Western Europe

I've made it to Ancona and am now sat on the ferry waiting to head off to Greece. This is the first opportunity I've had to properly relax, I really need it having ridden 1200 miles in 4 days.

I always knew the first couple of days were going to be really rushed - I have to make it to Istanbul very quickly. But actually it has been very doable, I probably could have got here in 2 or 3 days if I really needed to.

It's been surprisingly difficult to say goodbye to everything and everyone in the last couple weeks. Surprising in that I thought that I would just want to be on the road as quickly as possible but honestly there was a part of me that wanted to stay. Now, however, I would quite happily stay on the road for as long as I can.

I was booked onto the 11:20 train to France so needed to leave Chalgrove around 8am. At 9:30 I finally set off.

Got to Folkestone as quickly as possible only to discover I could have stayed in bed. Apparently some illegals has kicked in the door to the tunnel and were trying to walk through. Naturally this meant that the entire tunnel had to be closed indefinitely.

There is no way I'm making it to Malaysia, I can't even get to France.

While we were hanging around waiting, a group of a couple hundred bikers turned up all wearing jackets with an "English Outlaws" patch. They were quickly herded off to a secure section in case (and this is the genuine reason given by the rozzers) "another gang turns up and they start shooting each other." Never mind the name or the fact they were on bikes, a 30 second conversation with them and you realise they are mostly just normal people.

But then again, I never really have understood the actions of the authorities at the tunnel. Last time I was there we arrived to find police guarding all the entrances of the terminal because "the fire alarm had gone off." To this day I have not been able to work out why they didn't call a fire engine instead.

The first several hundred miles of France are mind numbingly tedious, just never ending motorways. And raining. But suddenly I ended up in Switzerland in blue skies and sunshine.

There is a drawback to all this sun, I've ended up with some interesting sunburn.

Ended up in Ancona last night with plently of time to spare for the ferry.

Well earned.

I woke the next day to discover that I am the worst camper in the world

This is the only peg which is actually in the ground, I hadn't bothered with the others.


The bike has been attracting a lot of attention, mostly because of the tyres I think. People are interested in why I am carrying off road tyres but probably don't really expect the response. A typical conversation is either:

Random Biker: So where are you going?
Me: Kuala Lumpur
RB: Oooo, ok. We're only going to Germany/France/Switzerland/Italy.

or

Random Biker: So where are you going?
Me: Kuala Lumpur
RB: Hahahaha, you idiot. Thats the craziest thing I've ever heard of.

But people are genuinely interested and friendly. I've had a lot of good wishes, hopefully some of the people I've met will be reading this now - would be great to hear from you if you are, find out how you are getting on. Hope you have all got where you were going safely.

To be honest it was great fun struggling to the top of the mountains in Switzerland and watching all the guys on Ninjas and GSXRs with their jaws on the floor.

Have to mention Luis and Virginia who I met at a campsite in Senegallia. They are exceptionally friendly, caring and generous people. Luis, hope you have a great time in Poland, safe riding.


Language is becoming a bit of an issue sometimes. I got chatting to an Italian guy and his Cuban wife somewhere in Switzerland. In about half an hour we had worked out that we all like motorbikes, that in summer it is hot and in winter it is cold. Really broke down some barriers there. No idea what will happen in places where I really know nothing about the language.


The bike has been doing surprisingly well considering how heavy it is. It has been a bit of a struggle to keep the front wheel on the ground at times, particularly accelerating uphill after a hairpin, but I think I've sorted it out now.

That being said there are one or two things which have gone wrong...

1. Speedo stopped working on day 2. I think the gearing in the drive unit is probably worn or shattered (heard of this happening on Transalps before) but won't be able to confirm until I get to Istanbul. If I'm right it won't be fixed until I get home. On the up side, when I get back the odometer will still say 24k miles. Will be really easy to sell. So for the moment I am relying on the GPS. Except the GPS isn't wired in yet (another Istanbul job). Cue the music, it's time for another amazing bodge job.

I can see nothing going wrong with this

2. Alarm has developed a mind of its own. Before I left you could have picked the bike up, dropped it, picked it up again, thrown it into the back of a van and driven off and the alarm would not have made a sound. Now, the alarm will go off if a mosquito flies past and farts.

3. Heat. I put a luggage rack on to keep the bags from resting on the exhaust. Well, they are doing that but I hadn't realised quite how much heat is put out from the pipes and even the fairly decent gap isn't enough to stop the luggage from overheating. So much so that my patent-pending hyper(tm)-dry(tm) pannier(tm) waterproofing(tm) system(tm) (a bin bag) experienced a slight melting incident.

4. Fuel guage. For a while I thought the fuel level sensor had packed up and was reading as permanently full since the needle hadn't gone down at all for 3 hours. It later transpired that the reason for this was that in 3 hours I had barely moved.

5. Brake light. A random Italian biker pulled up next to me and shouted that my brake light wasn't working. After a brief investigation I discovered that the Italian biker was, in fact, blind.


So that's the first 4 days in Europe. It was very rushed and I would have liked to have been able to take the slow roads though Italy and France, next time I will. Early tomorrow morning I arrive in Igoumenitsa and a day or 2 later in Istanbul.