chateau Joe Bloggs" champagne (the "chateau" is an ordinary one-family-house with a twin garage, the champagne being bottled in one of the two garages).
And these foolish tourists, mainly middle-aged and well off, will make it a ritual to return every year again, staying in the same hotel again and again (the hotel is throwing a lavish party free of charge for all local champagne producers each year during off-season, to celebrate another successful year of that scam), sampling the new champagne which - as usual - is only suitable as paint-stripper, and then buy copious amounts of that stuff for silly amounts of money, still slavishly believing that they just bought the finest liquid on earth. Well, as the saying goes; a fool and his money are soon parted.
Next time I am biking in that area I will probably disappear and never be seen again, having been assassinated by the local champagne mafia - so be warned, fellow travellers; who knows what aside from unripe grapes may be used to make champagne and to give it its "unique" taste?
Well, enough "champagne-bashing" - it is getting late and I have to find some suitable digs to spend the night. Sally reveals that there is a "Formule 1" at Reims, just a few miles to the east. If you do not know what that is, then I suggest you read the Wiki - it is a hotel like no other and I recommend that everyone should give it try at least once, if you are ever in France - it is the French reply to American motel corporations.

- 112350 km on the bike

I ride those few miles out west to pick up yesterday's route. My new target is the town of Boulogne-sur-mer. I have also arrived in the Picardie. The country is flat, but the things that leave the deepest impressions on me are those endless markers on the road, pointing the traveller to yet another military graveyard. During the two world wars many millions of young men found an untimely death, sacrificed on the altar of national pride by the same type of incompetent politicians and sparrow-brained generals who do re-produce the same horrors just around the corner these days in the Middle East - with just the same chance of "winning" anything than these endless rows and rows of dead kids ever got in their short lifetime.

These are the kind of thoughts a man gets while biking through this unexciting, flat countryside. Here a biker would be well advised to see if he can get himself a cruise control unit installed.
But luckily near the coast the countryside gets hilly again.
The website of the ferry company advised me to follow the roadsigns to the "Gare Maritime". I find no such signs at all. The signs I do find point to "Port" or "Car Ferry". I find the harbour anyway thanks to Sally, and they have actually received the online booking I did make while using the Internet connection at my old employer's office the day before yesterday.
It is the first time that I am crossing the English channel with this relatively new company. This was a tip from Nick in Clermont-Ferrand. Thy just have two tariffs for bikes, the cheap one (13 Euros for bike and biker) or the "expensive" peak-hour charge of 22 Euros to get me and Kitty to Dover.
They are on time, on budget and even manage to get a berth in Dover on time - now I have certainly found my carrier to England for the future. Compared to the competition these guys are in many places better - especially the price and the speed.
I must have crossed the English Channel about 200 times in my life - but this is the first time I believe that I was not ripped off. Hooray for the "pirates" at Speedferries [Postscript: that company regrettably went bust at the end of 2008].
It is 5 pm when I disembark at Dover Docks. I have just put those 17 miles to Canterbury into Sally, but I enjoy each one immensely - because at long last I am driving on the right side of the road (which, of course, is the left side). Half an hour later I am at the Canterbury youth hostel where they do have vacancies. 18 pounds buy me a bed and a breakfast - I know that is dirt-cheap for the UK, but I still remember that 3-star hotel I got for the same money in Spain.
I take a walk into town and view the cathedral and get some English money out a hole-in-the-wall. Alas, Britain is one of the few countries still refusing the use of the Euro, so I need a few pounds Sterling.
They also have an Internet cafe at the far end of town, where I download all the missing youth hostels for England and Wales plus Scotland up to the letter "D" onto my USB memory stick - then my one hour online is over. I will transfer them at a later time into my navigation software. And a last item I enjoy on my way back to the hostel is a fine English ale; lukewarm, no gas, no foam, and the colour of old brake fluid - that's how a beer should be.

- 112700 km on the bike

The hostels in England all offer a "book a bed ahead" service. This means that they will make a reservation for you with the next hostel along your route. I ask for Bath, Bristol or Cheddar. Bristol and Bath are fully booked, but Cheddar has room for me. I have plotted a route to Bath into Sally, but with Cheddar as a potential waypoint diversion, so no problems there.
I set out in perfect weather and perfect temperature at about 10 am BST (British Summer Time). My route runs maybe 15 miles south of the M25 London Orbital motorway along minor country roads through those shires and counties of England which I like so much; Kent, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire - the heart of the south of England. At Newbury I stop to do a quick visit to Anna, an old friend of mine.
Afterwards this lovely journey continues through Wiltshire and on into Somerset. People here have a funny, lilting accent which makes their English difficult to understand to foreigners. But I have been here so many times and had so many workmates from this shire that I am quite used to it.
Halfway between Bristol and Yeovil there is a small rise in the countryside. In Switzerland this "molehill" would not even get a name due to its insignificance.
But here the fact that there is what they call a "gorge", i. e. a river has cut a tiny canyon into that molehill, due to that circumstance the "Cheddar gorge" is a very popular tourist attraction on an island otherwise practically mountain-free.
The "valley" of the gorge is littered with parked cars and many people are either just walking on the road (a real nuisance for me on a motorbike) or climbing up the rock face, mostly using equipment fit for climbing Mount Everest.
If like myself you are one of the lucky bikers who ever had the chance of thundering up the Stilfzer Joch pass in the Italian Alps or the Col de Parpaillon in France, then you will understand my quiet amusement, looking at these people and their admiration of a spectacle that reminds me more of a miniature railway model than of a real canyon. But, alas, I have been here and can now say that I really biked the Cheddar "gorge".

Most of you will know the name of that town from a very popular and reasonably strong English cheese. Pubs nationwide will have on offer a "Ploughman's lunch", consisting of Pickles, bread and - of course - Cheddar cheese.
It is interesting to know that there remains just one sole company actually making that cheese in town - all the rest is produced elsewhere.

But the youth hostel is in a nice, quiet cul-de-sac and offers excellent facilities for very reasonable rates (at least for the UK, that is).
I am bunked together with three hikers, travelling in a group. They are all fairly old, but late in the evening the excuse for calling this place a youth hostel arrives in the form of a twenty year old student from Bristol university. The guy is completely new to hostelling, and us "old farts" have to show him, how a bed is made and how in general things work in hostels - it makes one wonder what kind of schools these kids are sent to these days, who never take their classes to a hostel.

- 113050 km on the bike

The friendly Landlord of the hostel has been to Snowdonia before and knows all of the available hostels there. I ask him to book me into one, and to his surprise he can get me for two days into the most popular one, Idwal Cottage near Bethesda. You can download my GPS route here.

The direct way from Cheddar to Wales is blocked by the Bristol channel. This is a stretch of salt water 10 miles wide here where I am. The nearest bridge over this bay is the M4 motorway toll bridge near Cardiff. The bay at that spot is still two miles wide and the bridge is quite impressive, because it has to be high enough to let any ocean-going ship pass underneath. The toll fare for a car is currently £ 4.90. The fee needs to be paid only when entering Wales. Leaving Wales is free. I am pleased to see that motorbikes can still enter Wales free of charge, the lady at the toll booth just opens the barrier for me and waves me through.
I leave the motorway at Cardiff and drive north on the A470. The so far bright weather starts to cloud up when entering the first hills of the "Brecon National Park", but the road is great and as it is Sunday today there are only very few trucks in the way.
In central Wales it starts to rain, but again that rain is not very heavy. The entire trip from Cheddar to Idwal Cottage is around 400 km, but due to these fine roads I arrive there by 4pm. The hostel is not locked, and a few guests are already relaxing in front of the cottage. The place is great, quiet and comfortable. This is one of the oldest hostels in all of Wales, it was given to the organization in 1931.
The people here call the surrounding hills "mountains". From my point of view this is a mild exaggeration, as the highest "mountains" around here are just 3000 feet high.

