Day 12 – Making it home!

Day 12

Once again the weather was awful when I woke up.

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I decided to push for home today so logged on and bought a Channel Tunnel crossing for 10pm that evening.  I had brought my tablet with me and although it’s the very unpopular BlackBerry Playbook, it was perfect for what I needed and it lasted for days on a charge.  It also had a couple of good books on it so in the evenings when I couldn’t sleep, 5 mins with this and I was out of it, really helped my brain and senses relax after hours on the bike.

I left the hotel at 7 and the ride was miserable.  Torrential rain again for 90% of the way.  In Germany there were lots of bikers out and about so I’d often tag onto the back of one of their groups and make decent progress.  I had fitted new tyres for the trip before I left the UK and they are the brilliant Anakee 3’s.  Not an ounce of trouble in the monsoon conditions.  I’d notice though that when we hit occasional traffic jams in Germany, that all the bikers would just queue up.  I didn’t buy a bike to sit in traffic so would just filter through slowly.  I wonder if it’s against the law to filter?  Anyhow I wasn’t bothered, it was now between 7 and 10 degrees and I was cold.  I hadn’t put my lining back in and just wanted to make progress.

There’s always a downside to doing 100mph on the motorway for hours on end, and that is that the bike will only do 150 miles on a tank vs the 220 if I were to do 70 mph.  I tried working out the maths of how long it took to fuel up vs the extra miles gained.  My brain hurt so I couldn’t be bothered, although after about 8 hours of this I was beginning to ache and was obviously very tense as my shoulder was killing me I think from just being tense in the rain and cold.  I kept having to tell myself to relax and within 2 mins felt fine again, but 15 mins later I’d be all tense.  My shoulder was killing me from being tense, but I just wanted to be home now so didn’t stop for anything more than petrol and chocolate.

I made it to the eurotunnel at just gone 6pm, I could have made it 15 mins earlier but I was nursing the bike the final 60 miles.  I was low on fuel and just couldn’t face filling up again, it’s no fun taking wet gloves off and on and I was aching, so just rode at about 60mph for the last hour.  They gave me the option of the 7:20pm train which I took.  I scoffed a huge pizza and had a few cups of coffee at the shop there while waiting and immediately felt better.

Got on the next train, parked up and relaxed.

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At least the rain had cleaned my screen a little!

On the train I had 35 mins travel time so I faffed with my satnav that had stopped charging and also put the inner linings back into my bike gear.  I was happy and warm now.  I had gained another time zone too so it was only about 7:30pm by the time I came out of the other end.  A quick fill up at the petrol station on the UK side and the final 200 miles home.  The UK side was uneventful apart from having to remember to ride on the other side of the road.  It was raining still most of the way home, and unlike Europe, if I get caught speeding in the UK I get points, so I took it easy all the way home and rolled in just before 11pm.  I was in bed by midnight and slept like a baby!

950 miles done today, no wonder I was a little tired.


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