A beginners tour to England

For our first day we were quite nervous. I wanted to leave early to get this first, relatively long stretch done. By 10:30 we were finally in the saddle and took off. Very exciting moment.

When we planned and started our trip, I didnˋt intend to write about it. An experienced traveller (Hi Tiffany) encouraged me to do it, since most people start with small adventures and might find it helpful.

I am 30 years old and did my licence last year. Already before finishing my licence I had fallen in love with the Yamaha XSR700. At the time I didnˋt think about motorcycle travelling but mostly wanted a ride for tours in the region. But soon enough I looked for motorcycle literature and it was all about travels and I started reading....and dreaming.

On Sunday we got up early - by vacation standards - and did the quick 20 minute ride to the Ferry. I had received an SMS from DFDS, advising us to arrive 90 minutes prior to the scheduled departure due to peak holiday season.

The check in went fairly easy for me, since I just rode the bike from one checkpoint to the other, whereas my pillion-pilot had to run and present our documents :D Go team!

On Monday we rode to Worthing. On the way we stopped at beachy head. We were amazed by the view and walked up and down the cliffs. My vertigo provided an extra adrenaline rush for free.

Originally we had planned to ride to St. Austell. I had found a nice youth hostel in the middle of a forest that appealed to me. But my copilot found pictures of wonderful beaches in a place called Porthcurno. I checked for a nice Airbnb, found one and so it was settled.

After a nice breakfast in our garden shed, we embarked for the next part of our journey. The first adventure was to get the bike on the road: we had had to park it in our host‘s garden which included two big steps. Getting in there could be considered my first attempt at trial riding and getting the bike out meant the same but backwards, since there was no space to turn. But everything went better than expected and soon we were on the road again.

With a feeling of leaving home, we turned our backs to Porthcurno and rode towards Newquay. The weather was slightly rainy but no real issue. Many people along our trip had warned us about Newquay being very touristy, full of stag parties and generally not very enjoyable. We still wanted to go there for a bit of surfing.

Compared to the last sections of our trip, we had a rather long ride ahead and we decided to take it easy. We had a lot of stops and ate on pretty much every stop. Very enjoyable way of travelling. One really beautiful surprise was when we suddenly rode past Stonehenge. It looked really nice and we were both quite happy we had seen it, but felt no need to stop for a closer look.

Today I woke up feeling a little nervous. We‘d ride to London. Huge city, lots of traffic, leftside traffic and where to park my bike safely? But with our usual optimism we decided everything would go well.

The ride was nice with plenty of sunshine. We rode with our jackets open and enjoyed the wild roadtrip feeling. Soon enough we reached the outskirts of London. Navigating the traffic was a lot easiert than expected. We had a good laugh when a big Rottweiler dog started to bark at us from a transporter at a red traffic light. We barked back and the dog answered and so on. 

The last day had come and we got up early and got on the bike. While waiting for the ferry we met some fellow travellers on their way back. Some Germans were returning from the Isle of man and one of them had lost his bikes key and didn‘t have a sparekey (hi Kai). What a nightmare. They all seemed in a good mood though and soon we went aboard. This time we had to secure the bike ourselves, but that went alright. Now it was time for a little nap to catch up om some lost hours of sleep.

There was no denying that our trip was coming to an end, but we still had a couple of nice things on the agenda. On our last morning in London we loaded the bike before breakfast and rode to the bikeshed mc. We had discovered the place during one of our walks through the city and it‘s a bikeshop/café/bar/garage hipster place, that immediately attracted us. One of the nice things about it is, that you can ride into the place, past the people sitting there. So there‘s always something to see and a very relaxed atmosphere.