But it is good motorbiking country, though the Snowdonia National Park is really too small to have enough roads for more than a single day biking.
I have nevertheless decided to stay a second day out here, because the place is so nice and quiet.
The other guests are mainly hikers and climbers. I learn to my surprise, that the team of climbers around Edmund Hillary trained in this area for their climb up the Mount Everest in 1953. To me that sounds like training seamen on the use of water pistols and then sending them off to fire a 15-inch naval gun.

- 113400 km on the bike

The forecast for today is showery weather in all of Wales. I have drawn a circular route into Sally, about 200 km all in all, making the best out of the Natural Park. If you have GPS software that can read a MapSource .gdb file you can download the trip here. The landlord of the hostel has advised me to stop in the tiny hamlet of Beddgelert, about 20 miles away. Apparently there is one of the best ice cream parlors in all of Britain. I am there by 9.30 am, and of course everything is still closed. I decide to return here after having done those 200 km.
At Harlech I have reached the ocean; to my right is the Irish Sea. The weather remains dry, and here at the coast the sun shines out of a hazy sky.
At Barmouth I reach the most southern point of my trip. Like all coastal roads this stretch from Harlech to Barmouth is too full of tourists and trucks for my liking, and I am happy that my track now turns eastwards back into the hills. The A494 takes me back upwards past the Balla lake. Then onto the A4212 north-westwards to lake Celyn and Capel Curig. As planned I do not return directly to the hostel, but instead return to that unmissable ice cream parlour.
But first I have a meal in the restaurant next door and come to this conclusion:
In France 11 Euros get you a fine 5-course meal with unlimited wine and water and a coffee afterwards.
In Wales 11 pounds Sterling get you an acceptable cabbage soup, an overdone and overspiced meat pie with some dried-out salad and a single potato and a pot of tea.
Maybe it was because of the below-par food that I am unable to find the ice cream really outstanding afterwards. Of course it is better than the stuff you get pre-packed in a supermarket, but it certainly is not up to the level of those splendid ice cream parlors I encountered in Italy in the past.
It is just after 2 pm, so I decide to have a look at the city of Bangor, the only larger town around here. The reason for this is quite simple; my Doc Martens boots are falling apart for several month now and I need to replace them. I have already tried to get a new pair in various places during my journey and even before, but without any success.
I ask at the first shop in the High Street and they direct me to the one shop that sells them in town. But that shop just has a few pairs left and none in my size. I'll have to try in one of the bigger cities once I leave this area. I will not leave England unless I have found a new pair of "Docs" for myself.
I am back at the hostel by 4 pm, take a shower and get the laptop out to copy the last missing youth hostels for England and Wales from the USB memory stick into the navigation software and update my travel diary.

- 113600 km on the bike

Today is a washout. The other people at the hostel get their raingear out and leave this nice, comfy place for a walk in spite of the gruesome conditions; the hilltops (sorry, I meant mountaintops) are in clouds and the drizzle is persistent
I myself instead grab my notebook and finish reading the current book (Rudyard Kipling's "Kim") and at about 11 am start the next one (Robert Louis Stephenson's "The Master of Ballantrae"). Sitting in this quiet lounge all day reading this very engrossing classic story seems to me much more sensible then hiking through the cold rain with wet feet and frozen body. As the hostel has no Internet access, no television and not even a radio, I am unable to get any detailed news about the weather. But it can hardly get any worse, so I am looking forward to ride towards the Peak District from here tomorrow.
The next day does not look any different, but at least the constant drizzle has turned into an occasional shower instead.
I take off at about 10 am in full battlegear, i. e. with full raingear plus an extra pull-over against the cold.
I follow the A5 towards Denbigh, and I am lucky; except the occasional few drops here and there it stays dry. The next larger city beyond Denbigh is Chester. That city is just inside England, and I immediately notice that I am back in Merry Old England, because the roadsigns are now solely in English. I let Sally find the nearest shopping center, because the quest for Doctor Martens is still unfulfilled. There is a shoe shop in that shopping mall about 4 miles out of town, but they don't do "Doc's". But I am advised that there is a shoe shop named "Olympia" in Chester's High Street and that shop has Doc's. Sally has one of her better days today and guides me without problems into down-town Chester. I find that shop all-right, but again, they don't sell Doc's at the moment, because they are currently not "in fashion". I couldn't care less about fashion, I am wearing these sodded, unfindable boots because their comfort is unbeatable - if your feet can survive those 4 weeks it takes to break them in.
The shop keeper at Olympia remembers that there is an outdoor equipment shop down the road with a Doc Martens label in the window. I walk that half mile, and yes, not only have they the labels, they have Doc's in any size. I just grab a pair of size 8 Doc's and put them on - perfect, as usual! The lady salesman comes with the carton and wants them back for proper wrapping. I hand her my old pair and tell her to properly dispose of them - I'll keep the new pair right on.
Apparently there are still a few people who fancy the comfort of Doc's - I am told they sell many pairs to security people, bouncers and policemen on the beat. All these people are on their feet for long times every day, and they know what is good for their feet.
59 pounds for the pair of boots is the usual price - you can get a different brand of boots much cheaper, but when it comes to my feet there is only the good Doctor M. who is up to make them happy. Or, to be precise, after I have gone through the usual process of breaking them in.
One problem solved, and on I go onto the A54 east via Congleton towards the Peak District National Park. The nice people at Idwal Cottage have organized me two days of accommodation at the Meerbrook youth hostel near Leek in Staffordshire.
There are larger hostels in the area, but I am preferring these smaller one's to the big one's in the cities.
I arrive there at 2.30 pm, and of course the place is closed. But Sally tells me that in nearby Stoke-on-Trent there is the local museum of Industrial heritage. I was always interested in this area for the very reason, that here the Industrial Revolution was born 250 years ago. I ride there and for £ 2.20 I can see the old bone mill, dating from 1859. Everything is intact and was actually used until 1972 - including the giant steam engine called "Princess" that powered the mill. That steam engine has the biggest piston I have ever seen, which explains the giant boiler with a capacity of 14 tons of water. All is in working condition, and once every month the museum fires up the boiler (which takes five days to do and uses 2 tons of coal each time) to steam up Princess and get the milling basins going. A very interesting place to see. On my way out I notice there is a concession available for members of the youth hostel association - I would have to pay only £ 1.20. These friendly people on the spot decide to reimburse me by inviting me to tea and biscuits. We have an interesting discussion about the technical aspects of the place and the problems of replacing the original, beyond-repair Lancashire boiler with the current one, an up here rather unusual Cornish type boiler - if you are interested in this kind of stuff, then just follow the links.

