Wales - Gatwick

So readers, last time our Blog was updated we were heading to Wales from the city of Liverpool...

We rode fro about 90 mins, crossing into Wales and with showers rolling past but not quite getting us really wet we decided to look for a motel. Finding one was easy but like we would discover later on busy means full. But this time we only had to back track about 12kms to find another nice motel. With a nice meal and a hot shower, nice rest and a good hearty breakfast we were back on the road again.

The route plan for this days riding was to get us to the town Pyle (pronounced Pil is Welsh). Were one of my Dads PNG work colleagues was living. Phil and Marie Hope, who had agreed to take us in fro a few days (Thanks Phil and Marie!!). But before getting there we would tour through the center of Wales heading West to the coast. Before turning East and ending up in the South near the mouth of the (big) river Forth.

Along the way we came across a small town with a big sign. The sign read that a Quilting exhibition was on, so that was the signal Deb needed for a rest!! And about 2 hours later we were back on the road...

The weather had cleared up to a bright and sunny day, but as we heading up into the hills, there was lots of fresh water stilling out across the roadway, from the night heavy down pouring. Making corner negotiation a gentle affair.

The summer holiday traffic was congested, making for a slow coastal journey. But the scenery was beautiful. But as we had got 1 hour over our arrival time, I had to cut late of the time. But like (almost) always this lead to another interesting side trip. The GPS has been working well. One thing I have found with this limited Garmin GPS (it has limited CPU and memory resources, and can take time to compute routes,) that I should not put many way points for it to track to/through. Re-working the route I was using did lead us on some interesting single lane tarmac roads and farm lanes. Which we would have otherwise not experienced. Quite thrilling blitzing down a narrow lane with stone walls as high as the bike then with thick hedges reaching up either side.

About Speed... One thing I have found diffacalte is working out what speed limit applys and where. There is even less indication than in Germany / Europe. The system seems to be that in trainign a driver they learn were and what the speed limits are for roads. While I have not been speeding (Well only once really :) ) It is a tricking thing once more to try to guess the speed for a given roadway.

The stay at our friends in Wales was another enjoyable time and was over too quickly. But the dasy were ticking down until we are due to meet Werner and Claudia near Garwick on the 21st. With 4 days left before this we had decided (weather helped out too) that a trip through Cornwall down to the far southwest was the go.

We camped 3 days along the way while we decided that on the 20th we would find a hotel/motel. Like our camping (except for the night of 21st!!) we would just roll up after looking and selecting a camp either via the GPS or just happing apon a camp site. being just one motorbike and not wanting power or a 'hard stand' (UK caravan speak for either stones or concrete pad for a van), jut just a patch of lawn or sand to put the tent. We always had an offer (ie price, whether we took it or rode on...).

A camp

Rained quite a lot over this night. Just after we went to bed!

I'm watching you ...

Sit camera on tent, set timer ... Flash fill ... Etc.

Mousehole, town near Penzance Cornwall.

Penzance harbor.

Another view Penzance harbor. Hope you like fishy smells...

Deb waiting on the bike for Steve to get some photos ...

Video Clip near Penzance and Mousehole

But on the 20th in Dorset county in 'High Season' you do need to book!! We started the day about 25 kms from Bormouth. and had already decided to either Hotel/ Motel or Pud stay for this evening. Well at about 16:30 as the Tangmere Aviation near (Chischester) museum was closing we punched up a close hotel. Rode the few Kms to it, but "full up" was the receptions reply.

Digital Equipment Corp!! Tjhis was the computer company I joined (many) a few years ago (1987). Did not expect to see this in an Aviation Museum.

Digital was into Air Racing!! Good old Ken Olsen I guess!

Years and years ago I had applied to the RAAF to be an electronics tech, this radar system would have been like what I would have worked on had that happened.

Viper: Good morning, gentlemen, the temperature is 110 degrees.

Wolfman: Holy shit, it’s Viper!

