Day - 1, Sittingbourne to Blois

 I'll keep this brief. A mainly uneventful day.

Up at 05:50, on the road at 06:55. On an earlier train that departed at 08:24.

Weather OK for first part of the day, then there was a shower, necessitating me to stop and put the waterproofs on. We had a drink at the same time. Carrying on there was a mixture of sun, cloud and light rain. We made our fuel stop, then had lunch in McDs. I'd kept the proofs on. Just as well. As we bypassed Chartres there was the most torrential rain and very strong winds. It was as if we were riding through the cloud itself. Later on, it cleared up and was OK when we got to our hotel but not for long. We managed to get one bag upstairs before the heavens opened again, so we sat it out, before bringing the rest of our stuff in.

Dinner was had at a Buffalo Grill about half a mile away. On the way through the commercial estate we passed some travallers caravans. Besides having some really large leathery looking women call out to us, we were facinated by the trail of wires leading from various caravans/appliances, to an electricity supply box, at the side of the road. Made all the more remarkable due to fact it had been peeing down under an hour before! On the way back, the washing machines were in full swing! I've never seen anything like it in my life.

Tomorrow looks to be fine and should be about 23 degrees when we reach our destination, Millau. I'm going to temp fate and pack the proofs away tonight.

Till Tomorrow.

Ready to Rock 'n' Roll

This time tomorrow (Tuesday) I expect Phil and I will be sweating our nuts off in our waterproofs and in 19 degrees, half way to our first overnight stop in Blois, France. Forecast isn't great, least not until we get to Spain, where it is currently 26 degrees. As I write, Phil is on his way over from Cheltenham and I'm expecting him by 18:00. We'll have a pre-trip noshup at Wetherspoons I expect and a couple of  beers, to get some practice in. Before that though, a catch up on the last few weeks.

Ginny went in for her 42k service on 18th August. Turned out, it wasn't the big service, so it was ready again the same day. I'd already arranged with Mark that I'd collect it Tuesday though and that's what I did. I wore my new Rokker jeans. They are comfortable. Looking forward to seeing how they are on a long journey. Tuesday also saw the arrival of my new Neotec 3 helmet. It's a lovely snug fit. I expect it'll take me a little while to get used to the difference in visor and air vent opening but otherwise there's little obvious to differentiate it from the 2 version. I mentioned I bought an adapter kit for my intercom. That was fitted last week, fairly straight forward really. It's not as flush as the made to measure version but don't fix what ain't broke, eh? The intercom has been fully charged too.

I finished tweaking the routes and Phil downloaded them. Then when testing, I found some didn't work as expected, taking us on toll roads, so had to redo a few waypoints. They're all good now. It'll be interesting to see how they match up on Phil's satnav compared to Tomtom, especially when he leads.

Ginny is all prepped to go, tyres pumped, tomtom fitted, panniers attached. I decided, given the forecast to forego a wash but did give her a quick spray/brush to get rid of some of the crap from the Athens trip.

Packing is 99.5% complete, just some electrical bits and my meds to go. ETD is 06:45 for our 08:54 train. Nowadays you have to check-in at least an hour before crossing. I think that's everything covered. 

Bye for now.