Steve_M

It’s a bit of a sad day for us today. Our 19yr old cat had to be euthanised after a long period of decline. Had you told me 19yrs ago how upset and emotional I would be over a cat I’d have laughed. Yet, here I am, looking over at “his” chair and missing him already. Silly old sod!

I wondered about that so did some digging. The definition of a public highway, it seems, is not necessarily a road maintained by the public purse. A supermarket car park, for example, may also be considered a public highway. As far as I can establish, it’s any road that has public access. This is a little concerning since it means that I should wear a crash helmet to ride down our drive (which, of course, I do every time, officer).

Booking.com is your friend... We book ferries for the start and end of our tour, decide roughly where we’d like to go and that’s overall planning done. We stop for coffee around 4pm each day and estimate where we’ll be after another hour’s riding. My good lady uses booking.com to find suitable accommodation in the vicinity of our expected location. We then check weather forecasts etc. on the evening and then plot a route covering around 7hrs riding for the next day. Not that we expect to ride for that long, but we’ve found it better to not run out of route before you need accommodation. The only constraint, then, is making sure that you get to your return ferry in time. It works for us.

Not sure how old your son is, but mine as a teen used to provide biblical food... Burnt offerings.

Thanks for the info’. It confirms our decision not to have a funeral to be right for us.

We’ve decided not to have funerals. We’re each having a simple cremation*. Then the family, if they choose, can just have a gathering to celebrate their inheritance. If they do then I insist that they play Get Down, Get With It by Slade. Volume set to 11. If that doesn’t break the morbidity of the occasion, nothing will... *nicked the idea from David Bowie, and my good lady’s ex-husband. Play it. Loud.

Thanks for the link. Interesting. “Trial by media”? Now we have trial by social media.

The nearest I’ve got to organised tours is a couple of long weekends in Wales with the IAM group I was a member of at the time, and one organised by a work colleague for him and his mates to go to Andorra. Each were pretty relaxed. Based at one hotel, you could join in the day’s ride or go your own way, meeting up at the hotel in the evening. That worked pretty well. From an individual’s point of view you had freedom, but not those evenings on your own. One point of note was that there was some friction on occasion with personality clashes, and differences of opinion on routes, refuelling needs, rest points and pace. I’m more than happy in my own company, but with my good lady on pillion, self-organised tours suit us well.

Installing insulation in isolation this week. Oh, I know how to have fun.

I certainly wouldn’t bother with riding across it again, but it’s an impressive sight from the Gorge du Tarn, which is a delightful road. I’d like to go back and explore that area more sometime.

We rode through the Mont Blanc tunnel a couple of years ago. Tedious, or what? Marked down as “been there done that, where’s my tee shirt”? A friend reminded me of this after we’d done it, thankfully. Mont Blanc Tunnel Fire

Route des Grand Alps South, Route Napoleon North, Swiss alpine passes, Austria - Grossglockner.

Top tip. Thank you.

We have some white stuff on the ground here. I think I’ll give the planned stroll a miss.

We have nosey neighbours. That seems effective (they once asked if we had driven a horse box out of the property at 4am. This was the week before we moved in).

That’s a bit disconcerting bearing in mind how much of our garden is full of nettles.

No biking plans for 2021. Having moved up North 18 months ago, I still haven’t really explored the area on the bike as much as I’d like, so that’s a to do. I think I’m due for my RoSPA 3 year retest this year so I’ll need to revise and practice for that. Away from the bike will be visiting the kids and my mum (better still, they can come and have a holiday here). Continue with renovating the house, build a polytunnel and raised beds to start growing our own vegetables. And get more time walking the fells in the Lake District.

I’m not sure system architects, system designers and programmers would be of any use to me. And the managers... they’re mostly only good for getting in the way (I except my good lady who was a techy / manager).

Yup. Most of my circle of friends work in IT in some sort of techy role or other (or a few are in manglement)... and live 250 miles away. What bloody use are they to me?

I had just read about that. It was on my list of places to visit, too. Brings to mind the fire at the National Motorcycle Museum near the NEC. That, I understand, didn’t have a sprinkler system at the time(I hear it does now). It makes me wonder if this one didn’t either.

I would recommend, if you can book in, the Kylesku hotel. It was first class, and one of the best hotels we’ve stayed at. Excellent food and service, and the view from the restaurant and the room we stayed in were delightful.

Nice work. We reconfigured the bathroom in a similar manner. There wasn’t a shower, but by moving stuff around and, like you, making a cupboard smaller, we’ve managed to fit in a shower as well. This has allowed us to remove the shower from the old shower room and install ian airing cupboard. This, though, is proving problematic as it’s a dormer, with leaking flat roof, which we only found when I pulled down the ceiling. So work has ground to a halt until we can get someone to put a new roof on it. Ho hum. Oh, look, a skip has just arrived. Filling that with rubble should keep me busy.

We went in August 2016, with planning starting in the January. By mid- February we found it difficult to find accommodation. Admittedly, August is a bank holiday up there but with the pandemic, as I’ve commented before, I suspect the place will be heaving with bikers and motorists. On that assumption, I would be booking a year in advance.

Second childhood? I’m still on my first. I have never, I’m told, grown up.

The macho image has long been with us regardless of the type of bike. Looking back to when super sport bikes were the in thing, how many riders actually took them on track, while riding around Foggy (other riders were available ) replica leathers? As you say, my GS is never going to go off-road unless I crash. Though I may well have a ride on the gravel roads around Kielder. I may take it for a spin around Cadwell, though. Sans panniers and topbox, mind.