Abort, abort!

You may recall my brother Paul and I were planning to do the RTTW (Ride to the Wall) memorial ride to the National Memorial Arboretum. Sorry to say, we had to abort the mission, due to the petrol shortage. In the days running up to our planned departure date, neither of us had petrol locally. Even if we had been able to fill up locally, we would need at least one fuel stop to get us back home. Obviously, there was no guarantee that we would find that, so we took the decision to cancel. 2 years running now we have planned to attend but had to cancel. 😟 Maybe we'll get lucky in 2022. 

No fuel, no trip

No shortage of idiots

My Third outing within a week took me a bit further afield and was 'interesting' to say the least, for it was the day the idiots started panic buying fuel. I had fueled up the day before and had a decent range left in the tank, after my Manston trip, certainly plenty to cover the 120  odd miles to Beachy Head and back, my destination on that day. I'd heard on the radio that BP had said they had some issues with getting fuel supplies out but I don't think anyone expected what happened shortly after that announcement.

I was desperate to get out, it was warm and the sun was shining again but I couldn't think of anywhere to go. The longer I pondered, the less distance I would be able to cover, as time was ticking on. Looking at Google maps for inspiration, I quite by chance, came across a marker for a Bomber Command Memorial at Beachy Head. Memorial info.  That was it, I'd head down to the seaside. I quickly knocked up a scenic route, togged up and set off, grabbing a couple of packets of crisps on my way out, a light lunch.

Needless to say Tomtom took a different route than I had anticipated, the downside of having too few waypoints on a route but not to worry, it was a pleasant ride nonetheless. Pleasant until I reached Kipping's Cross on the A21, where the traffic came to a standstill, blocking 2 roundabouts. Luckily I managed to weave my way through and get back to open road once more but then it struck me, the jams were caused by people queuing for the BP petrol station. As my journey continued, there were 2 or 3 similar experiences, with roads/junctions barely moving, blocked with lines of vehicles queuing for fuel. Crazy. It never ceases to amaze me the number of people who have no clue how the mechanics of supply and demand works. Maybe it should be taught in schools at an early age, so future generations won't have to go through this madness. Toilet roll, etc, last Spring, fuel now and most likely turkeys in the run up to Christmas.

With Tomtom having  taken me HER way, it was my turn to deviate from the route. I did this by missing my turning off a roundabout. Tomtom recalculated the route but rather than having me do a u-turn, she took me to a point beyond my missed turnoff and one of my waypoints. I only realised this a short distance from the waypoint, having turned left, when logic said I needed to go right. If you have a waypoint marked, she'll take you there regardless! It wasted a few minutes but I was soon back on track and in Eastbourne, at the seaside. The late summer sun had brought quite a few people out, and I felt quite chilled cruising along the prom watching the crowds. A few miles the other side of Eastbourne is Beachy Head.

Beachy Head and Lighthouse

There's a big pay and display car park at the Head, no motorcycle spaces though, so I parked up at the end of the car park, right by an ice cream van.  I made a quick visit to the loo, then set off in search of the memorial. As you might expect, being on top of a cliff, it was very windy, which, despite the sun, was quite chilly.

I hadn't expected the memorial to be quite so close to the edge of the cliff, so walked right past it without realising. My walk took me to something else interesting though, an old signaling point, now with seats in it, that had been used by the Royal Observer Corps during WWII. A plaque commemorates the job done by the ROC and other forces staff on that point or nearby. What an amazing, if somewhat scary view they must have had, watching thousands of German bombers overhead. A great place for an air show.

Beachy Head Signaling Station

British Forces plaque

 

With a little help from google maps, I located the Bomber Command Memorial. No wonder I'd missed it. It is out of sight of the main path, down a slope and near the edge of the cliff. It has a great view out over the channel.

Moving on from the memorial, I made my way back to the car park, grabbed my crisps and found a seat out of the wind. As I sat munching my 'lunch', I couldn't help feel I was being watched.

Steven Seagull

There was nothing doing this time for Steven, with no Grizzly to feed him chips! Sitting contemplating whether to have an ice cream or not, I suddenly heard the unmistakable sound of a merlin engine. Quickly I scoured the sky until I found the source, a Spitfire coming from the west, which circled around, before heading back whence it had come. My mind made up, I got myself an ice cream and returned to my bench. We'll, it's practically the law isn't it?, to have an ice cream at the seaside. Cone consumed, I made another toilet trip, then set off for home. 