I am back at the hostel at 5 pm. For 12 pounds a day I have all I need - including an Englishmen now living in Norway and showing his three kids his old home plus an elderly lady and her daughter hiking the area.
With the English/Norwegian chap I have a nice evening in the pub next door, called "The Lazy Trout". That is an unusual name, and upon inquiring about it I am told that it used to be called "The Three Horseshoes". There is another pub of the same name 2 miles up the road. That was no problem until one day in the past the tenants of both "Three Horseshoe" pubs were called Kirby by family name. This resulted in total chaos with letters and booze deliveries frequently going to the wrong location. So Mr Kirby from this pub decided to re-name his pub after his favourite coffee shop on the road to Wales which he frequently had to take.

- 113800 km on the bike

Yesterday I have plotted a nice round trip through the Peak District into Sally. But as most other scenic places here the Peak District is fairly small and I have trouble to make the journey a fair 240 km trip. Again that will be too short to fill the day, but I am sure I can find some other worthwhile point to visit to make up the time. You can download the trip here.
Biking through the Peaks is bliss; the scenery is fantastic and away from the main roads I have the countryside for myself.
Before 2 pm I am nearly done with these 240 km, but luckily Sally tells me that there is the old "Temple Mine" along the road two miles south of Matlock. This is a lead mine closed in the 1950's, and there one can visit the actual mine plus the adjacent museum with lots of artifacts and information. The guided tours through the mine start at noon and at two pm. I arrive just in time for the two pm tour, and Frank, the guide and myself descend into the depth of the mine. There were three more people supposed to join, but they never show up, so I have Frank as a personal guide all to myself.
There is a modern 38 volts mineshaft lighting system in place along the walls, but the scenery is still pretty claustrophobic. If one considers that this mine was opened around 1920 one gets an idea how extreme working conditions must have been before - and lead is mined around here for over 300 years.
Frank even demonstrates the conditions in the olden days by lighting a candle and switching off all other lights. Mining is not for me, I decide here and now.
Back in daylight I explore the museum itself. I am an addict for the Industrial Revolution that took place in this very area, and here they posses an item I know inside out since I was a teenager, but I never thought that I would see and touch an original with my own hands; they have a mine shaft draining pump build by Richard Trevithick - and not a replica, they found the real thing. They did a lot of research in ancient papers and concluded that an original pump had still to be inside a long abandoned mine and dug it out. And it is now on display in the museum. My hands glide over the embossed writing on the pump housing, which says "Coalbrookdale 1819". The size of the thing is gigantic, but its inventor was as much a genius as a good accountant; why use an expensive steam engine to pump the water out of a mine, if one could use water power to do it for free?
After two hours in this fascinating place I return to the hostel.
Tonight there is no one but me in the hostel, but the pub next door is filled with locals. I discover that the hostel is on the list to be closed down by the YHA (youth hostel association). It is owned by the Severn-Trent Water company, and the local town council would be more than happy to take it over - but the red tape is enormous. It will be interesting to return in a few years to find out what actually happened to the hostel in the end.

- 113950 km on the bike

This morning I find a note stuck on my bike; "Good morning. I have booked you for two nights into the Honiston Hause youth hostel in the lake district. Please be there before 6 pm, otherwise they will give away your bed".
The note, of course, is from the warden of the Meerbrook hostel. I do not mind him needing two days to make that booking (I told him that I'd like to have an onward booking in the Lake District upon my arrival), but the hostel he chose is not in my navigation system - which means it is a small one that is not open all year round.
The warden is nowhere to be found this morning, so I just take the note and ride on northwards. I pass Buxton and beyond that town the eastern fringes of the Greater Manchester area, which means that the roads are pretty busy here and the towns are fairly close together. Glossop, Stockport and later Keighley are part of this densely populated and highly industrialized urban belt.
But soon I reach the southern border of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and the countryside turns very rural again.
Ever since I am back in England the weather has been excellent. Today is no exception and now being in the Dales is good fun. The only reason why I do not take many pictures is that we are currently under a warm front. This means a lot of haze, so taking pictures is quite useless due to the limited visibility.
I am riding north-west and just after entering the Dales there is a snack-bar in a lay-bye where I stop and have a breakfast. There is a newspaper on the table which headline states that these days 42 percent of the average Britons net wages are used to pay for the mortgage - which is another way of saying that the people in this country are entirely pre-possessed with their properties (i. e. brick & mortar) and that ever more people are willing to work until they break their backs for substandard buildings which at my guess currently cost more than three times what they are worth. If I ever need to make easy money I should start working in UK real estate - the market here is so completely beyond reality that anyone who still has a minimum of common sense left over can make a fortune within months.
I leave this fine biker country beyond the town of Sedbergh. But that is no problem, because just a few miles down the road I am entering the Lake District National Park near Kendal.

However, after just a few miles it becomes clear to me that the Lake District is much more popular with the tourists compared to the Peak District or the Dales. All major roads are packed solid with tourists - the average speed is just 30 mph. I make a note to ensure my route for tomorrow does avoid all major roads and just uses minor country lanes.
The popular resorts of Windermere and Ambleside are from my point of view just horribly overpriced tourist traps, to be avoided at all costs. But I let Sally guide me to the Windermere youth hostel. Yes, it is just as I thought; the place is big and the hostel and reception are open all day. I ask for directions to the Honiston Hause hostel and they tell me to ride to a village called Seatoller and just continue from there for another mile. I ask Sally whether she knows that village - and she does. So off I am at 4 pm from Windermere on a rather frustrating A591 road north - far too many tourists in big, airconditioned Mercs creeping with 30 mph along roads where double that speed would still be too slow.
At Keswick I can finally leave that awful road and turn south again on the B5289 towards Seatoller. And Murphy's law is getting me again; after 200 miles of biking in near perfect weather I am now facing dark clouds along the hills on my course. Needless to say that 10 miles before reaching the hostel it starts pissing down in buckets. I really can't be bothered to put on my rain gear for those last 10 miles. Two days ago my feet would be wet within 5 minutes, but my all new Doc Martens are quite good at keeping the rain at bay.
Having washed my pants and my jacket many times over in the past means that they are not overly water-tight any more, but I know that the hostel has a drying room for wet garments.
I suppose it is not necessary to say that the rain stops the moment I reach he youth hostel. I put my wet stuff into the drying room and enjoy a hot shower. The hostel has no mains power supply, but they have a diesel generator. The generator is turned off at 10.30 pm. They have batteries to keep the juice flowing at night, but they are supposedly fairly old and no warranties are given as to if the lights will work if one has to go to the loo at night. I put my battery torch under the pillow, just in case.
In the evening I plot a route of 240 km through the Lakes for tomorrow, carefully avoiding any of those tourist-infested A-roads.

- 114250 km on the bike

This morning the weather looks rather promising; the sun is shining and though the air is rather humid, up here such an airmass is quite bearable compared to the south of France.
The hostel warden knows exactly how he can entice his guests to leave early; breakfast is served at 8 am sharp - you collect your plate or it gets cold. It is like a race; 8.00 to 8.03 the cereals are out for the guests, at 8.04 the cereals disappear and the plates with the breakfast appear - you must hurry, because at 8.11 they start washing the dishes.
As a result of this race I am on the road by 9 am.
Just half a mile on I have to stop and take a picture of the great view I have of the Honister Pass.

