305 miles
Today, is really the first day of the adventure. For whatever reason, I had butterflies in my stomach last night. Something about making sure everything is ready to go and I hit my timelines.
Mum was up bright and early with me for breakfast before departure. She had left the remaining sushi from last night on the counter. I chose to go with muesli again. Then it was off to the Sandbach Service Station to meet up with Martyn and Mark. Our timings were pretty much spot on. I arrived and was filling up with petrol when they arrived right behind me.
The ride round Manchester was quite painful with rush hour traffic to contend with. After that our progress was quite brisk, first stop was Warwick for toilets, tea, pork pies for me, and petrol. Then off to Cobham services for lunch.
For one reason or another Cobham was always going to be a stopping point for me on this trip. When I was picking up the bike, Neil from RoadTrip, took my license to get a photocopy of it. While standing there, I had the thought that I need to remember to get it back. That was the last I thought of it until I was almost in Peterborough. Too late to turn around and grab it. I did call them from Peterborough but no one was there to answer. Later, as I was driving down the M62, Neil called me to bet I couldn’t guess what he had found. Anyway, we planned to connect on Monday to discuss how to get the license back. He offered to come out and meet us so we did not have to side trip to far. Cobham made the most sense it is close to Woking and exit or so south of the Roadtrip HQ. Anyway, Martyn was going that way on Monday, so he stopped in and picked it up on his way to Brighton. As a bonus they gave him a scenic route down there.
The rest of the ride to the docks at Newhaven was uneventful with one stop for petrol. Martyn was already there and we lined up with, scooting up past one car.
It took a while for us to be allowed on to the boat. But once on board, we were quickly installed in the bar for a beer. I had a Guinness, not by choice but that is what was bought for me.
There really isn’t much to do on the boat between Newhaven and Dieppe. We did stop into the cafeteria and get food. Not really much to write home about. I think this is the name of the boats
You can see where the Cote D’Albatre got its name. It actually looks a lot like the coastline we left behind in England. Apparently, it was a favorite subject of the impressionist painters.
We were treated to most of a quite beautiful sunset. We had to go below decks to get to the bikes before the sun went down. By the time we left the ship it was dark. Customs and Immigration in France was a non-event. As we left the secure area, there as a beautiful, probably Belgian, shepherd dog barking his head off at everyone who went past.
The trip to the hotel was mostly non-eventful. Mark knows the way through town but roadworks had closed everything down and he had not mounted his SatNav/GPS. For whatever reason, I’d actually mounted my Quadlock to the bike and set the directions on my phone. So, I actually led the team up to the hotel.
