Gen and I spent this past weekend in Loddon, Norfolk for a gathering with friends and we decided to take the bikes to get some more of that all important road experience…
We set off on Friday night at around 17:30, hoping to at least get off the motorways before it got dark. The first part of the journey seemed to go well, but as we got to the M25 we hit traffic, and I mean traffic, it was almost 21:00 by the time we got to our first service stop on the M11, already starting to get dark with 100 miles still to go. Our luck then changed as we managed to stop at the same services as Dave, Steph and Adrian, we both breathed a sigh of relief realising that we could follow them the rest of the way and the pressure was off now I wouldn’t have to navigate in the dark (a good thing considering my navigational skills in the light). We arrived at Nina and Ollie’s at around 23:30 and after a bit of chit-chat with everybody we all settled down for the night.
I woke up at 08:00 Saturday morning, the plan was to go for a ride with Ollie and his GSX-R 750, we were on the road by 09:00 the weather was looking good. We rode to Lowestoft first, to tick off the most easterly point in the UK; Ness Point on Gas Works Road. I admit I have seen better scenery elsewhere, Gas Works Road is aptly named but regardless, this is the most easterly point in the UK and it deserved a visit and some photographs. We continued north from here up to Great Yarmouth and then north-west around the north Norfolk coast, we rode some fantastic roads here; nice and twisty, the way all roads should be. It was good fun riding with Ollie, it’s always good to watch other people riding; how they take their corners, where they position themselves in the road and even the small things like where they park their bike are interesting. We met up with the rest of the guys for lunch and then walked around Norwich for a bit before riding back. In the evening we stayed up playing nerdy board and video games into the early hours of the morning, alcohol was consumed by most and great fun was had by all!
On Sunday we did more of the same; nerdy games with a BBQ for lunch, but all of this unfortunately made us late leaving and we didn’t set off until around 16:00. We’d just got onto the A11 when I had an unpleasant experience with an idiot car driver. We’d just come off a roundabout onto a section of dual carriageway, there was a junction on the left and a place to u-turn off of the right-hand lane. I had accelerated up to around 60mph and a the car driver decides to pull out of the junction, “moron” I thought and proceeded to move out into the fast lane so I could avoid colliding, my plan would have worked too had the idiot not moved over into that lane too. I panic-braked causing my back wheel to lock, I veered over to the centre of the carriageway and found myself between the car and the curb, at this point I was so close to the car, I was getting ready to hit the road, I remember thinking “this is going to hurt”. To avoid hitting the car I went up on the grass verge in the centre of the carriageway and somehow managed to come to a stop without falling off, I was VERY lucky.
We carried on for the next 100 miles or so, the M25 thankfully was pretty good all the way, but we weren’t taking any chances and left it for the M40 where we stopped at a service station which by pure chance was home to a Starbucks, I was a happy man! We left the services around 20:30 and unfortunately it dawned on me that we would be riding, yet again, into the night. The rest of the ride home was fairly uneventful, we took the A338 from Oxford until a road closed sign threw us off track and onto a lovely “B” road, one which I wouldn’t mind revisiting during the day sometime. I decided that it would simply take too long to get home if we kept going like this so I took us to Newbury and then used the A34 and M27 to get us home as fast as possible. We arrived at around 23:15, it had been a long ride and it wasn’t in the most enjoyable conditions but we made it none the less, it was definitely challenging and we came out on top. France, Spain & Portugal… we’re ready.