The rest of the day is a great bike ride through the Lake District, interspersed with the occasional rather frustrating bit of A-road, where thousands of tourists travel along at an average speed of 30 miles per hour (and where I am tempted to do 130 miles per hour instead). Near Coniston Water I encounter a stretch of country lane marked "gated road". I know that this means that sheep are kept in their place by "gating" the road instead of the usual cattle grids. Travellers are supposed to open these gates and close them behind them. I normally do not mind, but encountering ten gates in as little as two miles is too much. Why do these farmers here in Cumberland partition their fields to the size of tennis courts? I stop at the next service station and buy a bottle of mineral water. This opening and closing of gates really was exhaustive.
They have a jet wash, so I clean Kitty - you can be sure that it will rain rather soon. It always does after I cleaned the bike.
A Fiat Ducato mobile home pulls in and the sole occupant lets his dog out. His name is Bill and he is from Milton Keynes. His timetable appears to be as busy as mine, so we spend a leisurely two hours chatting away about life, the universe and all the rest.
This long break means I won't have time to do the steamboat ride on lake Windermere that I had originally planned. I ride down to the village of Lakeside, where these boats depart and have at least a look. The whole place is crawling with tourists, and though a return trip is just eight pounds I do not really regret the fact that I have no time for it.
The return trip towards the hostel goes along the A591 again, but today there is much less traffic and it is fun to bike.
Somehow I have managed to delete the tracklog by accident, so today's trip does not show in the GPS chart at the bottom of this page.
I enjoy a sundowner at the hostel, watching the ongoings at the slate quarry next door. There must be some money to be made in this slate business, because the owner commutes to the site using a private helicopter.

- 114550 km on the bike

The breakfast race is on this morning, and afterwards I say good-bye to this nice place. My course for today is due north, into Scotland. The weather is still humid and hazy. Apparently there is a health warning out for the South of England; they have 32 degrees centigrade, and together with that high humidity people are certainly suffering down there. Up here it is much nicer, and even wearing all my protective kit is very comfortable. The city of Carlisle is ahead, and I use a 6-mile stretch of the M6 motorway to circumnavigate it.

The A7 road onwards is excellent biker country. After Longtown I enter Scotland, the shire of Dumfries and Galloway. At Langholm I turn north-westwards on the B709 and follow the valley of the Esk river towards the river Tweed. The ride is fantastic, but near Peebles I come over a hill and ahead of me is a black wall of clouds. The rising thermals from the ground have broken the weak inversion and formed a gigantic thunderstorm. Lanarkshire is ahead below the black cloud, but it is clear to me that I will not ride deliberately into that monster storm. Looking around I can see that the thunderstorms are rising up all around me, though the others are not as bad as that big one ahead.
I know my weather, so it is clear to me that out of the hills and preferably near the coast the chance for thunderstorms is much lower than up here. Well then, let's do some storm-dodging.
With a keen eye on the ongoings in the sky I turn north-eastwards, towards the coast of the North Sea. As the roads are good and have little traffic I manage to stay out of the way of the storms, but because many of the roads are wet (where the storms have hit before) Kitty is about as dirt-covered as she was before yesterday's wash - as I said earlier, cleaning the bike is a sure way of commanding bad weather.
I reach the coast at Berwick-upon-Tweed, which means that I am now actually back in England, because the border to Scotland makes a dash northwards here in Northumberland. The first guesthouse I find is full. The second one has a big sign saying "vacancies", but no one answers the doorbell. Well folks, that's not a good method of filling your vacancies if no one's at home.
But luckily Sally tells me that the Coldingham Youth Hostel is just around the corner - and in Scotland.
The hostel is located on a hill, overlooking the beach and with a great view of the sea. But due to the haze there is not much sea to be seen today, and ten minutes after my arrival it starts pouring down with rain outside.
The hostel has Internet access, so I check the weather; the same pattern of thunderstorms inland will repeat itself tomorrow, so I book myself in for two days. I will give Kitty a rest tomorrow. They have a laundry, so I wash all my clothes plus my biker outfit in their washing machine.

- 115000 km on the bike

There is a consultant from the hostel association here this morning. I sit outside and chat with his wife while smoking a pipe. I more and more like these rest days. I think I will have more of them in the future - as I am not really pressed for time.
Next I stroll into the village of Coldingham, about a mile away - which is about as much as I dare do with my new boots. The mainstay of the village is fishing, and they still have about 35 boats going out every day. At least that is what the barman at the "Anchor" pub tells me. Pictures of fishermen and lifeboat crews hang on the wall and a brass plate on the bar is claiming that "The captain's word is law".
Scotland has its own laws, one of which is that since this spring smoking in public places is prohibited. The barmen likes his fags, so every 20 minutes he has to go outside for a smoke. Even the mechanics at the garage next door are not allowed to smoke at work.
Like in England there are many bizarre laws regarding booze in Scotland; one of them states that pubs have to close at 0.45 am (add to that the official "drinking-up time" of 20 minutes, regulated by another law). But hotels and other licensed places frequented by travellers may have their "residents bar" open for as long as you like.
The result of that nonsense is forseeable; many places up and down the country now offer "bed and breakfast" for five pounds, meaning the drinkers pay that nominal fee of a fiver and just drink all night long, while being legally "hotel guests" - though they never see a bed and live 5 minutes down the road..
It was even worse in times now gone, where every man that wasn't a local person could drink as long they wanted. The predictable result was that every Saturday evening all of Coldingham would descend upon to the pubs in neighbouring Eyemouth, while the Eymouthian drinkers would populate the pubs in Coldingham.
I have a decent lunch in the pub and afterwards take a walk along the beach. The haze by now is so dense, that the visibility is down to less than a mile. But the weather forecast is not too bad for tomorrow; some fog on the coast, otherwise nice and sunny in the Highlands.

When I look out of the window next morning, the haze or fog or whatever it is is even denser than yesterday. Outside everything is dripping wet from that stuff. I set out at 9.30 am on the Edinburgh road, the A1. The fog gets even denser and after just 3 miles the visibility is down to 30 feet. Oncoming cars get visible to me, when their headlights appear out of the muck basically abreast of me. This is very dangerous and I am creeping along with 25 mph, wondering what will happen if some idiot will come up from behind at high speed. He will crash into me, and Kitty has no rear foglights. But then the headlights of a Peugeot appear very carefully behind me and the driver adjusts his speed to mine. At the same time the rear foglights of a Volkswagen appear in front of me. That's great. Wedged in between these two cars who are obviously driven by sensible folk I am perfectly safe. Anyone coming up from behind too fast will bump into that Peugeot.
After a few miles driving like that the fog lifts a bit and visibility increases to about a quarter mile.
I know that inland the sun must be shining, but unfortunately my initial course leads me along the southern shores of the Firth of Forth, i. e. always close to the sea and therefore under the slowly lifting fog. If you like you can download this part of my trip here.
I take the Edinburgh bypass and by now the road is dry and my raincoat is drying up, too.
There is a Tesco supermarket just before the Forth Road bridge over the bay at South Queensferry. For the princely sum of £ 2.39 I have a decent English breakfast and a pot of tea at the supermarket restaurant.
Then the journey continues onwards over the bridge. It is a toll bridge, but like in England a very biker-friendly toll bridge; cars and trucks must pay, motorbikes can cross the bridge for free.
The bridge is gigantic and the fog makes the construction even more impressive today; the bridge towers are covered half way up by a bank of fog, but the top of the towers are again in the clear.
I am entering the shire of Fife, but after a few miles on the A90 I am in Perth and Kinross. This is the beginning of the real Highlands. And being further inland now the sun comes out and it gets nice and warm. I stop at a layby, get rid of my raingear and re-grease Kitty's drivechain. Many motorbikers are afraid that their chain will suffer badly when the bike is driven through rain. That is not so, a modern O-ring motorbike chain will not wear more in rain than in the dry. But this is a completely different ballgame the moment the rain stops. The rain did actually cool down the chain. But now, with the outer lubrication washed away, the chain soon gets really hot. This heat now melts the grease inside the O-ring seals and the grease will begin to squeeze itself out from underneath those seals. Having lost that vital lubricant means a very premature death for the chain. It is therefore essential that the chain is re-greased the moment the rain stops. Just for your information; I change chain and sprockets every 60000 km - not bad for a bike with 110 horses.