Goose: Viper’s up here, great… oh shit…

Maverick: Great, he’s probably saying, “Holy shit, it’s Maverick and Goose.”

Goose: Yeah, I’m sure he’s saying that.
Topgun, Viper rode an F4 Phantom

RAF Tangmere was heavily involved in the WWII Battle of Briton.

Eventually at about 20:00 and after about 12-15 stops asking for accommodation, we ended up in Horsham in a nice B&B, meal at a pub down the road etc...

In about an hour we'll leave and head to the camp site about 30mins away. We have a "Laundry day" and wait for our Friends to arrive...

Cheers
Stephen and Debbie.

Again, here is the Google Earth KML file of our track across the earth.
p.s. Deb did/has not got to 'check' my spelling or gramer (yet ?).

Yorkshire to Liverpool

We left Warrick & headed on a mix of motorways & back roads heading up to the Dales area in Yorkshire to meet up with our friends in Harrogate.  Along the way we were blessed with beautiful weather.  It was Saturday afternoon when we arrived at Anne & Mike's.  We went into Harrogate for dinner & had a tour of town as we walked.  On Sunday we had a fairly quiet day, we walked down to the Valley Park in Harrogate - where the Royal Bath's are situated.  We enjoyed sometime with our scouting friends.

A narrow York old street.

York Minster.

Take a picture Deb...

Teddy Bears ... Of course!

Oliver Cromwell build this fort in York age's ago....

 On Monday we headed to the old York township.  We walked the back streets of York, went sightseeing in the old township area.  York has a long history of a township dating back to before the Roman occupation which started in AD71 through to when the Vikings invaded at the demise of the Roman Empire into British history several centuries after that.
While in Harrogate we got to meet some other friends which we caught up with at the Wellington Hotel.  Wellington was a great pub to have dinner in as Steve had remembered all the stories from his colleagues who have also enjoyed their time there.
On Tuesday we had a good look around Harrogate itself, then finished off some home duties.
After the last couple of episodes of watching 'The Dome' we thought it about time to get ourselves moving off the couch!!  Around 11:00 we finally got going.  Shortly after we got going, for what ever reason the speedo on the bike stopped working.  Steve did a few things to fix it which made no difference at all.  We decided to ride to the Wellington Hotel for lunch, whilst there Steve pulled the front wheel off the bike to have a better look at the problem.  He found that the mechanic had not put the speedo drive mechanism in correctly.  It was easily fixed & we were back on the road after an hour or so's break.  We went riding through the Yorkshire Dales - which are those picturesque back roads with little stone fences close to the roads edge.  With fields of sheep & cattle.  It looked like a patchwork quilt of green, yellows & pinks, with all the wild flowers & different fields of crops.  We finished up at Abbey Farm  Camp Ground about 20 k's north of Liverpool.  They even had a grass pitch.  The pitch was quite cheap at 13 pound.  Mind you we paid 2 pound for Wi Fi which didn't work.   We had a great meal at the pub  over the railway line - all home cooked.

Link to some video of us riding in the Dales.

Lunch break outside the Wellington, also did some field service on the bike.

This morning, Thursday 15th August we road to the city of Manchester to visit the Science & Industry Museum.  The museum was huge, it was spread over 4 or 5 old factory buildings.  We spent about 5 hours there wondering around.  After that we rode to the Liverpool Docks area, which reminded us of the Southbank area in Melbourne & so did the prices.  Deb visited the Beatles Story, which she found interesting.  We left around 5:30 to take the Birkenhead Tunnel towards North Wales.  The weather all day was looking dark & threatening, after an hour or so we decided to stop at a nice roadside hotel taking a room for tonight.  A few minutes after the skies opened up.  Tomorrow we are planning to head further into Wales, we plan to stay at Steve's parents friends place in the South of Wales.

twin shaft prop. with 2 x 3 bladed props. Fitted to a converted Lancaster bomber with was used for maritime surveillance, post WWII.
  

Old Bikes!

Here is the Google Earth .KML track we took.

Cheers,
Deb and Stephen.