The route back was different from that down and totally down to Tomtom, as I hadn't put in any waypoints for the journey back. I'd been on the road about 30 minutes, when I came across a queue of traffic. It was a fairly narrow road, not to mention with a police car in queue, so filtering passed was slow going. I wondered what the cause could be. Then, the penny dropped. A good thing about Tomtom is, that it shows you fuel stations along your route. One look at the route and I could see there was a fuel station about a mile up ahead. Slowly but surely I rode into Horam and filtering by, got within sight of the petrol station. It was utter chaos. Cars waiting in both directions to get onto the small forecourt. A guy on the forecourt was doing his best to direct cars to the pumps. In front of me was a lorry. He suddenly went round the queue, all sitting indicating to turn into the petrol station. I followed. When he stopped, I nipped around him, only to be confronted with another lorry and a long queue of cars behind, coming towards me on my side of the road! I was now sitting in between 2 lorries with only one place to go. Luckily for me the kerb wasn't too high, so I rode up it and onto the narrow pavement. As I did so, another guy from the petrol station came walking passed me. "Fucking madness " he said. He was like the pied piper but leading a line of vehicles.

The Horam Pavement. Don't recall a bollard. 

 I rode along the pavement for about 100 metres, before my side of the road became clear again and I could get back on it. I did so but had to stop, as I'd picked up a bit of branch on the pavement, which was sticking out just behind the front wheel. With that disentangled, I was on my way. Heaven knows how long it took to clear that mess, and all because people had panicked unnecessarily. A small issue with BP in a matter of hours, became a crisis across the country, despite what anybody said. The panic buyers created the problem that they thought existed and we were all screwed.

The rest of the journey was fairly uneventful. Back home, I bedded Ginny down and went inside to watch the chaos on the news. It was just incredible the way it blew up. I've not had to put any fuel in the car yet, as I still have about half a tank and Ginny has not been out since. She has about 80 mile range left. I don't expect to use that anytime soon. Hopefully things will be back to normal soon.

 

Leg over at last

Finally, after 2 months, I was able to get Ginny out of the garage and take her for a ride, as September threw up a few decent days. 

The first trip, was a meander down to a place called Dunkirk, just north west of Canterbury. I was on a mission, that being, to get a snap of the village sign with my bike and my Overland Ride the World sticker. Basically, a bit of fun that could win you a prize, i.e. some new Dunlop tyres, the idea is to visit as many places in the UK whose names match those of somewhere else in the world. For example, there's another place in Kent called Botany Bay, which I already tagged on the UK tour with Grizzly in July. Dunkirk was my 8th place. Two more, gets me a t-shirt. "You don't need any more t-shirts", I can here Catherine saying. She's probably right but don't tell her. 😉 

The ride itself was only about 50 odd miles, as I had an errand to run that afternoon, so it had to be short and sweet. Still, I let Tomtom take me the scenic route on the way there, then gave Ginny a blast along the M2 on the return journey. She's equally happy bimbling about country lanes or blasting the motorways and never complains. Getting back on her after so long is always a really satisfying moment, because she looks and sounds great and is so easy to ride, and when the sun is shining, there's no better place to be.

Another one ticked off the list

A week later, I was out again. I'm not a rider who can just ride around, I need somewhere to go, a focus. Sometimes it can be difficult to chose somewhere. Even with my 'To Visit' list, it can be hard, as so many places on that list are a long way away. This time though, I decided to head down to RAF Manston and pay a visit to the RAF Manston History Museum. I've been to the Spitfire & Hurricane Museum, right next door, a couple of times but on both occasions this place has been closed. Again, I plotted a scenic run down on Tomtom and boy was it scenic. Plenty of single track roads, the kind with high hedges and loads of grass and muck down the middle. Luckily, there weren't more than a handful of occasions when something came the other way and never a time where one of us wasn't able to get in a passing place. I did have a Tomtom issue on the way down, which wasted some time, where I came into a village, only to find my road out closed. I'm not sure how long it took me to find my way out of the 'loop' and finally bypass that village but needless to say I did one circuit, to end back where I started, before I found the way out. Sometimes Tomtom just can't seem to see the wood for the trees! It's frustrating but not uncommon.

The museum itself is housed in a fairly large hangar and is as you might expect, fairly well crammed with memorabilia, old aircraft, replicas, models, mock ups, etc. It was fiver to get in, so pretty easy on the pocket and certainly well worth that entrance fee. I probably spent 90 minutes going round but if you're not into reading too much, you could do it a bit quicker.

Blackburn Buccaneer Cockpit

Replica Sopwith Type 9400

Test Upkeep device (bouncing bomb)
 recovered from Reculver

LEGO, brilliant, eh?