After Perth the road really gets exciting. The altitudes, as usual in the British Isles, are not really impressive, but the landscape and the empty road are sheer bliss.
At Spittal of Glenshee, shortly before entering Aberdeenshire I find a ski lift and next to it a ski rental shop. Out of curiosity I stop and ask Sally my current altitude; it is just 250 meters AMSL. Coming from Switzerland this seems ridiculous, but on the other hand I am at 56 degrees north and therefore the winters are probably much more severe at 250 meters up than in Switzerland.
In Aberdeenshire begins the "Whisky-country". Glenlivet and Glenmorangie are only a few of the famous distilleries I am passing by today.
I am of the opinion that Single Malt Whisky is the same type of scam in Scotland than e. g. Champagne is in France; a horrible and harsh-tasting liquor is sold for ridiculous money, all because lot's of people with a serious ego problem are believing that advertisement bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I quite like whisky, but of course the blended type. All those overrated single malt producers are lacking the most important person in the entire process of making a fine whisky; they don't have a blendmaster, and thus are just amateurs from my point of view, and their products just qualify as engine degreaser.
I have reached Inverness at the close of the Moray Firth. Most people these days take the A95 into town, but I rather use the B9006 a bit further south. This is because this road runs over the battlefield at Culloden Moor, where the Scots lost their final battle against the English in 1745. The battlefield can be viewed by the public, it is covered with walking paths and markers explaining the individual positions and the sequence of events on that fateful day.
I am now close to the sea again and that sodded fog is back. It is clear on the ground, but as it shields the ground from the sun it is much colder here.
I cross the Moray Firth on the A9 and shortly after, the Cromathy Firth as well. I am approaching my target for today, the youth hostel near Culrain on the far end of the Kyle of Sutherland. This hostel is special, as it is actually in the Carbisdale Castle. This castle at first look seems to be the former home of a medieval knight. But it was build at the beginning of the 20th century for the duchess of Sutherland under the most peculiar circumstances. In the 1930's it was bought by the shipping magnate Christian Salvesen, who after the Second World War donated it to the Scottish Youth Hostel Association.
The inside of the place has been converted to cater for hostel needs, but the great hall and the lounges still reek of the luxury of olden times and it comes everything included - even a ghost, that supposedly haunts the hallways at night.
There are still the bells on the wall to ring for the servants from the different halls and rooms of this big place - which was build just to cater for one single, widowed women. Now it is used to offer way over 100 beds for travellers. The dorms are huge and for the first time in about 20 years I am put into a dorm with 18 beds.
440 km today was a decent trip, and Kitty is running perfectly except for the horrible British petrol. Britain is using its own oil from the North Sea oil fields, a stuff called Brent crude. Most other European countries use oil from the Middle East, which is of much better quality than North Sea Brent. Switzerland gets all of its oil from Libya, and that stuff is much more to Kitty's palate than the stuff that is coming out of a British pump - even though my Tiger is a Cat born and build in England.
I plan a trip around the northern shores of Scotland for tomorrow and then back down south on the western coast.

- 115450 km on the bike

I wake up at 8 am in that big dormitory, because some of my roommates want an early start. The hostel does not do fully cooked breakfasts, so I leave without one. The A836 runs due north through the Northern Highlands. You can download the route here.
There are no cities up here, just small villages. At one such village called Tongue I reach the Atlantic Ocean. Any further north and I will have to mount floats on Kitty. I stop at one of the rare filling stations - the juice costs £ 1.08. That's daylight robbery, but it is the only place around here that sells petrol. I would actually warn any biker with a small petrol tank to come up here without knowing where he can get fuel. I have driven here stretches of 100 miles without ever seeing a petrol station.
I am at the northernmost end of Scotland. I turn westwards onto the A838 towards Cape Wrath. At Durness, the most northwesterly town in Scotland, I have a proper breakfast at a cafe. It costs six pounds, which proves to me what I just assumed before: the local people just squeeze the tourists shamelessly for any penny they can lay their greedy hands on. I found the same situation in Snowdonia; while these backwaters should really be much cheaper than elsewhere, these criminal locusts actually put the thumbscrews so tight that the prices in a piss-poor little village like Durness (320 inhabitants) are higher than in Central London!
I will start with self-catering while I am up here, I just refuse to support the local places here, as everyone is obviously an outright thief. Bikers, if you ever come up here, then do not use local cafes or restaurants - they will rip you off.
However, that is all offset by the great ride I have. As the land ends at Cape Wrath I now turn south again on the west coast. The streets up here are mostly single track roads with passing places. And they are fairly straight as well. Due to the little traffic one can go along easily with 60 mph. Oncoming traffic is visible from far away, and the trick is to adjust each others speed so that both vehicles pass each other at a passing place, where for a few yards the road has been widened so that two vehicles can pass each other.

The tourists of course are a significant obstacle for the locals and often force the them to brake, because of their unpredictable way of driving on this kind of road.
I have had a lot of training in the past and play the game like a local, but I do not recommend that for the newbie; it takes a certain stamina to close in on an oncoming 40-ton truck, both him and myself doing 60 mph. We adjust our speed slightly until we have both vehicles passing each other at the right spot. I stare at the giant front of the oncoming truck. When it is just a few feet away I reach the passing place and pull to the left. The truck shoots past with unchanged speed and in the moment it has passed by the passing place ends, and I just manage to pull back to the single track - without either of us ever slowing down. This kind of driving allows average speeds up here, which in the south can only be achieved on motorways.
At Unapool I leave the A-road southwards and turn onto the much more scenic coastal route, the B869. That is a much longer route than the A-road, but worth the diversion. 50 miles onwards I rejoin the A-road at Drumrunie. From there on I have a great ride along the west coast all the way to Kyle of Lochalsh. Here is the bridge that links the island of Skye to the mainland. From there it is just a few miles to Broadford, where another youth hostel offers accommodation for £ 12.50. The hostel is directly on the sea, and Kitty is parked just 5 yards away from the water - let's hope there is no storm tonight.
500 yards away from the hostel is the Broadford Hotel. From the outside it looks like it is closed, but in reality they are just carrying out a multi-million pound refurbishing job. But at the rear there is the hotel bar, and that is open. The hotel bar patrons are mainly local fishermen. The barmaid is from Western Australia and she is looking forward to leave this forlorn island and return to Edinburgh next week. She also looks like she has been attacked by a swarm of killer-bees, but apparently that was the work of the midgets. These little bloodsuckers are the pest of the North and the moment I stop my motorbike anywhere I am normally surrounded by a cloud of them within seconds - though to my surprise they never do sting me at all, even if I walk through the woods wearing just pants and T-shirt. I have no idea why they don't like my blood, but I will certainly not complain.
The future room prices in this hotel will be around £150 per night, but at least the bar prices are reasonable.

