Given that I am currently unable to undertake similar trips due to health reasons I just thought I would revisit this trip that was for me a real 'eureka!' experience and genuinely life changing. I Kept a daily diary which I later made into a personal photobook so as I have never shred this publicly I thought it might entertain some of you folks as well as being a nice chance for me to revisit the experience.
(Just want to apologise in advance for any typos as I have deteriorating eyesight that requires regular intravitreal injections and the next one is scheduled for next week so it will get rapidly worse until I receive that treatment.)
The bike was a 1989 Kawasaki Tengai 650 which is basically a dakar styled KLR that I had bought for £1000 if i remember rightly and had 38K km on the clock. It was a bit of a nail tbh but I was working on the basis that if it misbehaved I could just abandon it without any great financial loss. Not very environmentally conscious but that was my thought process at the time. I'd had it for a couple of years and it had successfully taken me down to Switzerland and around the battlefieldds of France and Belgium on previous trips so I had some degree of confidence in it.
Anyway, these are the first couple of diary entries from that trip, with a few images too, I was clearly finding my feet on these first couple of days but, as always, It gets better. I was very nervous initially and these nerves led me to some strange decisions all through the trip. However, it was such a seminal experience that subsequent to this I got in the habit of taking a yearly trip of at least a couple of weeks with an absolute minimum of preparation knowing that it would all turn out okay.
Day 1 - 03/05/10
Start - Bournemouth, UK
End - Noussant de Gruyere, France
204km for the day
My overloaded 1989 Kawasaki KLR650 Tengai and I were ushered onto the ferry at Weymouth by my good friends Dot and Roger. I had experienced a great deal of trepidation about setting off into the 'wilds' of France, relying on nothing more than my feeble wits and grade 4 schoolboy francais. Not my first trip but scheduled to be my longest - three months!!
Initially headed for Morocco, I would then return through Europe via the Alps, and down to Turkey. It didn't pan out that way as it happened. . .
Straight out of St Malo, a near miss with a French motorist insisting on 'Priorite a Droite' when the sign clearly stated 'Cedez le Passage' and having the satnav bracket fall off on the dual carriageway were enough to fray my already dodgy nerves. A quick stop for food and then flaking out in an empty campsite was as much as I could manage.