Warwick to Yorkshire

I left Warwick and headed north east to wards Yorkshire. The day was cloudy but did not rain. Was mostly a travel day as were had friends we had made plans to visit in Harrogate. 

As I mentioned we only have phone cameras to capture images. So not the best, we hope that our friends might have a Panasonic Lumix charger we can use to re-energize our discharged camera battery.

The Abby.

Main through street, near the pub we stayed in.

Market Square, pubs all about.

Old South Gate.

'Posh' Fish and Chips, the chips were cooked over 3 days, steamed, 1st fry up and 2nd fry when served.

We did ride to the Warwick Castle to have a look about, before starting the journey up to Yorkshire. But did not stay too long as we had about 3-4 hours of travel a head.

Link to some Videos of this stage

In Harrogate we enjoyed a dinner out with our friends who had been active in the Alice Springs Scout Group. On Monday we plan to visit York via train which is about a 30 min trip. So Sunday (as I write this) Deb is off to town to shop, while I help with some battery maintenance (re-charge) on a car of theirs.

Apple cider with dinner.

This is the link to the Google Earth track of us heading to Yorkshire   Here.

cheers,
Stephen and Deb.

Out & About in London & to Warwick

After leaving the motel in King Langley,we headed towards Lee Valley Camping grounds.  We chose this area as it was close to public transport for the ease of getting into London.  We stayed at the caravan park for 3 nights & departing Friday morning.  We arrived at the camp site during the 'high season', we were very lucky to get a site.  After setting up camp

yes the sun was out, Lee Valley camp site.

We set off for our first journey into London.  Cars, bikes & people galore!  We walked for miles & miles. An all day pass ticket for use on the bus or trains was 8 pound each.  After walking 5 kms to the train station we took the East Anglier line train to Seven Sisters underground station, then we took a London tube train from Seven Sisters to the Victoria Line to Oxford Circus station. We walked all about Trafalgar Square, up to Buckingham Palace then onto The Rising Sun Hotel for our dinner.  We both had sore feet & legs by the end of that day.

The next day we were off again catching the train back to London (earlier in the day), checking out other sites of London.  The London Museum where we saw many Egyptian artifacts among a whole swag of other interesting pieces.  We took a few hops on the tube to get to the Tower of London & the London Bridge. We had to take another journey on the tube to get us up to Westminster Station, we were getting quite good at this!  We decided we wanted to spend more time at the World War 11 Cabinet Museum, which was very interesting.  Unfortunately, two hours was not long enough...we had to skip a few sections of the Churchill Museum.  Later we ended up at an American Pizza place (not sure why we did this, as Steve is the Master at cooking pizzas!)  Although we did enjoy sharing the 'Double Sundae'.

Next day was spent doing a few household chores.  After that we rode  up to Waltham Abbey.  It was another old church with interesting background information.  This church had been upgraded quite a few times over the years.  Upto this stage we had great weather for camping.  But this was rapidly changing as we were cooking our chicken & corn soup (dinner).   Due to the poor weather we had an early night & studied the Lonely Planets book of interesting places to see on the next phase of the journey to the North.   To wake to more rain in the morning, we packed up as soon as possible & headed for Bletchley Park, where specialist decoders worked on deciphering German codes.

[no photos as we had no access to power on the camp site, so no batter re-charge. Plus Stephen managed to leave the good Panasonic Lunix camera's battery charger in Germany!]

This too was very interesting.  It was great to see such old relics.  Not only the 'cyphering machines' but a hut filled with old toys (Deb like this hut).  Many collections whether it be toys or war medals were donated to the Park.  After spending many hours here we moved onto Warwick where we found accommodation at the Leycester pub.  Before dinner we had a walk around the old village.  It too was very interesting, old cobbled streets & large church arches at each end of the town.

The internet was not good in the room. So I have had to sit in the lounge and try to finish off this Blog. So no more photos at this time.

Today we'll be heading north some more up toward York.

Cheers,
Stephen And Deb.