The Least Fixed Point Motorcycle Club: Prelude
On Monday and Tuesday mikeb and I took a tour of the
south-west of England. Here are
some photos mikeb took. iPhoto mangled the anti-aliasing on
some of the images; let me or mikeb know if you want
better-quality copies.
The plan was to meet in Richmond at 10.30am on Monday. London traffic being what it is, lunch in Richmond at about noon was followed by an early afternoon departure along the A4 (not the M4) south to Southampton, where we took a break for orange-juice tops on the Town Quay.
Given what we'd learnt about how far we travel per half-day, we revised our destination at this point. Originally, we had planned to visit Beer in Devon, but it seemed like a bit of a stretch, and since I'd visited Bridport in early 2004 and liked it, we decided to go there instead. Upon arrival in Bridport, we rode directly to West Bay, found a B&B to stay at on West Bay Road, and walked down to the beach, where mikeb took a fair few photos of the dramatic and beautiful cliffs.
I phoned Hadyn to skite about the fact I'd made it to Bridport before he had (it's a long story). This backfired: Hadyn was there that weekend also! We met up for a pint at The George in West Bay, and then called it a night.
We were up next morning for a full English breakfast, over which we chatted with a couple who were taking their summer holiday driving a classic MG around the southwest. We rode on to Beaminster and then took some minor roads (which were outstanding!) to the road ("Sandy Lane") leading back south to Cerne Abbas, where we saw the giant! Amazing! Then we turned North again to Yeovil and Bath, where we stopped for lunch. Continuing on in the early afternoon, we took the wrong road out of Bath (toward Trowbridge and Salisbury instead of toward Chippenham) and stopped to look at the map. mikeb came off his bike and broke the gear-change lever, rendering the bike unridable. We called in the RAC, who carried his bike back to Bath. I followed the truck. There, an engineer repaired the lever by drilling out the snapped peg bolt and putting in a fresh makeshift peg. We managed to limp home via Marlborough, a White Horse at Cherhill, Newbury, Thatcham (for dinner at a roadside pub), and the M4, with me arriving home exhausted finally around 11.30pm.