118 miles
When I realized that I would be arriving in Newhaven either late at night, getting a hotel, or early in the morning off the overnight ferry, it seemed a waste just to head back to Woking and drop off the motorcycle first thing. I have an old friend, Robert Ashworth, who lives in Havant which is just down the road so I decided to give him a call. He said the dates worked for him and we’d be in touch. When I originally reached out, I had one set of dates but things got moved around and so I was a few days off. He thought I might have blown him off but a few days late, he had the morning off and we were able to connect. Finding out I was on a motorcycle, Rob decided to meet me on his at a halfway point so we could ride to breakfast. He set our meeting point as Arundel station an hour, on the slow road, west of Newhaven.
The ship landed on time at 5am and getting through immigration and customs was a breeze. I was on the road by 5:30am. Given we weren’t supposed to meet until 7:45am, I had plenty of time to kill. I took it easy along the coast road towards Brighton. I did have to stop and switch the bike back to MPH so that I was not going too slowly down the road. I stopped in Brighton to take a picture of the remains of the pier. The last time I was in Brighton it was functionally still a pier although not open to the public. Since then fires and storms have taken their toll on it. All that remains is the metal ribs.
I arrived at Arundel station a little after 6:30 and checked in the lads who were enjoying warmth and sunshine in Brittany. As you a see England is doing its best to hold on to grey and gloom. Anywhere else in the world, I’d say it would burn off in an hour or two. That’s not a good bet in England. Anyway with time to kill, I took a look around the town of Arundel.
My first find was a 12th century church at top of the hill. It was across the street from a massive cathedral and Arundel is only a tiny town. I always think of the US having lots of churches but England has lots of old and big churches.
Down the street was the gates to the castle. It wasn’t open but it does look quite impressive.
I thought this was quite a juxtaposition once open a time there would be a lot of horse in and out of the castle and up and down the streets here. Today, German engineering packs 135 horsepower into to the space of a single horse. After my wander, I went back to the station to wait for Rob.
It was so cool to see him pull into the station on a Ducati Multistrada 1260S. After hugs and greetings, he said the plan was for us to go to the Goodwood Aerodrome cafe for breakfast and that it would open at 8am. We took off into rush hour traffic and headed down the main London road towards Goodwood. When we got there, on the dot of eight, the cafe was closed. However, its sister operation the Motor Circuit cafe on the other side of the track was open.
We had a great time catching up over a full English breakfast and many cups of tea and coffee. We estimated that it had been over 30 years since we’d last seen each other. Lisa, Danielle, and I (no Tristan) had stayed with him as we toured the countryside and visited Portsmouth. As you can see, we are older and grayer but just as handsome as ever 😊
It turned out that there was a classic car day going on at the track that day. We got to watch a few classics hauling there way down the straight. Only the air-cooled 911 seemed to be making gains on the cars ahead of it. The rest seemed to run around with a consistent gap between them.
I asked Rob for recommendations of a route to get back to Woking without taking main roads. He suggested the following waypoints to get me there – Midhurst, Haselmere and Dorking. I plugged the first into the SatNav and took off from Goodwood as Rob went the other way. The first leg was easy with some beautiful country roads. I plugged in the next stop Haselmere and took off. The roads were great but they kept getting narrower and more overgrown. I eventually made it to Haslemere having seen some fantastic countryside and rolling forest. I then set the SatNav for Dorking and set off again. As impossible as it seems, the lanes got narrower and more overgrown. It was at this point that I remembered that leaving Newhaven, I’d set the SatNav for curvy roads and it was certainly showing me them. I’d also at the last intersection stalled the GS for the first time on the trip, I think. On pulling out I’d gone to the right side of the lane. As I said, the lanes were narrow and there were no markings. Coming towards me was a truck. For the life of me, I couldn’t think why it was not pulling over to his right. Then, I realized it was me who was on the wrong side of the road. At the next town, I stopped for water, a cheese and pickle sandwich and to reset the SatNav. As I’d spent the last couple of hours ripping up and down country lanes, I decided to head straight for Woking and take Dorking off the list.
I made it back to the Roadtrip offices without any further side of the road issues. As you need to bring the bike back full of gas, I programmed a station close to the offices as an intermediate stop. It turned out there were roadworks and the SatNav kept sending me down as street that was closed. Ultimately, I drove back out of town to a station I knew on the main road and filled up there and then went to drop off the bike.
I have not gone back and added up my mileage day by day but it should be pretty close to 1766.5 miles. That’s the official number for the trip. After dropping the bike, I took and Uber to the hotel, cleaned up and put on clean clothes that I had stashed in my suitcase and left behind. The choice for dinner was easy – the Indian restaurant in the hotel. The food was great but the martini they served was easily the worst I’d ever had.
Until next time.
