Irish Spring
We'll spend the next 10 days traveling to Europe and back for a motorcycle ride through England, Ireland, and Wales.
Jackie and I are doing a self guided ride set up by Magellan Tours. We'll start and end in London where our rental bikes are located. I'm riding a 2019 BMW 1200 GS and Jackie will be riding a 2019 BMW 1200 RT.
Bags are packed, the clock is ticking towards our departure and overnight flight to London. This will be our first time riding unchaperoned in Europe, without a guide or group to tag along. While we don't anticipate the typical language barriers we will have to adapt to riding on the "wrong" side of the road.
I'm both looking forward to and wary of the challenges we will face. With luck we'll get a bit of nice weather and some good photos. I will post updates when I can.
- Wayne Busch, AmericaRidesMaps.com
We arrived this morning in Woking, UK. This English town of about 65,000 in Surrey is noted for being the first place the martians landed in H.G.Wells “War of the Worlds”.
About 25 minutes ride from Heathrow Airport, Woking is where we pick up our rental motorcycles for this trip. The heart of town is pretty and modern,
Doubletree Hotel, Woking, UK
After a nap we walked to Road Trip Motorcycle Rentals to insure things were set for our departure tomorrow. We we given our pannier liner liner bags to pack and our tour pack from Magellan Tours,
Road Trip Motorcycle Rentals, Woking, UK
Woking is also home to McClarren Racing.
Well fed, we look forward to getting the ride started tomorrow.
Photo
Wayne Busch - AmericaRidesMaps.com
It’s official, the adventure is underway. We picked up our rental bikes this morning at Road Trip.
Doing the paperwork
The sun came out briefly as we loaded up but we ran into problems when our Sena radios refused to communicate. We wasted too much time trying to reset them and by the time we got on the road a cold rain had begun.
Ready to leave
It was our first time driving on the left side of the road which really had me alert. While we both had GPS units with our route in it they were sending us on different tracks. Traffic was heavy and the rain just kept coming quite hard at times.
I expected some roundabouts but had no idea there would be hundreds over the course of the day. Traffic lights, stop signs, were rare. Without our radios it was frustrating going but I got them working when we took a break at a rest stop and things improved
The scenery was probably hampered by the weather. I found little of interest in southern England.
The small bit of Wales we clipped in the afternoon was nice. We climbed a mountain pass then wound toward the coast to reach the ferry to Belfast from Liverpool.
There was a bit of excitement when the GPS directed us to the commercial port instead of the ferry and we had to make a fast backtrack into the city but we arrived at the dock with time to spare .
Once aboard the bikes were secured, unpacked, and we found our cabin.
We changed out of our wet gear and bought our way in to the executive lounge for some quiet. It was fine until the ship got underway. Once moving things shut down and we passed the noises night with intermittent sleep
-—Wayne Busch, AmericaRidesMaps.com