Soaked

The final leg of the trip saw us ride from Leeds back to Bristol today.  It was raining when we started and that rain didn't let up until we were very nearly home.  The conditions were truly miserable for two wheeled transport.

At Telford Services we stopped for a coffee. By the time we got up to leave there was a large puddle on the floor around our table and the staff had placed one of those yellow "danger - wet floor" cones next to our table - much to everybody's amusement.  Several of the other customers stopped by to commiserate and work out why on earth we were mad enough to be travelling on motorbikes in such conditions...

We both made a change into dry gloves and set off once again, carefully negotiating the small lake that now blocked the exit from the services where a drain had become overloaded.  There is something very welcome about having a fresh set of warm dry gloves - it really does help with what would otherwise be a miserable situation - and considerably improves one's safety.  Cold wet hands are dangerous on a motorbike.

We arrived back safely in good time, despite the conditions, and it is good to be home - no matter what fun you have on your holiday, it is always great to come back home at the end.

My wet gloves (from Telford) are still rather wet - I suspect that they will take a few days to dry our completely.  My motorcycling boots are also still wet, as you can see - and its been 10 hours now since I got home :-). Fortunately the gortex liners meant that my feet were nice and dry.  In fact, the only bits of me that got wet were my hands and my head - in the sort of torrential weather we had today the inside of one's helmet eventually gets some water in it, no matter how carefully one tries to stop that happening.

I've carefully cleaned the bike which has been put away in the garage. The total mileage on the trip was 2,105 over the course of 11 days.  Its been brilliant fun - and I've only got 850 or so photos to work my way through.  I've now backblipped the empty days in my journal and will try to sit down tomorrow to sort out the photos ...