For this relief, much thanks

My AGV Ti-tech and I have been locked in a war of attrition since I bought it 3 years ago at the Ally Pally show. Like a pair of irresponsible but desirable shoes, it fitted fine in the shop but as soon as I got it home it started to pinch. £220 is a lot to write off, so I persevered, thinking that sooner or later either the lid lining would bend into the shape of my head, or, like a member of one of those tribes that practises head-binding, my head would re-emerge in a similar shape to Valentio Rossi's. Neither outcome has manifested, in favour of me just getting a blinding headache after about 30 minutes. You can't get very far in 30 minutes and a bright red forehead is not a good look on arrival. But, as I hate buying lids almost as much as I hate buying shoes, I've stuck with it for fear of replacing one expensive mistake with another. And for fear of getting my head stuck while trying on, which also happened at the Ally Pally show, at the Dainese shop.

But this year is about facing fears and dealing with them, so, yesterday, poked a little by the Midnight Mud Westler, I gave in and bought a new lid with a pointier headspace. And it's lovely.

PS. Speaking of fears, I'm assured it's not a track day, it's a training day. I shall mostly be wearing borrowed leathers which make me look like an East German shotputter.

A proper bike rack

no scooters! And in case you were wondering, that's not Ruby in the middle - far too clean.....

Specialist magazines and anticipation

In bed tonight I shall mostly be reading the latest Aerostich catalogue. Been looking forward to it all day :)

There is a God, and his name is Dan Walsh

Dan Walsh...rides like a former motorcycle courier, writes like a god. The only reason I used to buy Bike. Buy this book, you will love it.

Leftpondia

I like these campaign materials from NHTSA, the US road safety body - while making safety points, they manage to stay positive and avoid the "ride a bike and DIE!" approach that sometimes gets a bit prevalent over here.

6 points part II

Click here to read Part 1

Once we had cleared up the linguistic confusion and established that I wanted a rubber stamp not a postage stamp, Killiecrankie obliged with a very fine example of the genre and I continued north. There is a lot of north, and, rather like Cornwall, it stretches rather further than you might be led to believe by a London-centric media. There is still a little snow on the mountains, and helpful signs on the A9 encourage courteous driving and overtaking. A friend asserts that courteous driving is more manifest in the north due to the incipient violence in the Scottish psyche making road rage too risky, but I disagree.

After the debacle of the Hunter Stone, I have decided to be strict with myself about detours. I could have headed east for an attempt on the Well of Lecht, which looked straightforward (don't they all!) but would have added maybe 2 hours to the journey, and by this point I'm starting to feel the combined impact of sustained high-mileage days and less-than-totally restful nights. Not helped by the stentorian tones of the Twins who like to start their day at 7.00am (they are on a mission to bag all the Scottish landmarks while up here) and see no reason to whisper while striking camp. So I joined the queue for a photo of Glenbogle Town Hall and headed for the campsite.

I live in London. People assume that this means I am used to things on a large, imposing and possibly even grand scale. But this doesn't mean I don't find the 24-hour Tesco at Dingwall anything less than terrifying. All I want is a citronella candle, some chocolate, and maybe some Primula and Cheddars for a retro tea. I really don't want a plasma TV, a 3-litre jerrycan of citronella oil, a DVD player or a flymo. After several hours I am still roaming the aisles hopefully looking for a citronella tea light. The checkout staff take pity on me and show me to the candle aisle and I leave with something which promises to smell of the ocean. Whether this deters midgies or not remains unproven.

According to the Camping and Caravan Club website, Dingwall is Viking for Meeting Place. Presumably the Vikings brought their own barbeque supplies with them, for Dingwall is not over-provided with eateries. It is well-supplied with honesty, however - "where's the best place to eat?" we asked the local citizen industriously weeding the planters at one end of the High Street.

"At home."

Day 5 - Still plenty of North to go

The paucity of roads in the Highlands makes navigation straightforward - up the A9 until you run out of road. Stop. You have arrived in John O'Groats. On the way we pass the Ord of Caithness, which sounds like a Dr Who monster. After the stop at Clynelish for a LM photo and a tour, I'm riding with Graham, Graham's granddaughter and Graham's friend from Brora who looks a dead ringer for Bill Bryson. All three of them are on the Wing, which causes a small stir when we pull up for a coffee at the Laidhay Croft Museum. Within 5 minutes we're joined by a bunch of Harley boys who are doing the end-to-end on hardtails and chops - I wouldn't like to be their kidneys! - and I wonder just how much money bikers bring to the tourist economy in remote spots like this.

