Waiting for Spring and Summer

Ginny has been SORNed since the beginning of December and I got my 3 months tax refund as a result. 2 and a bit months on and I have to start thinking about re-taxing her. She'll be 6 in March, and being that age means her annual test is due, so although I might not normally get riding again until April, I have to tax her from 1st March and get her up to my local MOT centre, Ryders Motorcycles, for when that runs out on the 17th. Add to that, it's also insurance renewal time. If my car insurance is anything to go by, I can expect a big jump in premium. 😟

For those who have been following recent posts, you'll know that I am off to Europe in the summer, with Paul and Phil. I'd got the hotels booked (it's always good to get something booked early, even if I change later on), when Paul announced he'd be cutting the trip short by a couple of days! Consequently, I've had to change the hotel bookings for the couple of days after the Assen MotoGP. One of the bookings, I was able to just cancel one of the rooms. On the second, I found a cheaper alternative for one room, so cancelled the whole thing. Knowing who was going to be where and when, prompted the booking of the channel crossings. There was some talk (not sure now if Paul went down this route), of coming back on the ferry, rather than LeShuttle. Ferry is cheaper but takes longer. We were all going out on the shuttle anyway, so Phil and I decided to stick with it coming back. As I say, not sure if Paul is tunneling or ferrying back now.

I had pretty much got everything sorted for week 2 (Phil and I in Germany), what to visit along the way, etc, then a couple of weeks back I had this message, through Booking.Com messaging, from one of the hotels, saying they needed to verify my credit card, and giving me a link to click on. This seemed strange, so I contacted both the hotel and Customer Services. Customer Services said the hotel shouldn't be asking that, advised not to use the link, and confirmed my booking was still valid. The message said I could lose the booking if I didn't comply. I didn't get a response from the hotel. To be on the safe side, I located another hotel and booked that. If it all turned out to be OK, I could always cancel. Then, a week or so later, I got the same message again. Once again I contacted Customer Services, this time though, I cancelled the booking. I've still had nothing from that hotel in response to my message, so not sure what's happening. You'd expect the messaging internal to Booking.com would be secure, yet they do advise to be vigilant against unusual messages! Anyway, I have the repacement hotel booked, so all is on track again. Only 140 days to go!

That's all for now.

Till next time.

 

How Time Flies

Is it really 8 months tomorrow, I asked myself, since my last small 'adventure' Well, the answer is a categorical Yes. On the 9th April, myself, my brother Paul and our chum Phil, made the trip over to France, for the Vimy Ridge Memorial Ceremony. Since then, apart from the Wild Hogs trip in June/July, I've barely thrown a leg over Ginny, in no small part, due to the shite weather. Ginny is now registered SORN for the winter, so it'll be another 3 months or so before she feels me on her back again.

Looking forward to next year though, the same 3 aforementioned chaps, have been doing a little planning. Stemming from a tour I was planning for myself, as there's no Wild Hogs trip planned for 2024, we have booked up for a couple of weeks (those of us allowed 😉), travelling the European Union, visiting a large number of memorials to the dead of bomber command, some other WW2 related sites but also, in keeping with our interest in all things motorcycle, taking in the Dutch and German MotoGP race meetings.

My initial idea was to locate and visit Lancaster bomber crash site memorials. Those of you who followed the summer's Wild Hogs blog, will recall we stopped at the Crash site of Dambuster AJ-M. When I mentioned what I was thinking of doing, the discussion quickly evolved to include a visit to Assen for MotoGP at the same time. All 3 of us were up for that, so I got to work on planning the routes, hotels,etc. We'd be away 8 days.

Assen ✔ How about Germany?

Not long after I'd finished the initial planning/booking, Phil posed the question, "why don't we do the German GP at Sachsenring too, as it's the weekend after Assen?" That sounded like a reasonable suggestion to me, so I set to work on planning a second week away, this time though, for just Phil and I. Paul has some plans to be away in his motorhome, or so he'd have us believe! 😏 

I've done the initial planning/booking for week 2 already and will get down to more detail, like which McDonalds to stop at 😁, in the new year. It may be that more hotels will become available, providing better facilities and/or location. It's often the case, so we'll have to wait and see.

Coffee, free toilets, wifi, what's not to like?

Hopefully, there'll be a few other trips out (I have a long bucket list of places to visit) before this fortnight away but as Catherine is now 'retired', they might not include Ginny! 😮

That's all for now.

Merry Christmas Everyone