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Foray to Fishguard

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The brilliant blue skies of Spain and Portugal were now behind us, and it was time for on our annual pilgrimage to Fishguard. This tour to Wales is organised by our local BMW dealer Williams Motorcycles Manchester (see https://www.williamsgroup.co.uk/motorrad/news/peak-ride-outs-williams-ride-outs-2018/ ). The Williams organized ride-outs have been instrumental in our discovering the joys of motorcycle touring, a story which began with a chance meeting outside a Costa Coffee shop, but I will tell you more about that another day.   So on a Saturday morning we assembled on a not so sunny day (yes, the spectacular British heat wave has run out of steam just as most families want to enjoy their summer holidays), and set off for our first tea break at Sleap airfield ( www.facebook.com/pages/Sleap-Airfield/103497646370355 ). Sleap is a highly recommended destination for a ride-out for anyone living in Lancashire, Cheshire and Shropshire. On the way there or back you can stop off fo...

Roughing it at Roughleys

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There are times when I realise that as resident of a gated community consisting of 2 properties in a suburb of a suburb of what Wikipedia calls "a large town in Greater Manchester" I lead a very sheltered life. Today our planned ride-out with the excellent people of our local RoSPA group ( https://www.rospa.com/ ) was cancelled due to the return of our usual British weather, so we decided that if we weren't going to ride on a bike, we would at least look at some bikes. As it happens, it was the day of the annual aptley named Roughleys Bike Show. In previous years, we had read about this event in the local press, last night a fellow dancer and biker announced his intention to attend, so we thought we should check it out. We paid our modest entrance fee of £3.00 per head, felt virtuous to support a charity event, and joined a couple of  hundred people milling around in the rain. There were about a dozen bikes on show, most of them sights we are not likely to forget in a hur...

Welcome!

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Welcome to my new blog where I will share the view from the back of our motorbike. This blog will be about touring in the UK and Europe, lots of pictures, routes, where to stop and what to avoid for pillion comfort i.e. many roads not suitable for motorised vehicles. Also tips, equipment and other things that will make your motorcycling alone and with a pillion more fun. We'll kick of with a few pictures from our recent tour of Spain and Portugal. You can already see how this works. My husband John pilots our bike - a very comfortable BMW  1200 RT, ideal for touring 2 up, and I point and shoot. I will tell you more about the challenges of highspeed photography for rider and photographer in later posts.