- 115900 km on the bike

I have put a circular route around the island into Sally, which you can download here. Again the island, like before those different National Parks, is really too small to put a full day of biking into the system. I'll just add a few scenic breaks or museum visits to fill up the day.
But the gods of the weather think otherwise today; up the northern shore the weather just holds together, but after less than two hours a wall of clouds moves in and it starts raining. That as such is not really bad, because the rain is relatively warm. But the cloudbase is rapidly coming down, and within minutes hits zero, i. e. the clouds are on the ground and visibility goes down to 100 feet. The weather of the Hebrides is notorious for its changeability, but actually seeing it change from reasonably sunny to abominable, from sun to slashing rain within minutes is a rare experience, even for me.
Murphy's law has it that I am on the farthest point near Kilmaluag, so there is really no other option than completing the circle.
By 2.30 pm I am back at the hostel, completely drenched. But like most hostels on these wet British Isles they have a drying room for the raingear. And after a hot shower I am ready to stroll into the "town". Broadford is the second largest town on Skye, but it really consists only of a few buildings.
When I mentioned earlier that prices in these touristy areas are daylight robbery, I was not exaggerating things. Have a look at the menu of Mrs. Armstrong's Firtree cafe next to the Broadford post office:

You see that a plate of plain chips without any dressing will cost you three pounds. Have a burger with chips and a salad, add to that the £2.80 they charge for a pot of coffee and your meal sums up to £17.80 - in France you can take a family of three, treat them to a five-course lunch with wine and coffee and still take some change home with you. Stranger, if you ever come this way, then shun these thieves. Boycotting them (preferably even bankrupting them) is the only way to get civilized prices returning to these places.
Want another example? I asked the hostel manager what he would charge if a guest would loose a room key (that happened to me at Honister Hause, and I was asked to pay £2 for the replacement). He told me he would have to charge five pounds, as he would have to travel to the nearest city on the mainland to have a replacement made. Sounds logic, until you know that at the local garage, a quarter mile from the hostel, they do key cutting - and you can bet the manager knew that. It's all part of the same game they are playing in these places.
In the evening I visit the pub again. It is interesting to talk to these fishermen. Their lives are so completely different from the ordinary nine-to-five. So are their problems. Two have just walked out on one of the large fish processing firms. Too little money for too hard a job. Supposedly there is a meeting with the boss next monday. Unfortunately I won't be around to hear the outcome of the dispute.

- 116100 km on the bike

After carefully studying the weather forecast I have set my next destination 500 kilometers further south, the hostel at Kielder in Northumberland. And my weather gamble seems to work; a few isolated showers hit me in the hills after I arrive back on the mainland on the A87, but the further I get to the South the brighter the weather becomes. For July the day is rather cool, even up here in Scotland. But the scenery once more pays for the shortcomings of the climate; the ride is fantastic.

At the end of Loch Garry lies the village of Invergarry, where I turn south onto the A82 towards Fort William.
With the constantly improving weather the ride is sheer bliss. I stay on that road all the way south to the Clyde river, which here forms the huge Firth of Clyde, another vast, fjordlike inlet. I am approaching Glasgow, and I am not willing to ride through the city centre after all that great countryside biking. Instead I join the motorway M8 at Erskine and traverse the city on the motorway ring road. I am back in the Scottish lowlands, of which Glasgow is the industrial heart. The countryside is fairly flat and by far not as exciting as the highlands. For that reason I stay on the motorway, the M74, all the way until just before Carlisle. The B6357 then leads me eastwards towards my destination, the Kielder Forest inside the Northumberland National Park. Just ten miles before arriving at the youth hostel a friendly sign tells me that I am back in England. The hostel is in the centre of the forest, north of the Kielder Water reservoir. The reservoir was built to store water for the heavy industry of Northern England. However, that industry is gone now, and these people now have all the water that the South of England is in dire need of - what a bizarre situation.
This part of the country is proud to be the remotest place in all of England - and among the wettest. People wanting to go shopping in a sizeable town will have to travel at least 40 miles to Hexham or even further to Carlisle or Newcastle upon Tyne. The area is well known among the astronomer community as the place to have the least light pollution from nearby cities when watching stars, and the night sky is supposed to be the clearest in the entire country - at least on those four days every year when they have a clear sky up here.
In spite of the long distance I arrive at 4 pm at the Kielder youth hostel. That gives me an opportunity to sample the local roads, and I take a ride along the Kielder Water to Bellingham, about 15 miles southeast of the hostel. The roads are completely deserted. Compared to the Lake District this fine part of the country is obviously much less of a favourite with the tourists, which makes it all the more attractive to me.
The one drawback that remains is the road surface; this is a problem affecting the entire British Isles. 90 percent of roads have been build using a tarmac rather unsuitable for motorbikes. The gravel it contains is too rough and the amount of tarmac in the mixture too small. The result is a road surface like this: /\/\/\/\/\/\ whereas on the continent the surface is a smooth line like this: _________. The result is that the surface of my tyres touching the tarmac is much reduced. This means that while leaning into a curve I can not bank the bike as deep as on the continent.
But worse is yet to come; once a road surface is worn out, a primitive repair method of spraying liquid tarmac onto the worn surface and covering it with loose gravel is employed throughout the UK. The gravel is supposed to be glued into place by the liquid tarmac. The resulting surface is much less even than before. As this cheap repair is repeated again and again, the road turns into a very bumpy ride.
Of course, the gravel stones are not very well seated by the tarmac and stones are ripped out of the surface by cars and especially trucks. Stones are more frequently ripped out of the tarmac where the forced applied by the truck tyres are highest - which is in curves.
As a consequence one often encounters loose gravel in curves, which of course is poison for motorbikes.
Another effect is that the ripped-out gravel exposes the "old" road surface underneath, resulting in a surface structure now looking like this: __/\__/\___/\__/\_. This in turn reduces the amount of tyre surface actually in contact with the road to next to zero. This of course is highly dangerous, regardless of whether the biker wants to bank the bike in a curve or just needs to brake hard.
This is the curse of biking in Britain.
The hostel in Kielder is one of the finest in England. I am bunked up with a chap about my age from Sunderland. There is a pub nearby where we have a pint and he tells me why he is here; he worked for 15 years as a labourer in the Nissan car factory - then it was closed, because production elsewhere was cheaper. He got the sack with thousands of others. He got sponsored a new education as a teacher for IT (of all things) at government expense, and just this morning his diploma arrived and he is now ready to get himself a job. So he told his wife and kids that he needs a break and went up here by car all by himself.
But the most astonishing thing he tells me is that he has never ever left the UK in his entire life. I would suggest that the government in London should impose a law that forces people to travel at least for a minimum abroad.