The Lightning

It was an interesting visit, with aircraft on display that I have memories of as a kid, such as the Gloster Meteor or Jet Provost, besides stuff from the two wars. I left the museum and took the quick route home again, which meant dual carriageway and motorway for all but a couple of the 42 miles to home. Mileage for the day was about 100. The next day was forecast to be another warm day. Where should I go?

Up, Up and Away

What better way to spend Battle of Britain Day, 15th September, than taking to the skies over Kent in a small aircraft?

My boss at Spitfire Club, Phil, is a pilot and often asks club members if they want to join him on a flight. I've not really had the chance to accept an invitation before but when I saw he was planning on a trip on Battle of Britain Day of all days, I jumped at the opportunity. Luckily, nobody else was quick enough to respond, so the flight was mine.

Phil flies out of Headcorn, previously, RAF Lashenden, so I had to make my way down there to meet him, a drive of about 45 minutes. Not quite as handy as Rochester but then Rochester doesn't have a Spitfire on site. Not that it was around on this day though and not that we would be flying in one.  Before I was allowed airside, there were some formalities to complete, signing some form or other, probably to say I was of sound mind! That done, we made our way over to the aircraft. Being a member of the flying club, Phil gets to fly several different aircraft. On this occasion, it was a Robin DR400-108, rego G-BCXE. The 108 denotes the horsepower of the engine. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little surprised the engine was so low powered, and Phil was equally surprised I think, when I told him Ginny has 160 horsepower!

Meet Robin, G-BCXE

As I took photos and probably asked some stupid questions, like "how does it fly with only 108 horsepower", Phil took out his little book and proceeded to do his external checks of the aircraft. Once those were complete, we got in the cramped cabin and he ran through another long list of pre-flight checks. Finally, we were ready to start up the engine but not quite ready for the off, as we had to put some fuel in.

We trundled over the the fuel pumps and stuck in 21 litres of Avgas. Once again I was surprised, as Avgas is cheaper than petrol, and considerably so, at only £1 per litre. If that became common knowledge amongst the t*ssers queuing for fuel now, I bet they'd all be heading for their nearest airfield!

Fueled up we were ready to go. Headset on, route map in hand, I was tooled up. With some communication between Phil and the control tower, we found ourselves at the end of the runway and gave Robin full gas. Slowly, very slowly, we bowled along the bumpy grass runway. For what seemed like ages we bumped along and my attention was drawn to the hedge at the end of the runway, coming slowly into view. Briefly wishing Robin had Ginny's 160 horses under the bonnet, I realised that the bumping had stopped and we had left the ground. I was happy to see the hedge pass beneath us that's for sure. 😌

Making a left turn Phil put us on course for the coast. The plan was to fly over the Capel-le-Ferne Battle of Britain Memorial, head up to Manston, then turn back to Headcorn. Whilst I had the map, Phil had an app on his phone that he had loaded the route into. It was a bit like a flying Tomtom and recorded masses of detail about the flight, not to mention, keeping us on course. The pic below shows the route from the app.

Blue track marks the route flown

The weather wasn't brilliant but neither was it too bad, so visibility was pretty good for the entire flight. We flew fairly close to where my brother Paul lives, though the shooting ranges prevented us flying over his house. We did fly over where my sister-in-law Claire used to work though, which Phil told me used to be RAF Lympne. A little further on we flew over the Battle of Britain Museum at Hawkinge, which also used to be an RAF airfield. Next up, we did a circuit of the Battle of Britain Memorial and Phil wiggled the wings as a mark of respect.

Battle of Britain Memorial, Capel-le Ferne

From Capel we made our way to RAF Manston, before turning south west on our return to Headcorn. From the air you get to see the full extent of the Manston runway, which is just huge! On the way back we flew over Canterbury and I managed to grab a photo of the Cathedral.

Canterbury Cathedral

Not long after, we passed over Ashford, before making a circuit of Headcorn and our return to terra firma. We taxied back to the spot we had left about an hour previously and cut the engine. The adventure was over. I'd only ever been in a light aircraft once before, a trial flight for my 40th birthday and have to admit felt a little queasy, so I wasn't really sure what to expect on this trip. Phil must be used to that, as he had some doggie poo bags with him, in case the need arose. It never did and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole flight, well, once we got over that hedge. I'd definitely consider doing it again and I can see the attraction of having a PPL. It's a bit like riding a bike I reckon, the freedom to go almost anywhere you like, without sitting in queues of traffic.

For those of you that like stats, Phil's app provides loads. Below is a summary of the flight.

109 knots is about 125 mph

That's all folks!

 

 

Summer, what summer?