The lady at the Last House in Scotland seems resolutely unimpressed by this End-to-End nonsense and stamps my form with as little small talk as possible. I buy several postcards in a bid to cheer her up, and then discover that the most northerly branch of Costa Coffee on the mainland is running at a slower pace than is normal for take-away coffee shops - thankfully I'm getting an espresso, not a filter coffee as the filter coffee's only just gone on and will be about 15 minutes...which would have made me even more last than usual at the next meeting spot, Dunnett Head.

I'm still awestruck by the landscapes in the very far north. But the wild and windswept beauty can't be admired without acknowledging that emptiness wasn't its original state and was created at the cost of a great deal of human misery. And then taken advantage of by the person who decided that the north coast was a great place to build a nuclear power station...







Day 6 - the 6th point

We begin the day with another demonstration of maintenance muppetry. The bike hasn't been cornering too well (hmm..workman...tools?), so I thought I'd best check the tyre pressures. Being Bavarian, the pressures are in Bar rather than psi, but the 24-Hour Tesco is not fazed and lets you set the air machine to either. Preoccupied with the kryptonfactoresque puzzle of trying to get the air hose onto motorcycle tyres when little things like the brake calipers, the spokes and the axle keep getting in the way, I set the machine to Bar and set about my topping-up mission. Strangely it seemed to want to let air out of the front tyre instead of put any in, but the ways of technology are strange so I thought little of it. Squirrelling down the roads, I cursed the inaccuracy of free air machines and thought I should find room in a pannier for my own gauge. Then I thought, maybe you need to set it to Bar for each tyre, and not just assume that setting it for the back tyre means it knows you want Bar for the front tyre too.

Time for HRT?

Once again I blunder into something slightly beyond my comfort zone....the symptoms are hot flush, anxiety and night terrors, and later tonight I plan to treat them with some very loud heavy metal. While advancing age and hormonal confusion may have something to do with it, mainly it's just ineptitude - an email arrived from the ringjunkies, proclaiming a great deal from Martin Hopp, and I need some R & R at the moment, so I checked the date, rang up, gave my credit card details and booked myself onto the Better Riding day. Then I read the email properly. I thought I was booking the much-recommended Advanced Machine Skills day, to improve my slow speed riding and confidence. What I've actually booked is a track day.

Eeek!

I have been round Cadwell Park once before - in 1996, with cix_bikers, two days after passing my test. Not so much difference between a Kawasaki KH100 and a Cadbury Yamaha race bike, when you think about it. And looking on the bright side, it only took about a week to relax again afterwards.

And Martin's website says lots of reassuring things about being good for novices, the nervous, and those who "have been to a track day and came away frightened". One day I'm going to find an activity in which anxiety and stress are advantages, because then I'm going to bloody excel.

Medieval Ogri?

The winged helmet is a bit of a giveaway!

6 points - part 1

Peculiar travel suggestions do not, as Kurt Vonnegut would seek to have you believe, originate from God. In my experience, they come from Lichfield every spring when Dave the D sends out the landmark list. And they come from Graham, who not content with turning the slightly vague suggestion of a Lands-End/John O'Groats run into an itinerary with miles, times and campsites, also suggested individual unclassified roads in Scotland. I would have taken more heed of the warning about his not being able to get the chair up it if I'd known he was a former sidecar racer (and therefore must be missing a sense of self-preservation.)

Those searching for logic behind a trip of some 2700 miles at a time of soaring fuel prices and rising congestion would probably be stumped. Those of us doing the End-to-End, plus the four cardinal points of the British mainland, shuffled a bit, pointed at the blue sky and muttered something about the road calling.


Day 1 - Cornwall: any port(aloo!) in a storm

The blue skies were, however, a long time coming. As was Cornwall. Day -1 of the 6 points was a soulless slog down the M5 to the knuckle of the Celtic fringe, ready to smile for the camera at Lands End, turn round, and head straight back. Lack of research time also meant I had only the vaguest idea about the location of the site of the Lydford Leap, and no clue at all where the railway monument at St Cleer was. So on Day 1 I returned north with a half-empty bag, pursued for the whole 300 miles by a rain cloud with a vengeance. If anywhere in the UK cries out for a web cam, it has to be the Lands End fingerpost - so the rest of us can be cheered by the queue of the optimistic, the super-fit and the worryingly keen, psyched up and ready to go. We were followed by "Brian's Brain Tumour" in his lycra and panniers, and three guys who had to be from the forces, because no-one else could possibly possess that unique combination of fitness and insanity that makes running the length of Britain sound like a good idea.

