Week 1 – Tourists

Thurs 12 – Sat 21 May

Dorset, London, Felixstowe, London

Leisure Seekers In Dorset

Long distance flying is never pleasant in Cattle Class, although the 787-Dreamliner does have more leg-room than most planes. Melbourne to Darwin for a 90 minute layover then the 18 hours non-stop to London’s Heathrow, arriving at 5.30am to a pleasant enough morning

The adventure begins with multiple train connections to Weymouth in Dorset, arriving at midday, where we have a joyous reunion with my sister Jill and her husband Phil. It’s then back to their beautiful country home to recoup for the day.

Saturday is a lovely late spring day so its off to Weymouth to spend the day on Phil and Jill’s 50′ ‘She Wolf’. It was an easy 15klm run along the coast to the secluded Mupe Bay (at least I think it was Mupe Bay), where we enjoyed the sunshine before heading back to port. That’s a decent boat even if it doesn’t sail.

The next few day were taken up with some sight seeing. Portland Bill and Osmington Mills for lunch.

London & Bike Pick-Up

It’s now Thursday and there’s still no guarantee that the bike will be available for pick up before the weekend, so we catch the trains to Streatham where my cousin Tristan and his lovely family live. Its so good catching up with family you haven’t seen for ages. Thursday afternoon we hear the bike ‘should’ be good to go from midday Friday.

Friday is bleak and threatening rain and still no guarantee we can pick the bike up, but we catch the trains to Felixstowe anyway where indeed we are reunited with our BMW F900XR Tour. It’s a frenetic couple of hours getting on the road. It rains for the first 2 hours of the 100 miles to Tristan’s, which is interesting in a new country and on a fully laden bike that I hadn’t ridden for 3 months. It stopped raining for the last hour’s run through south London in Friday’s peak afternoon traffic but TomTom didn’t let us down.

Saturday we played tourists on the South Bank.

So tomorrow, Sunday, we head off on our Journey.