Skip to main content

Don't Ride Angry

Never ride angry. It leads to mistakes.

For some unknown reason people in England have this urge to travel. That's not a problem.

What is the problem is that no sooner has the final bell of the summer term/semester rung,  like lemmings they are in their cars and motorhomes  (RV) and heading on their summer holiday.

Why? Most kids won't be back in their classrooms until September 6th or even 7th!!

To coincide with this exodus, small 'e' as the waves don't part for them, after some terrorist activity in France (not to mention our vote to leave the European Union) the French boeufed up their ridiculously slap dash border control.

Traffic was queued back on the M20 for about 15 miles. Three lanes and then two.... The A2 into the port two lanes for about 7 miles.

Add to that both roads closed due to the inevitable accidents and a rare truck fire, and you have CHAOS.

People trapped for upto 14 hours.  It later turned out that for a few hours one single lone French douanier was the only one working.  At peak they had three booths out of seven working.

Now tell me that wasn't pipsqueek M. Le Président Hollande making a Brexit point!!

Where do I come in. Mr très angry.

Friday we missed a concert only 40 miles away as we couldn't get there due to the traffic and roads closed, see above, so that was £60/$80 up the swanee.

Saturday we were going with Pepe to a bike show and meet at Dover.

Roads blocked..we got as far as Folkestone (5 miles of the 14!!) And were blocked along with other bikes by a truck deliberately blocking the road. The temperature was about 80°F and little shade.


Another event missed. At least this one was just time and petrol wasted.

And as we got moving I made my mistake. I made a right turn into a one-way street. Luckily I was on the right kerb so the car coming was easily able to miss me. In fact it never got close. The passenger called me quite a few names. I shouted back to asked if he had ever fucked up? I rode off to more abuse.

My fault entirely.

So let there be a lesson in there somewhere.

The road is no longer one-way!!!

Comments

  1. Yiks. So are the traffic issues due to high population and poor road planning (old roads) or just summer vacation travelers?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Battery?

The weekend showed how weak the battery has become.  Having had to use the dbPower unit on four separate occasions during the day in Belgium was the giveaway. We are in the second winter of this problem where the battery isn't strong enough to start the bike. In the summer it charges and holds that charge and although I keep the dbPower unit to hand I rarely have to use it.  But in winter it barely has the power to turn the engine over. It's simply "clunk". The lights come on though and that probably doesn't help. So what to do? Being a fair weather biker nowadays I won't be using the bike that often until the new year. Do I get a new battery sooner rather than later? It might end up freezing away in the garage. I have a garage in a block away from the house with no power, so a trickle charger is no use either. I have been looking at a replacement though.  A  Motobatt  with a high cranking power should be around £75. So unlikel...

Bikers Loft 3

The last day. After leading yesterday's run to Ypres, I decided to take a back seat, or a different place in the line of 8 bikes. And so after a repeat of the previous day's self cook breakfast we packed the bikes and headed off. Aiming for Nieuwpoort aan Zee as the first stop. The plan to follow a canal all the way there to where it meets the sea at a huge marina. I was bringing up the rear of the column and saw a sign like this one. "No Motor vehicles" After only one short section of the towpath/road. We tried to alert those ahead but Cal and I were the only two not heading past this sign. We chose to turn left across a lift bridge onto the other bank, where Nieuwpoort was signposted 15kms away. As we headed along we sounded our horns and waved at the "first wave" to no avail. Some miles further on their side came to an end. By then we were way ahead despite dropping the speed to 40. We carried onto t...