Day 2 - East Anglia - flat.

On the third lap of Lowestoft I started to think maybe it's time to buy a satnav after all. Like many things, the Euroscope wasn't hard to find, once I was starting from the right place...but I was last to the party. (This will become a pattern.) On the third pass around Mansfield trying to find the B-road to Teversal, I realised that, short of a sat-nav, navigation would also be easier if my A-Z wasn't 10 years old and missing an entire bypass.

Day 3 - Heart of England

All went a bit pear-shaped today! It was supposed to be an easy transit day, nothing to achieve except being in Haltwhistle between 2 and 3pm. But shivering through the night in an under-rated sleeping bag in an unexpected May frost wasn't the best preparation. I'd started the day feeling quite smug (as well as chilly) because in an outstanding display of mobile research, I'd found the OS reference and a picture of the Hunter Stone capable of being shown on a BlackBerry. But in another prime display of numpty navigation, I set off down the wrong unclassified road and lost 2 1/2 hours getting back on track. No pressure, but everyone was waiting for me at the Centre of England. So the M6 saw some brisk progress and I used up at least one life on an overtake badly affected by target fixation. Fortunately the man in the silver 4x4 seemed serenely unperturbed at the thought of acquiring a heavily-luggaged BMW as a hood ornament and some last-minute prayer got me back on the correct side of the road.

To avoid a day with nothing in the bag at all I decided to give up on my judgement completely and just follow the Twins, Steve and Jim, who were following their Zumo to the Market Cross at Alston. Slightly confused hoodies will be appearing in several photo albums later in the year...

Day 4 - luxuriously appointed tent!

Moffatt Camp Site being just behind Moffatt Woollen Mill, first priority was to buy some extra layers of insulation before heading further north...and why can't a girl have cashmere? Just because I'm camping doesn't mean I'm roughing it... :)

Today was a much better day - after yesterday's sole "photo a hoodie" success (thanks again to Steve and Jim!) things started well at Coalburn Village Green - Man vacuuming car "are you on some kind of rally? You're the third one this morning, there was a guy with a sidecar when I left for the tip." Me: "there's going to be a few more..." - before I took Graham's recommended diversion, with an added detour to the Lochearnhead Watersports Centre and Lochside Cafe. Best biker-friendly establishment on the 6 points! I approached the counter sheepishly for a stamp for my Transit Verification Form (I get a certificate and a non-specific privilege card) and got an espresso on the house (as well as the stamp). Then to Killicrankie which was also swarming with 6-pointers - "have you a stamp for my form?" I asked the strapping blonde lady in the Gift Shop. "No, we are saving the local post office." Small pause for puzzled silence.

Meet "The Nutter"

Some would say that's what I must be after riding 2500 miles in 5 days. But in fact it's a martini :)
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Maverick Media

I've posted before about the strange choices made by the media when it comes to covering biker protests. Tomorrow it's BikeFest feat. KillSpills - a positive campaign about road safety and not spilling diesel on the roads. Track record to date suggests that 7,500 bikes riding in London on a KillSpills demo gets about three lines on BBCOnline. Yesterday just 500 bikers in Manchester enjoying the sunshine protesting about high fuel costs got coverage in most of the nationals. Maybe it was the splendid names of the organisers wot won it - Maverick, Nobby and Triumph Man.

Congratulations Frank and Carol

Frank has been named "Business Person of the Year" at the Vale Royal Business Awards, while the Thundersprint itself was Highly Commended.

It's been really disappointing to read the anonymous sniping in the letters pages of MCN about the Thundersprint. I had a really fantastic day - apart from the early start! - and it was amazing to be there when a whole town is taken over by a festival of biking and bikers.

Frank and Carol took a personal interest in everything and were amazingly relaxed - no idea how they did it, I'd have been wound up tighter than the tightest thing you can think of. Thousands of congratulations on well-deserved recognition!

And the award for most creative use of a motorcycle to escape the KGB goes to..

....Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull! Shame it was a Harley but you can't win them all.

"You're going too fast."

"That's a matter of opinion."