Leaving London

Everything was well planned - Aled and Kate had arrived to house sit, the bikes were ready, everything was packed, and then the house central heating failed ! So, we spent our last night before departing on our little expedition with Nick repairing the central heating - oh joy !

After a brief meet at the Ace Cafe, some departure photos, and a bacon sarnie, we were ready to head for Dover. Until I was volunteered to navigate to Central London to collect John's passport from the agent. Navigating into Central London was fine, the amount of traffic - made worse by the tube strike, combined with loaded up bikes (heavy and wide) and hot sticky London weather made it an ideal training ground for central Istanbul!

With passport collected, and 'fastest route' to Dover entered into the GPS, I was a little surprised to find our selves in Holborn, then we passed St Pauls, then we crossed London Bridge, nevermind - trust the GPS... Then we passed Cutty Sark, then under the A2 - then I remembered, a few weekend previously I'd set the GPS to avoid highways and motorways - Doh ! So, with navigation resolved, we blasted down the A2 and onto the P&O ferry.

Once in Calais - a blast down the highway to our overnight camp just outside Arras.

Over a few beers we totalled the incidents of the day (and we are still on tarmac, in Western Europe):

3 dropped bikes (by 2 different people)

1 car wing mirror

2 bashed panniers (same person, same incident :-))

2 navigation errors

....it could be along trip