V2XS

This was a long weekend in glorious weather at Ragley Hall for the Adventure Bike Rider Festival. Our team consisted of Doug, Peter, Martin, Sam and myself and we were all camping. I was trying out the idea of “van camping” with a camp bed and sleeping bag in the back of my van, whereas Dougie had the luxury of a full size single bed complete with mattress inside his much bigger van. Everyone else was in tents.

This is a video summary from the event…

And here follows a number of photos with captions…

From Cruit Island I drove back to England and then did a tour of family visiting Sara at her caravan in Keswick as well as her home in Preston, Felicity in Padiham, Chris and Corinne near Newcastle, Lucy and family in Horsham together with a visit to Nanna and taking in a weekend at the Adventure Bike Rider Festival.

Keswick with Sara

This is the video of this part of the trip..

Hedley on the Hill with Chris and Corinne

A visit to Chris and Corinne’s smallholding at Hedley on the Hill, near Newcastle, with the usual long list of jobs to help with. One big job was cutting, baling, wrapping and storing the winter feed for the animals. Fortunately the weather was hot and sunny – perfect conditions for the harvest, but hot work for the farm labourer. Another big job was giving the cows a pedicure. Both of these are shown in the video :

For the rest I’ll let the photos speak for themselves, with captions to explain a bit more.

Padiham with Felicity

I spent a few days with Felicity at her smart new apartment in Padiham.

Horsham with Lucy and family

I took the train down to Horsham from Newcastle and it worked very well. I spent the weekend with Lucy, Dan, Bella and Hollie and had the opportunity to go and visit Nanna as well.

For the second week of our Irish trip Dougie and I moved further North to Donegal and were joined for a few days by Dougie’s daughter Millie. We were in a cottage on Cruit Island and once again the weather was rather mixed. We went into Donegal itself and explored the town and the Castle as well as touring around the local area on our bikes.

The video of the trip is here :

The “Old Duffers Trip” has become and annual tradition and the previous two trips have been to the Isle of Man and Normandie. For this year we decided to go to Ireland and moved the date to June in the hope of getting reasonable weather – a vain hope as it turned out.
The trip video is here :

In previous years we have all used old motorbikes and part of the entertainment has been the ongoing maintenance and running repairs that these machines inevitably require. This had started to impinge on the enjoyment of the trip so we agreed that newer bikes would be allowed for this trip. Unfortunately Keith didn’t get the memo and turned up on his 1970’s Honda 400/4. As he lives in Northern Ireland and had the shortest distance to travel we were hopeful that this wouldn’t be a problem. The reality was somewhat different…

I had the longest distance to cover to get to our destination in Galway, on the West coast of Ireland and set off a few days before the others. I stayed overnight with Alexander in Limoges and dropped off Hebe Dog for her holidays, then on to Le Mans for another overnight stop. I took the ferry from Cherbourg to Dublin, a 20 hour crossing, but with a cabin of my own and calm seas the journey was very comfortable. I then drove across Ireland to Oughterard and stayed in a B&B for a couple of days before checking in to our holiday accommodation.

On arriving at our rental house and meeting up with the other guys we spotted that the oven door was broken, which became the first project to work on. The house was set on the shore of Lough Corrib in a lovely location. The weather was a bit mixed, generally cool and showery but with occasional bouts of sun.

We managed a few outings to interesting places : The landing site of Alcock and Brown’s first transatlantic flight, the site of the transmitter that sent the first communications across from Ireland to America and a trip across a sand causeway to a remote island cut off at high tide.

We took it in turns on kitchen duties, which is always an entertaining part of the trip especially with a malfunctioning oven. We had no real mechanical issues with the modern bikes although Dougie did spend some time investigating an elusive tapping noise on his Honda CRF (later traced to the cam chain tensioner).

Predictably it was Keith’s old Honda that proved the most troublesome. The first issue was a binding front brake – the Honda has a pivoting bracket and the pivot was partially seized. Unfortunately the front brake locked up just as he turned into the gravel drive at our accommodation dumping him and bike on the gravel in front of the house. Apart from dented pride this also resulted in a broken front brake lever and smashed indicator. The brake lever was patched up with jubilee clips as a temporary measure and duct tape sorted out the indicator lens.

The next issue to emerge was the Honda electrics – the charging system stopped working meaning the battery discharged over time and it was touch and go as to whether he would be able to get back before the battery ran out. This required a number of bump starts as there wasn’t enough power to drive the electric starter. We bought a battery charger and that seemed to restore the battery enough for him to get home at the end of the trip.

Having suffered pretty mixed weather on this trip, I suggested the team might like to come to the south of France next year. But this would require everyone having a reliable bike to cover the distance. Keith probably needs to have a clear out of some of his antique machinery and get something more up to date for next year.

I went to visit Georgina in Canada in May, which involved a flight from Paris to Calgary and then on to Kelowna. I thought I would take the opportunity to spend a few days in Paris before the trip and invited my siblings to join. My brother Chris agreed to join but sister Sara wasn’t keen. We spent a pleasant couple of days doing a great deal of walking around all the major sites : Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, Musee d’Orsay, Place de la Concord, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame and more. We stayed in a cheap hotel near the Gare du Nord which was very convenient. I was pleased to see the impressionists in the Musee d’Orsay again – on my previous two trips to Paris I failed to book far enough in advance and couldn’t get in.

The flight to Canada was long (12 hours) but passed smoothly and George met me in Kelowna. She is working as a Yoga teacher and didn’t have any leave to spare so for most of the day I was left to amuse myself, which was absolutely fine. I worked out a run route from her apartment, along by Okanagan lake and back through Canyon Park. I also found a great coffee shop nearby that did lovely pastries, so it was just like home from home for me. I also rented a bike for two weeks that allowed me to get around and explore a bit more.

Georgina’s apartment has a small balcony with room for a couple of chairs, but it doesn’t see much sun. However, the building does have a very large roof terrace equipped with comfortable chairs and a barbeque, which we were able to make good use of, and there was no-one else there !