It is still overcast in Arras when I set out at 0830 hours to cover the remaining 130 kilometres to Calais. The cloud cover has resulted in the morning temperature being already 16 degrees - very nice. By 1045 hours I am at Calais harbour. The French have build large holding areas for hundreds of trucks right outside of the harbour in expectation of the large number of trucks that will queue here upon re-introduction of border controls after Brexit. I continue to the (as yet borderless) harbour and buy a ticket for the 1245 P&O sailing to Dover. There is another biker waiting for the boat, Martin from Lincolnshire.
Another interesting item waiting here is a 9-seater jail bus. The steel cage inside is filled with a number of non-Caucasian human beings. I have a chat with the French bus driver; apparently the prisoners were caught by the harbour employees trying to sneak onto trucks to illegally get into the UK. They were packed into that van (the fact that the harbour has such a vehicle explains the three metre high barbed wire fence that stretches all around the harbour) and the driver is now waiting for the French cops to take care of them.
The cops arrive shortly afterwards and then the jail van and the cops disappear. Moments later we can board the boat, and chatting with Martin about motorbikes means that the time flies. Soon we have reached the White Cliffs of Dover:
It is 1300 hours (1400 hours French time) when I leave the boat. My destination for today is Newbury, as I know that place very well - if you have read my older voyages, then you should already know that I lived there for a long time, albeit decades ago.
It's only 250 kilometres to get there, but I have planned the entire ride on smaller backwater roads - so it is 1900 hours when I arrive. The first decent hotel is fully booked, so is the second. Newbury is the headquarter of Vodafone, and if that company hosts a conference, all hotels far and afield are fully booked. I manage to find a room at the Carnarvon Arms hotel and restaurant, which is just three kilometres away from where I used to live. By the time I arrive there it is 2030 hours French time, meaning that I was on the road for 12 hours.
The hotel includes breakfast, and a fully cooked English breakfast keeps a man fed all day. Not being used to such a calorie bomb this early I actually feel sleepy - not ideal when riding a motorbike. At Newbury I stop to do some shopping - some things are freely available over the counter in England, where everywhere else you'd need a prescription:
The weather couldn't be better; blue sky, morning temperature 16 degrees, climbing to 21 degrees in the afternoon. Here is a picture of Marlborough:
I am heading south-westwards through Wiltshire, Somerset and Devon. At Devizes I have a look at the Caen hill locks; out here if something is going very slowly, then people say "as fast as a canal barge up Caen hill". Boats need five to six hours for this obstacle.
Near Taunton police is regulating the traffic around an accident. A motorbiker against a delivery van. The motorbiker came out second best. Medics are still working on the rider while he is lying on the tarmac. Oil and debris cover the road. Nasty business.
I also pass by the Haynes Motor museum, but the weather today is far too perfect to rummage through a museum.
Given yesterdays problems with finding accommodation I start at 1630 hours to look around. The first place in Coleford just had a guest cramming lots of toilet paper into the loo, flooding the floor and causing a lot of damage. They have rooms, but all full of craftsmen repairing the damage. The very nice owner calls a place nearby in Sandford. Yes, I can have their last available room.
When I arrive 20 minutes later the staff is upset; while I was booking the room someone else grabbed it on booking.com. But they have made an enquiry at a local B & B, where half the price of the hotel room gets me a lavish flat with two bedrooms. Very nice.
There is a pub next door where I conveniently can still connect to the wireless internet of the guest house, so I am having a proper beer while writing this; only 3.7 percent alcohol, lukewarm, no gas in it and having the colour of worn out brake fluid.
This morning the usual weather check reveals that the fine weather in England is definitely going to end. For several days the meteorologists were unclear of what would happen next - the question was: will the Azores high pressure ridge link up again with its counterpart over Russia? This morning it is clear that this won't happen and a fat low pressure ridge will bring a lot of rain and possibly the first autumn storms. By Saturday it will be raining in England, so I have decided to return to the continent.
This means that my route heads due east today. From Devon I ride through Dorset, then into Hampshire and the New Forest, all on minor roads and a lot even on single track roads. Only for circumnavigating Southampton I do a brief ride on the M27 motorway. Here are a few impressions from today:
One can't make all that much distance if biking only on the narrowest roads available, so I end the day after just 370 kilometres at the Buxted Park manor house, which nowadays is no longer populated by aristocrats, but has been converted into a hotel:
Form here it is a bit over 100 kilometres to Dover and another ferry ride.
The blue sky this morning is very deceptive. I know what kind of weather is on its way to this island, so I have my last fully cooked breakfast for a while and set out through another day of blissful riding, today beginning with the rolling hills of the Weald.
By 1230 hours I am in Dover. In case that you are planning to head this way like myself without a ticket, you may want to know that in Calais the ferry companies have an office in the harbour building where tickets are sold to walk-ins. In Dover you can ride directly to the ferry operators check-in booth and purchase a ticket right there. Unfortunately today my charm fails me; the (male) booth operator refuses to call the load master on the 1255 hours sailing and ask for permission to have one more motorbike send over (I call that ferry jumping). It worked beautifully back in August 2012, of which you can read here. I am booked onto the 1405 hours sailing instead. So I have over an hour to sit at the harbour. I use the time to plan ahead for tonight; it will be after 1630 hours when I will arrive in France. And the flat countryside of Flanders full of ruined Nazi V1 and V2 rocket launchers, war graves and monotonous roads is not my cup of tea, anyway. So I have plotted the route on the motorway to get as quickly as possible through this depressing countryside. I reckon that I can do about 100 kilometres before having to find a place to stay overnight, so I look around on the Maps.Me App on my smartphone, as it shows the rating of the hotels and pick one near Arras that looks decisively better than the one I stayed in on the way out.
On boarding the ferry I note the usual sign that informs motorbikers about their responsibility for securing their bike. Readers with a knowledge of the French and/or German language will enjoy the text in those languages just like I did:
The boat leaves on time, so it is finally "bye, bye" to England:
90 minutes later the boat docks in Calais and I take an uneventful 110 kilometres ride to the village of Gavrelle, where the hotel selected earlier has a room for me and as expected from the rating is not a shabby place:
Tomorrow will be the last day of riding without weather worries.
Below is the usual map with my GPS tracklog.