Allowed out ... day 1

Miles today: 198

Miles so far: 198

u-turns: at least 6

Ruins visited: none so far!

WiFi not working sufficiently well for upload of photos. Not that there are many, as most of today has been spent avoiding London, getting lost and in desperation filtering on the M25 round Heathrow (driving between the lanes to avoid the stationary traffic in that annoying way that motorcyclists do). Not even a silly selfie yet!

After what I understand was the wettest May on record, the weather gods are being kind to us, although to be honest it is a bit hot, with motorcycle gear on! A dry start all the way to the first breakfast stop at Pulborough - for anyone not that familiar with Sussex that is all of 45 minutes from Hove! Hard work this motorcycling. A full English (in a sandwich) was of course required to give us the strength to get as far as Surrey. Not really off the beaten track yet, but and we managed to get to Rutland before dusk is even approaching. That is almost a novelty!

For the first part of the day just Rob and I until our mid afternoon meet up with Eric at our third cafe stop of the day, in Buckinghamshire somewhere. Then we wound our way, through various chocolate box villages with zero signage (hence the multiple u-turns) until we could take it no longer and sped up the A43, to end up for our first overnight stop in Rutland Water. Well not actually in it - but near enough to the submerged church at Normanton for Rob to get all misty eyed about a submerged village - or something. I wasn't really listening. Apparently we are visiting it tomorrow before breakfast!

Unusually for us we have actually booked accommodation for the first few nights - having seen the demand for staycations, particularly in some of the prettier parts of the country, we would have been hard pushed to find anywhere to stay on the west coast of Scotland if it were not already booked. So, despite it going against the grain, we actually know roughly where we should be each night for the first week. After that we have decided to take our chances and if we have to use Travleodges on the side of trunk roads that are empty of travelling salesmen and women then so be it! More likely city centres will cough up something we can use in an emergency. And of course we might be rerouting to avoid Covid variants by then.

So, day one complete - the feeling of staying away for the first night of one off these motorbike trips is second to none! A couple of hundred miles under the belt and at this stage what feels like an an almost endless possibility of riding on rural and remote roads. With perhaps a slight regret that we aren't on our way to the Arctic Circle in Finland as we had planned we are nevertheless excited to be again exploring parts of this island we don't yet know.

So, with 3 weeks of utter silliness to come, we have planned our route for tomorrow. Eric has already identified the first of doubtless many ruins of questionable interest that we will be going miles out of our way for and we are already practising the simply awful Scottish accents that will probably get us punched somewhere just North of Gretna Green! Ah, the joy of it! We will of course then switch to Welsh.

We've bagged a fab hotel for the night, the Old Pheasant near Oakham, so with food, beer, a completely incomprehensible route panned for tomorrow and a good night's sleep to come, we are ready for anything. What could possibly go wrong!