The journey home and M25 events

Just for completeness, here are the last stages of the journey home, to be fleshed out later: I slept poorly on the boat, in fact I slept badly for the whole trip!

Gathering down on the very lowest deck as the boat came in to Portsmouth was a nice opportunity to chat to the others with bikes.

They were a pleasantly friendly and interesting group which restored my positive feelings towards bikers because sometimes I think they are a bit heavy going. There were at least 4 other 1200GS bikes there including the new water cooled model which its owner was very pleased with though the electric suspension turfed him off the bike when his pillion (who I have to say was no balerina) got off for the first time, he said. We made it up the very steep ramp

and then I sped out of the port and up onto the motorway and up the A3 to the M25 at a really good pace. The bike's fuel gauge has not been its strongest feature and it is on its third one since I've owned it. Telling me I had 66 miles left, then 68 then 72 miles should have made me stop for petrol but I thought I could make the next stop apparently 25 miles away. But of course I ground gracefully to a halt by the exit to the M40 and had to be rescued and re-fuelled by the RAC - the first time I have called them out since joining in 2007 when I bought my first bike. The side of the M25 is not a pleasant place to spend the best part of an hour.

I also learnt that 40 minutes of leaving the ignition on to keep the hazard lights flashing drains the battery to a point where it needs an on-hand RAC person's charger to get the engine going.

When riding in the rain in Spain, water leaked into the tiny hole in the GPS screen (caused by me dropping it a couple of years back). So the route only starts from after I filled up with petrol near Uxbridge and is inaccurate. (I bought a new screen from Hong Kong for £30 and have fixed it now.)

Eventually, after stopping for something to eat at South Mimms on the A1 - which seems more like a business meeting centre than a motorway service station ( I was the only one without a laptop), I got home to Cambridge by 4pm. Here I am just having walked into the hall.

I have to say I was exhausted - and still am. But It was a successful trip and most of the lessons I learnt from my last trip to Sweden I was able to put in to practice, the main one being to go somewhere sunny.

Here's the mileage - nothing too ambitious.

And here is the lovely image made by Adze, piecing together the GPX files from my Garmin of the whole Spanish part of the trip.

Spain is a good place to go to with a bike. One of the others on the boat told me that he takes his racing bike there every summer. I can see why people do return there, but I have no sense of connection with the country. I feel more at home in Germany and northern Europe, and have more interest in speaking some German than Spanish.