The Ride to Cowes…

Should have stopped as Simon suggested, but missed the last service staion at St With...

Heading for Liege and a maddening set of navigational mistakes...

My ride to Cowes was long and tiring…and frustrating…! I made a number of navigational blunders that I could not blame on Gi-Gi… Mistakes that cost me more than two extra hours of riding, added about 140 extra kilometres to my ride, and turned what was always going to be a long day, into a bit of a marathon… Some rides are best forgotten, and this was one of those… Thirteen hours after leaving Steinsel in Luxembourg, I rode up a steep little road and into East Cowes, where Borge and his wife Antonia were waiting for me…

Welcome to Belgium... Tsk, tsk...forgot to refuel where it's cheaper did you...?

I left Luxembourg early enough, with a bleary-eyed Simon waving me goodbye, and probably heading back to the comfort of his bed…!! Despite my plans for an early night, we had sat up talking and having the odd drink until after midnight, and then I still pottered about getting some of my kit packed and ready to load…

Simon had warned me to refuel before leaving the Luxembourg border, as fuel was almost 205 cheaper here than in Belgium… I still had over 150 km of range left in the tank, which would take me well over the border, but I wanted to take advantage of the saving anyway… I zoomed through the empty streets of Steinsel and Hunsdorf before hooking up with the A7 and riding due north towards Saint Vith, which because of the yellow signboards, thought was still in Luxembourg…

The border was actually at Wemperhardt, which I rode right through without even realizing that I had entered Belgium… My first mistake of the day…

The Big Fella was very excited when he saw this sign... He was hoping for a twirl around this famous racetrack...

I hammered on, heading for Liege, planning to skirt the city by riding around its northern edge, but somehow managed to take the wrong exit on the highway and ended up on an unplanned and very frustrating half hour tour of the highways and byways, very close to the city centre… I made four detours before finally giving up on my original route in utter frustration, and setting a new course for a village to the east of Liege…. There I pulled over to welcome the calming influence of nicotine, got my Europe Map out of the Tank-bag pocket, and tried to figure out where I was, and how the hell I had got there in the first place… I was very annoyed with myself and from then on, things went from bad to worse…

I was desperate to avoid another unplanned detour through a major city, and wanted to stay as far south of Brussels as was possible… I rode east towards Tournai, making a few more errors at some of the roundabouts in towns and villages that I did not bother to get the names of… I had a very bad case of the “mutters” and could not seem to concentrate enough to ride confidently, overshooting turn-offs and mis-interpreting the instructions I was getting from my GPS…

I got around Tournai without mishap, but then overshot my planned turn-off and entered France far to the south of where I had intended to… This mistake cost me 48 km, as the next off-ramp was almost 23 kms down the drag, and by now I was not interested in trying to find new routes to get me to Calais… I rode all the way back into Belgium and then headed north again towards Dunkirk…

The count through Europe was mounting... So were my stress levels...!!

We thundered on towards the coast, past Dunkirk and on to Calais...

These guys had just returned from a long run through to Italy and Switzerland...

By now I was well and truly annoyed, and began thinking about pulling over and calling it a day… I was that frustrated… My arrival time in Southampton had gone out by more than an hour already, and I still had over 400 kms to ride… I pressed on and got to the Eurotunnel entrance in Calais, after refueling in Nieppe on the French border…

More bad news awaited me at the ticket booth…

The previous night I had tried to book a ticket on the train, and was quoted €57.00… My card was rejected, so I decided to buy the ticket on arrival… I nearly fell off the bike when the teller told me the ticket was now €110.00…!! Almost double the on-line booking price…!! I rode into the waiting area, shaking my head all the way… Things had gone decidedly pear-shaped for me and began wondering what else could possibly go wrong for me…

Ready to roll...

Parked inside the Eurotunnel train...

The Eurotunnel train was quite an experience for me… I watched in amazement as cars were driven onto the upper deck of the enclosed carriage of the train, entering through a door on the side of the train and then riding up a ramp onto the upper level… Bikes were the last to be loaded and four other bikers returning from a trip through France, Switzerland and Italy joined the Big Fella and I as we rode through the doors and parked as instructed by the loading staff… With barely a bump, the train rolled out of Calais and headed under the English Channel for the 50 km trip to Folkestone in England, just east of Dover… We stood next to our bikes for the half hour it took to get us across to the U.K., chatting about our respective trips and the conditions we had experienced…

At Folkestone, all the vehicles exited through the front of the train, and being right at the very back, meant we rode off last. Within minutes of exiting the front carriage, we were out on the highway… The overhead road-signs advising that this was the road to London, had me thinking about my family, who were almost in touching distance… This had me both excited and apprehensive… It had been almost eighteen months since I had seen Robyn, and more than a year since I had seen Vanessa… A jumble of questions went through my mind as I skirted London to the south, and headed east towards Farnborough and Basingstoke…

“What would they look like…? How much had they changed…? How much had I changed…?”

Under a darkening sky, we head for Maidstone, and the highway leading down to the coast...

Another birthday for the Big Fella, all the while skipping along at 128 km/h and begging for fuel as usual...

The Red Falcon awaits the entry of the Big Fella onto its lower deck... The end of the day's ride was nigh...

I finally rolled into Southampton, after refueling again at Eastleigh… I had ridden hard and fast, and had chewed through my fuel to try and get to Cowes before dark… I rode down to the docks and boarded the Red Funnel ferry at 7.00pm, bound for Cowes on the Isle of Wight… I had been on the road for 12 hours and it took another hour before the ferry docked in West Cowes… From there I got on board the Chain Ferry, which is basically a barge that is dragged across the estuary which splits the town of Cowes…

Borge and Antonia were waiting for me on the East bank, and it was a joyful reunion to say the least… I had last seen them in Ghana more than a year ago… Cowes was crowded with thousands of people who had either come to race the 800 or so yachts which had entered for Cowes Week, or just to watch the spectacle from the shoreline… Music blared from various pubs and beer tents, as I followed Borge and Antonia up the road and then rode the wrong way down a one way street and into the yacht basin, where they had arranged VIP parking for the Big Fella, right under the offices of the Sun Sail complex.. Vehicles are not allowed into the area, and I wondered how they had managed to arrange this rather special treatment for me… It probably had something to do with Antonia batting here eyelashes at all the right people…!!

A nervous smile as I near Cowes and my reunion with Borge... "Be afraid, Liver... Be very afraid...!!"

Within minutes my kit was stowed aboard “SunSail 38” and I changed out of my riding gear and followed Borge into the nearest beer tent…

Despite being knackered from the long ride (all 925 km of it…!!) the energy that the massive crowd gave off was infectious, and my exhaustion was quickly forgotten after the first few pints of Guinness had slid smoothly down my throat…

And from there, things went downhill at a steady rate of knots…

©GBWT 2010