- 116650 km on the bike

The breakfast at the hostel is of the same fine quality than the rest of the place. The place is run by a chap from Brisbane. Sometimes I wonder whether there are any Aussies and Kiwis left down under, as they all appear to be in Europe all the time. But he is doing a fine job, and the tourist board has given the place five stars.
After that massive breakfast (I am probably putting on the weight I lost earlier in the trip) I am ready to tackle the countryside.
First I ride to Newcastle upon Tyne, home of the famous Brown Ale. But the big, busy city is somewhat not to my liking, so I ride back to Hexham instead. That more provincial town is more to my liking. I have a look at the famous abbey, founded in the year 674. There are lots of US American tourists her. For them this place is so old, they probably believe it was build right after the big bang.
Every second Saturday there is a farmer market in town - which means today. They also have the "Old Gaol", a medieval prison turned into a museum. It is the first-ever purpose build prison in England - seems that in the olden times the locals must have been a pretty rough bunch to deal with. Cross-border raids and family feuds apparently were very frequent. The laws prohibited selling foodstuff or weapons to the Scots - it was even outlawed for an Englishman to marry a Scottish woman 400 years ago.
At an outdoor shop I find what I am now looking for ever since I got my new boots; some decent leather cream to soften the boots and help my poor feet breaking them in.
The next item on my agenda is The Wall. I do not mean that famous rock album by Pink Floyd, but instead Hadrian's Wall.
In the second century the Romans had enough of the raids of the Pict tribesmen from the north (nowadays better known as the Scots) and they build the first "Iron Curtain" in history, a stone wall with integrated fortifications, spanning the entire width of the country from the mouth of the Clyde to the Coast of the North Sea.
4 miles north of Hexham is Chesters Roman Fort, where one can see the wall plus the fortification, which housed 500 cavalry legionnaires and their mounts in Roman times. The fort is in comparatively good condition and the layout of the fortification as well as the architecture of the buildings inside are clearly visible.
The Romans used an ingenious heating system up here; the floors were all build about two feet above ground, and the floors themselves were of stone slates sealed with mortar to make them airtight. Next they would light a charcoal fire in the space underneath the floor. Through ingeniously positioned stokeholes plus flues in the walls they insured that the rooms were nice and comfy in winter, without ever being pestered by smoke from the fires below. Just imagine; in the 16th century most houses in Wales didn't even have a chimney. Instead an open fire would burn in the centre of the house and the smoke would escape through a hole in the roof.
The visitors can freely walk through the site and see and touch everything. I even take a walk on a stretch of the original wall where it leads down to the nearby North Tyne River.
Another proof of the level of civilization in those times is the bathhouse near the fort, which is the antique equivalent of a Turkish Bath.
It takes me nearly three hours to see it all, and I suggest that the place is well worth a visit, should you ever be in the vicinity.
By 5 pm I am back at the hostel. I put the tarpaulin cover over Kitty - and in the same moment it starts to rain. That's what I call great timing.
I have the big, 6-bunk room all for myself today, so I read a bit in my book (R. L. Stephenson's "Weir of Hermiston").

- 116800 km on the bike

Today is a washout. The drizzle continuous all day, but in a comfortable hostel like this that is no problem. I can update my diary. It is unfortunate that most of the hostels in the UK do have Internet access, but just with a designated PC offering just a browser. No chance for FTP, no possibility to connect a USB stick or connecting ones own laptop to the web. I shall see if I can find an Internet cafe tomorrow if the weather improves.
Going to the pub is no good today, as there is the soccer world championship's final game on today at 6 pm (shown in the pub on a big screen, yuk!), so I rather read on in my book.
The next day is overcast, but dry. I ride into Hexham and see if I can get on the web, but the one place offering access is doing an upgrade today, so no luck for me.
Well, I haven't updated my homepage in three weeks, so for the first time since the beginning of the journey I have to use my "alternative method" to get online by seeking access through a wireless LAN network.
I will not go into details, but you can find related information here if you are interested in these things.
So I end up for four hours in a comfortable tearoom with my laptop and catch up with the online community.
It is just early afternoon when I am all done, so there is time to see the nearby Housesteads Roman fort, another prime example of a fort on the Hadrian's Wall.
Back at the hostel I visit the pub. The locals are very friendly in this remote area. Talking, drinking beer and playing pool billiard are a pleasant way to wind down the day.

- 116950 km on the bike

Today it is time to say good-bye to this place. Because the weather should be quite good and even improving further south I have asked the warden yesterday to book me into Salisbury hostel in Wiltshire - a clean 530 kilometers away to the south.
I am using the M6 motorway to get me as far south as Birmingham. South of the city I get onto the B3400. This road was the main trunk road from Birmingham towards the South until a few years ago. That road was a pain in the back, because it was small and had to bear an enormous amount of traffic. Then the new, big four-lane A34 was build, and all the traffic is now using it. Except me of course. Because now this older road is virtually empty and a bliss to bike. And the little towns and villages along the road like Henley-in-Arden or Stratford-upon-Avon are very nice. North of Stratford I do visit my old gliding club, where I used to fly from during my life in England. Conditions are excellent for gliding today, and though today is an ordinary Tuesday there is an astonishing number of people that managed to shy away from their jobs today, plus the usual group of unemployed or retired members that one always finds on the airfield.
I stay for an hour and get all the updates on who did what, new members and everything else not normally found on the clubs website.
South of Stratford I take the A429, an ancient Roman road called the Fosse Way towards Stow-on-the-Wold. This is the Cotswold countryside, another little treasure unheard of outside the British Isles.
Following the A361 I come through Burford, Lechlade and finally to Swindon. That is a former railway town which successfully recovered from the decline of the railways by attracting the Honda motor company into this rural backwater, turning Swindon into one of the largest car manufacturing towns in the UK.
Via Marlborough I finally arrive at the Salisbury youth hostel. That place is right downtown, but nicely off the main road in an old villa.
The reception looks more like a bar. Everywhere are posters, advertising the fine selection of wines, beers and spirits available from reception. In fact the place is a licensed bar, which from my point of view is a quite radical change compared with the rules and intentions of hostelling in the olden days.
I can well remember the times when alcohol was strictly prohibited in hostels and anyone found drunk on the premises would face the wrath of the hostelliers.
After I have "moved in" I take a stroll into the nearby city centre. The tourist information tells me that there is a proper internet cafe in town, so I won't have to seek an "alternative connection" while in town. And near the hostel is the Frothblowers pub, which currently features a selection of excellent guest ales, so I have a very relaxing evening there.

- 117500 km on the bike

I hit the road at 10 am this morning. First stop is the motor factor where Martin, a mate from my time in the UK is working. [Postscript 2013: he doesn't work there any more and the shop has gone out of business, probably because of Martin quitting] He has the day off today, so I decide to pop out to his home place later on.
Next on the agenda is another visit to my old friend Anna in Newbury. After that brief visit the day after my arrival in the UK I now take some more time and show her some of the pictures I have taken during the journey
On my way back I check out Martins place in West Overton; no one is at home and the neighbour tells me that he is out playing golf. I can't blame him, the weather is absolutely brilliant.
So back to Salisbury. I need a pipe, but my tobacco tin is empty. No problem, I still have two tins from that excellent Swiss tobacco. But when I look for the tins they are nowhere to be found and I realize that I must have left them with my camping equipment in Nick's caravan in France.
Breaking down with the bike in the middle of the Spanish outback is rather inconvenient, but running out of pipe tobacco is a major disaster.
But luckily they still have a tobacconist in Salisbury town centre (they are a dying breed as pipe and cigar smokers are getting fewer and fewer), where I can buy tobacco, re-charge my lighters with fuel and stock up on pipe cleaners - problem solved!

