S-Westerly

Not being a fan I'm totally flummoxed.

Just as well it wasn't calculating anything life saving! "Sorry I miscalculated your morphine dose and you died" doesn't really help.

May, June and September. Depends whether you are doing Provence or Languedoc.

FFS. Given a ferry to the IoM must have more bikes on than most you'd think the crew would have some idea! Obviously not.

My bike's oem were Pirellis and they weren't bad. They were occasionally twitchy in the wet especially as they started to wear. Very prone to squaring off. The Metzlers were a significant improvement all round and I had two sets of them. My only complaint was that both back tyres were good and then after a single 400 mile ride they weren't. The last bit of tread seemed to go really fast. The Michelins were on recommendation from another former Metzler fan and I was told they were similar but better longevity. My experience with them to date is they are pretty damned good albeit pricey. I'm not riding a sport bike so I'm not dragging my knee around corners.

Pretty well what my son in law said. Certainly not had any squirelly moments on them despite by best efforts.

I fitted those to the Ducati and tbh don't notice any difference to the Metzlers. However according to my son in law who preceded me down this route the Michelin tyres wear a lot better than the Metzlers. Time will tell as so far I've only done about a 1000 miles on them.

I believe it is but the only previous time I arrived there it was thick fog and when we left it was pissing down. I've yet to see it!

So I say goodbye to sunny but bloody cold (!) Portugal and now trundle off to Nigeria. Frabjous joy. At least when we are done with that less than salubrious part of the world we are off to Canada and then New York so something to look forward to.

Depending on the particular day our local Shell is sometimes the cheapest fuel near me. Even cheaper than local Tesco. Also its the petrol station that's on my direct route out of town so I often use it. TBH when I'm putting about 15 litres in the difference is about 60 p so not exactly eye-watering.

Luxembourg is worth a visit. Wish I'd spent more time there when a passed through on the way from Germany to Belgium.

Can be good fishing there in July through September. Personally I've never been bitten there. Scottish midges have been known to get e on occasion particularly in the Crinan Canal. Nasty little buggers.

Bet my wife could find one! She got bitten by a midge in Kielder in March FFS. If there's a midge within about 50 miles I reckon they home in on her. Don't bother me at all.

To be fair our Clydebank based mob aren't much better. They too have a track record best described as abysmal. The trouble with our IT gnomes is that they focus only on whatever task they've been given and completely ignore the communications side when they remotely dive in and look me out of my comms. But that's the most essential issue. If we can't send / receive timely emails we can fail to get fixed for a lucrative voyage which can quite literally cost millions. There's always another one but when the market is volatile fixing a cargo today can be twice as profitable as one tomorrow.

My IT department in Mumbai. While trying to fix a problem remotely (failed) they managed to screw up my communications system so I had nothing at all for 12 hours. Useless effing IT squirrels shouldn't be allowed near anything more complicated than a jigsaw.

Good afternoon from sunny Portugal. Now in Sines which is a million times better than Algerian hell hole I was in before. Have a quiet night at anchor before a mad day tomorrow. Might treat myself to an Italian jaffa cake this evening. Living it up.

Wife never ever buys biscuits. She does make a good shortbread though. On ship we don't get a lot of choice. Danish Butter cookies are common although usually not Danish or with butter and are disgusting. Recently in Italy though we got a rather good Italian version of Jaffa cakes. Very nice and when put out disappear rapidly. Also a reasonable cherry version but the orange is better.

That was last month and I'm now in Algeria which is a vile place. I'd take a wet November night in Glasgow over this shithole.

Thr M6 between Birmingham and Preston is now a nightmare. It took me 10 hours to drive from Gloucestershire to Glasgow back in July. It was awful. In a horrible hire car just to make it even worse.

As the saying goes "If you have a £10 head buy a £10 helmet."

Just about guaranteed that you won't get a demo on a Rocket with a brand new licence.

Disagree vis Ducatis and I'll leave it there.

I've a Ducati and there's two dealers reasonably close to me. Also a very good independent (Motovation) even closer. Had the bike 5 years and apart from routine servicing has never needed attention. Its done close to 30,000 miles and I've had it since new. So I do think you are perhaps a bit wide of the mark ref Ducati. No idea about MV.

Any Moto Guzzi although I take issue with the Multistrada being boring. Try riding one - they go.

Unless you test / get tested how would you know? I may have had it but I had no means of testing so I've no idea. 2 others (out of 21) had it so no hyper infectious. One as bad as me and one less so. Flu ? Covid? Who knows?