Steve_M

We’re all different. Some of us aren’t as comfortable with our own company as others. I’m ok with breakfast alone as I can be anticipating/planning/preparing for the day ahead. The evening meal, though, not so. I guess that’s part of the reason I enjoy touring with my pillion.

I used my Garmin XT last weekend for the first time. I bought it last year after getting frustrated (that’s the polite term) with my Motorrad Navigator IV. It’s really rather good - a big improvement on my previous satnavs.

DuckDuckGo is my friend… a simple search. I scan-read it but it’s in legalese waffle-bollocks which I suspect amounts to nothing more than noise.

Is that Baron (David) Ward of the House of Ward (AKA 145, Slater Road, Warrington - a neat little semi detached), a para legal - not really a fully qualified lawyer? I’m almost embarrassed to ask my friendly solicitor for her response.

I had a little potter around France on my own in 2008. All the kids had flown the nest and there were only four cats and my good lady at home to abandon. I really didn’t plan well enough- I booked a ferry and just set off. This in my days before satnavs and Booking . Com so I had a few ‘interesting’ route and hotel challenges. I loved the riding, seeing new to me places. I hated the evening meal, eating alone (I still do - I was in alone in York last weekend and it was still the same). The experience did help inform the approach my subsequent tours - lessons learnt applied!

Really? I made it public… hmmm. Basically I headed the route up to Finchingfield (always worth a visit), Dennington, Heveningham, Halesworth, Beccles, Reedham (Ferry), Martham, Waxham, and then the coast road around to Hunstanton. The stretch from around Waxham has some tedious speed limits but worth enduring to see the good bits.

Until five years ago I lived in Norfolk and during my time there, as well as my ride outs with the local groups around East Anglia, I did a charity ride from Boston to Felixstowe around the East coast. It was not the most inspiring route between just north of Gt Yarmouth (Caister) and Felixstowe. I would head slightly inland to avoid that stretch. If you can find a route to near Braintree the route I’ve linked to might for a reasonable basis to do that. It does take in the Reedham Ferry to cross the river Yare which is a quite novel way of avoiding the awful A roads of Norfolk. Link to route idea

Local BBC Report

Another of my “out for a ride” loops uses that to avoid the military road between Greenhead and Chollerford on route to Kielder before heading back via Newcastleton.

One of the joys of being retired, I can choose my times to ride “off peak” as it were.

It’s on one of my “I’m just popping out for a quick ride” loops from home. It’s about an hour in to the ride so somewhere for a quick break would be welcome.

Planning permission has been approved to build a replacement. Hopefully this one will progress. I haven’t seen the proposal - their last effort was a somewhat Grand Designs style steel and glass edifice.

I had a couple of days riding with friends from Norfolk last weekend. There were two breakdowns among the ten bikes over the course of a week. A clutch cable broke on a 58 plate Honda Hornet on Monday. He called his breakdown service to recover the bike to get it to a garage and they refused as “the bike is over 15 years old”. Another found oil was leaking from the driveshaft of his BMW R1200RS, requiring recovery back home. They were recovered from Gretna by the AA using their “Relay” service - it took well over 24hrs of travel and numerous false starts. Two instances that have made me wonder if my cover is good enough. I’m with Green Flag - I’ll be checking their Service Levels and terms ahead of my next trip abroad. Has anyone any experience of how good Green Flag is?

I can’t see this elsewhere… it’s a link to a website indicating where roads are closed to motorbikes. Mostly, as far as I can tell, in Germany though it does reference Austria and Switzerland. Needs translating unless you speak German. I used google translate.

I’m a technof*ckwit so ride in ride out and cough up the price. I wouldn’t trust any tyre fitting I did, and the likelihood of me cocking up and damaging the tyre pressure sensors is a risk I’m not prepared to take.

If I may add one. Crafts and Things on the Tigh a Phuirt Rd just off the A82 west of Glencoe village. We stopped there both on the way to Skye and on the way back over the last few days.

Not half. i’ve just coughed up £1700 to have the front suspension replaced and the left side switch gear replaced (to fix the cruise control after two years of living without it). However. It’s still probably the best bike I’ve owned for the type of riding I do.

It’s been over 23 years for me. I’d previously graded in 1973 They say you shouldn’t have regrets but having a 22 year judo hiatus is mine.

Congratulations. The difference between a red belt and a black belt is that the black belt didn’t give up.

All the best with your grading. Shame it’s not judo, mind.

I can’t see the wear indicators - they’re in the tread pattern - check them. As a leisure rider I usually replace the tyres when they’re around 1mm from the tread. Not sure if that is a good description of what I do.. I used to let the tyre go all the way to the wear indicators when I was commuting as well as leisure riding as I was doing around 12,000 - 13,000 miles a year so I needed to get full value from them.

Tyres square off through lots of motorway / straight A road riding with little lean.

Just from my experience, some bikes are affected more than others as their tyres wear and square off. My VFR800fi would readily squirm over slightly raised white lines as the tyre wore, while my R1200GS doesn’t feel in the slightest affected until just before I replace them at around 2mm tread depth. I did a day at Cadwell Park on my FJR with tyres that were nearly ready to be replaced and quite squared off - made little difference on track. As a bike that was bloody awful in the first place it wasn’t a whole lot worse - just needed a more of a push to get it to lean and was stable once leant over.

What a tosser! Good to see you holding your hands up on this. I’m sure most of us have skipped / forgotten checks at some point. EG. I don’t check tyre pressures each time I ride the bike despite advocating regular POWDERS checks.

Suspension settings. Oh the joy of ESA and mode settings.