- 117650 km on the bike

Next morning I check out that Internet cafe; for £3 I can stay online for an hour, which is just fine. I also use the opportunity to get a ferry ticket for next Saturday to leave England and return to the continent. It is a weekend booking, and on short notice, so the charge is £19 at Speedferries. I check on the two main competitors; they charge £50 and £60 for the same service. Speedferries has only a single ship, the Speed One (though rumors about a second one are abundant), which can carry about 190 cars and a maximum of 8 motorbikes per sailing. The only sailing which still has capacity for bikes is at 17.30 hours, so I will arrive fairly late in France (even losing a further hour because of the time difference).
Afterwards I do the unavoidable if one is in Salisbury; I go and visit the famous Cathedral. I will not deny that the building is impressive, but Father Time has done its bit; whole sections of the building look like giant mice have taken a bite out of the stonework. A section of the building is scaffolded and apparently already 3 million pounds have been invested in the repairs. The work is supposed to continue until at least 2015 and the final costs will be well in excess of £20.000.000. Considering that the percentage of church-goers in England is rapidly approaching zero (and that remaining fraction of a percent deeply divided into the different creeds of Christianity, Islam and other religions), I can only assume that this repair work is done just for historical reasons, as pragmatism must suggest tearing it down and finding some more useful purpose for this prime piece of ground.
Rummaging through ancient cathedrals makes a man thirsty, so I have a pint at the "Old Ale House" pub. The place is a fine example of another bizarre piece of regulations so common in this country; while meals are served smoking is prohibited at the bar - but one yard away from it at the tables it is perfectly legal.
All these ridiculous rules are just the preamble to prohibit smoking in public places in England completely (same as in Scotland), which will take effect approximately in July 2007.
In the evening I ask the warden of the hostel to book me into Canterbury hostel for tomorrow night - my last night in the UK for a while.
Then I sit outside on the porch and have another pipe. I am joined by two young chaps, one from Berlin, the other from the Bretagne ("Brittany") in France. By sheer coincidence all three of us speak French, so we have a nice, relaxing chat while sampling a bottle of Black Sheep Ale from the hostel bar. The Frenchman has the same opinion than myself concerning vacating in summertime; why go south where it is burning hot, while it is nice and comfortable north of France?
And the German wants to improve his English - which of course is not helped if he continues to speak French here, which he speaks accent-free.
The following day I pack my stuff and set out eastwards. As Newbury is on my way, I check in on Martins workplace; today he is in and we decide on the spot that we should go out tonight in West Overton and that I can stay at Martins place. As my ferry leaves late tomorrow afternoon I can easily reach Dover if I leave from West Overton tomorrow morning.
This unexpected change of plan means that I have time to bike the local countryside - and the day is perfect for it; blue sky, bright sunshine, but a nice and cooling breeze from the east keeps the temperature in check.
For me this is a ride along memory lane, re-visiting all my local biking roads I used to travel on after a days work in the office.
Some of them, like e. g. the Ridgeway I can't bike with Kitty - she's just too heavy.

At 6.30 pm I am supposed to meet Martin at Hell's Corner Farm on Inkpen Common near Hungerford; he has to replace the timing belt on a friend's K-series 1.4 liter Rover engine. I have offered assistance, as you can never have enough hands on a job like this.
Though Sally knows Inkpen Common, finding that strangely named farm isn't easy, so I ask at a pub around the corner. Everyone agrees that the place is just a mile away, but on how to get there from this pub turns out to be a topic hotly debated by three major factions among the patrons. I take note of all three suggested routes and set off. Half a mile on Martin is waiting for me and guides me to the farm - on a route not matching any of the three suggested tracks.
Doing the timing belt or carrying out any type of repair on a British build car is never as straightforward as it is with ordinary cars, so it takes until 8.30 pm to get the job done. Then off on the A4 to Martins place and into the local pub. We have a couple of pints, and luckily the times when pubs had to close at 11 pm are finally over, so we stay until about 1 am.

- 117900 km on the bike

Martin is off to work by 8 am. Being a man of leisure I have a lay-in until 10 am. But then it is time to get under way to Dover harbour. First a quick visit and a farewell to Martin at his shop in Newbury, and then eastwards through southern England. The weather is just as it was yesterday, though the easterly wind has freshened to a stiff breeze.
Again I take the country roads instead of the motorway. Only the densely populated stretch from Reigate to Aylesford I do on the M25. From Aylesford the A20 trunk road used to carry all the traffic for those last 70 miles through Kent to Dover. Like the old A34 this route was a pain in the back, because the traffic was so dense. But then a few years ago the construction of the M20 motorway was finished and the A20 became a quiet backwater road.
Maidstone and Ashford are along that road and finally I arrive on top of the white cliffs of Dover. The easterly wind has turned into a roaring gale, and even from up here I can see that the waters of the English channel are furious today. That's going to be a rough crossing.
I arrive with an hour to spare and at the parking lot in the harbour I meet a guy on a Harley. He's a Brit, but has a house south of Bologne to which he is now heading from his home in Leicester. The narrow seat on his Harley is giving him grief and he looks longingly at Kitty's comfortable touring seat. We have a nice chat, especially so as the ferry is an hour late. This is not a rare occasion; the port congestion at Dover Harbour is legendary, and ferries have often to wait for a long time before a berth becomes vacant.
On board I get the laptop out and charge Sally with the maps of France and Germany and plot a route towards Luxembourg. You can download the route here.
Because of the ferry delay it is 8.30 pm French time when we arrive in Bologne. But the local youth hostel is just 5 minutes away. When I arrive there, several buses from the UK are parked outside - and a sign in the door announces that the hostel is full. I check out two other cheap hotels in town - everything is full.
The main reason for this is that in July and August all of France is on vacation. If you ever want to see Paris, do it during those two month, because no one is at home and all attractions you can enjoy virtually on your own. But seaside resorts like Bologne and especially the south of France are booked out month in advance.
Due to these bizarre French holiday habits, finding some digs around here is obviously impossible. I decide to continue onwards to St. Omer, a town further inland. By the time I arrive there it is rapidly approaching 10 pm. All I need is a pillow to put my head down now, so I check out the Formule 1 and the Mister Bed, another budget chain. Both are full. Sod these Frogs and their silly habits.
I ride on until I am just out of town. In a small forest 4 miles south I find an unpaved road marked "proprieté privé". That sign is obviously meaningless at this time of the year, as everyone is on vacation. That small woodland is all I need. There is a heap of last years leaves on the ground which will provide all the mattress I need. An old bucket turned upside down makes a good seat for me to smoke a sundowner pipe, and by 11.30 I am fast asleep at the heart of mother nature.
What a return to the continent.

- 118350 km on the bike

Below is the usual map with my GPS tracklog and some trip markers.