Sad to say adventures have been non existent since I got back from the UK tour with Grizzly. Opportunities to get my leg over were severely curtailed due to the weather mainly. August was just a washout from start to finish, so a whole month of potential biking went begging. All this means, that since I got back from tour 2 months ago, the only time Ginny has been out of the garage, was the other week, when I washed off all the crap from the UK tour. Hopefully I'll be able to get out over the next week or two but what summer we've had, is now on the wane, so that may be wishful thinking.

In the pipeline though, is the RTTW, Ride to the Wall run to the National Memorial Arboretum with my bro', on 1st/2nd October. We were down to do it last year but it was cancelled, so we're booked again for this year.

National Memorial Arboretum website

We'll ride up Friday and stay in the Ramada Hotel at Newport Pagnell services on the M1. There are a number of rides/routes to the NMA and we are route 3, starting at Northampton Services, about 12 miles up the M1. Setting off at 08:35, we'll ride in convoy on our designated route to the NMA, where all the other routes will converge. There'll be, I believe, a memorial service, after which we'll have time to look around some of the 400 memorials on site. Once we've had our fill, there's just the small matter of a 3+ hour ride back home, nearer 4 for Paul.

With any luck October will throw up some decent days and I'll be able to get out a few more times. Fingers crossed.

More on the RTTW ride, in a couple of weeks. Bye for now.

Sir Barnes Wallis

Taking advantage of the change in the weather, I decided to get out and put some miles on Ginny, only about 100 round trip, but enough to blow the cobwebs away.

My destination, a place on my list, not unlike a bucket list, of places I'd like to visit, Effingham in Surrey. There in  St Lawrence's Churchyard, lies the famous engineer and inventor, Sir Barnes Wallace. 

Most famous for his brilliantly inventive and hugely successful, if also very costly in terms of lives lost, bouncing bomb, used on the Mohne and Eder dams, he was also responsible for the design of the Wellington bomber.

Having paid my respects and taken my photos, it was nice to spend a while in this peaceful little churchyard, contemplating the contribution this great man had to the war effort. Whilst the pilots, soldiers and sailors quite rightly take the limelight, it's all too easy to forget the part the 'back room boys' played in operations too. Would Gibson have been a hero, without Wallis?

It's clear Sir Barnes is well thought of in the area, as a newish looking housing development's close is named after him.

Am hoping to get to some other memorials in the coming months, so watch this space.

Raring to go, if only..

 .. the bloody weather would perk up a bit!

Last post, I was talking of Ginny's MOT. I re-taxed her from March 1st, then rode her to Sittingbourne to Ryder Motorcycles, a family run dealership. I'd not heard of them before. I saw some guy on the BMW Facebook page say he'd taken his K16 there for its MOT, so I thought I'd give them a go, rather than go all the way over to Tunbridge Wells to the BMW dealership.

As expected, Ginny passed the test. The tester made some comment about how big she was (rude!) and how difficult she was to manoeuvre about the workshop. Not much I can do about that. When I came out, it was raining slightly but that didn't stop me taking a ride round, looking at some houses I'd picked out on Rightmove, really just to get an idea of the area. Nothing can happen until I sell the flat and it's been dead as far as that is concerned but it's useful to see what areas are like. That was the last time I rode, so about 6 weeks ago now. There's been a couple of nice days but I've not been free to ride and now it's gone chilly again. Fair weather biker! Soon I hope to get out and about though.

In the meantime, my brother and I have been planning a little trip across to the continent, for August. I have 2 Eurotunnel tickets that will need to be used up, those from the cancelled Wild Hogs European tour, so I asked Paul if he wanted to use one. He said yes, so we have planned a 4 day trip to visit the dams made famous on Operation Chastise and the attack by 617 squadron, The Dambusters. The plan is to visit all 3 dams, a couple of cemeteries and 6 crash sites/memorials. This, of course, all depends on what covid restrictions are in place at the time, so we have our fingers crossed. Hotels are booked, so I just need to amend the dates on the Eurotunnel. There'll be more on that tour in this blog, as and when we get going. Anything else in the meantime will appear here, as it happens.

That's all for now folks.

Gibson Street, Steenbergen, Holland

Time to think about getting my leg over

Last week I thought I'd best see if Ginny would start. No worries, she burst into life first prod of the button. It'd been about 5 months, since she'd last roared into life. 

March will be a busy time for her. Come the first, I'll look to get her re-taxed. She'll then need to have her MOT, which I've booked for 16th today, at a place in Sittingbourne. Insurance is due on 22nd, and I have a little makeover planned to coincide with that. Once, she's all legal again,  I'll be hoping the weather allows for some essential travel, as I have a long list of places I want to visit. Just getting on her to take her for MOT will be like an adventure though, after the last 12 months. Catch up in a few weeks. 

Stay safe still.