Plain Sailing (Biscay)

Tuesday I couldn’t resist a pre tour ride out, after all, the sun was breaking through in Carlisle north of the river, so I donned my open face Union Jack crash helmet and added my Triumph shades to complete the image. Three miles down the road the sun was nowhere to be seen, hidden by cloud, which made me say to myself “Ain’t no sunshine”. Now lyrics of songs were never my strong point, but the little I do know was enough to finish the line off. It doesn’t take the winner of Pop Master to work out the state I was in by the time I arrived at Rachel’s grave! In the words of Tom Jones ‘It’s not unusual’.

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/billwithers/aintnosunshine.html

For fear of turning this blog into some kind of ‘Guess the lyrics/guess the artist’ game, I shall desist from such a theme and move on to the adventure in hand.

Tuesday night was quite a sleepless affair, not really due to excitement of the trip, but more the concern of doing the final form for entry to Spain. The Health Control Form (FCS) can only be completed within 48 hours of arrival into Spain, so I had to wait until I was at the Blackburn motorcycle dealers before I could stress out on the computer whilst the Rocket was getting its first service. Twenty minutes later I had the final piece of the jigsaw to allow access to the country, so providing they’ll let me on the ferry it should be ‘plain sailing’.

The Portsmouth check in went seamlessly “Passport, booking reference, proof of Covid jabs and Health Control Form please”, less than two minutes later I had all those documents back complete with cabin card, result!

• 

All that remained was waiting the two hours in the holding area until we boarded just before 10pm, time aplenty to form casual relationships with the only other two bikers in the queue, Alun from the Welsh valleys and Gavin a guy using this trip to try his hand at YouTubing. The less said about Flash Harry with his equally flash and noisy blacked out Range Rover the better, but I suppose solo travellers naturally gravitate towards each other, although this novice solo traveller is happy to remain so for the time being.

Alun makes me laugh, a short guy with a tall motorbike, a recipe for disaster if ever there was, to which Alun truly obliges by falling off it three times in as many days of ownership. He seems to be one of those guys who attracts misfortune. He was supposed to get the ferry the previous night and in fact did get a ferry, just not the right one! Due to problems with his FCS form they wouldn’t let him board so, in an effort to find reasonable priced accommodation for the night, he ended up booking a place nine miles away….. on the Isle of Wight!

When they finally let us board Alun was the one they brought in for searching whilst Gavin and I rode through unmolested.

Gavin’s a very well mannered unassuming guy whose desire is to retire in two years at the age of 55. Enough has happened in his life to make him realise that he should enjoy it as much as possible sooner rather than later, sensible chap.

During the few pints Alun and I shared in the ship’s bar, we unfortunately caught the eye of ‘Flash’ and had to endure an hour of his company until the vodka, and whatever else he’d ingested beforehand, got the better of him and he staggered off back and forth several times between reception and (possibly) his cabin.

Thursday we have a relaxing day at sea, the sparsely inhabited ferry makes avoidance of Flash a little more challenging, but so far I am enjoying the peace…….

The sea is like a millpond as we head for The Bay of Biscay 🙂