We've bought a bike!Finally after much deliberation and consideration, we finally bought ourselves a bike.
Our weapon of choice is the highly regarded BMW 1200GS. (Definitely more money than we hoped to spend but hopefully we recover more from the resale).
A contributing factor in our decision was the lockable panniers (side bags) and top box.whilst the panniers are fine apart from the left hand side which loses a bit from the exhaust and they do make it difficult getting on and off the bike, the top box however compared to the Harley's is useless. It's far too small and can't take two helmuts. It seems we've been spoilt the the Harley's tardis type top box.
It's an awesome bike and we're impressed by it so far, though Janet is a little frightened by its power.
So far we did a couple of hundred miles last week just around the Surrey area to get the feel of the bike and visiting some old haunts of Steve 's.
The trip started in earnest on Monday (5th August) when we left the comfort of Julie & Mick's house in Surrey and headed to Cambridge and after a couple of hours of lunch and sightseeing we left to go to the beautiful township of Ely.
Unfortunately as the day was getting on we didn't have as much time as we would've liked to have a full look around and the nearest caravan park was in Littleport a few miles north and the skies were getting darker and more menacing.
So off we headed to Littleport, the home of William Harley's father, the co founder of The Harley Davidson. It was here that we made the decision that we were definitely carrying too much crap on the bike so the next day did a bit of a u-turn to steve's sister Vicki's place in Rochford to get rid of some excess clothing/luggage. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we ended up going through some beautiful towns which we may. It have seen, such as: Newmarket, Haver Hill, Halstead and the BMW dealer in Braintree before spending the next night at Sudbury. at first we had sour doubts about this town, but it turned out to be a great caravan park and a town that had a lot of character.
On Wednesday we left Sudbury and went north through Bury St Edmunds, Thetford, Kings Lynn, Sleaford then up to Lincoln where we decided to spend a few nights as there seemed to be so much to see here.
Today (Thursday) was spent walking around the amazing cathedral that dates back to just after the Norman invasion in 1066.
The cathedral was amazing and we cannot put into words how incredible and humbling it was, so for this we will add a few photos at a later date.
Stay tuned for more exciting developments.