Trip: done

as usual, if you click on each image and, when it’s loaded, click on it again, you’ll get the full-screen option

Mid-morning on Saturday, despite the -2c, I sat on the Bandit in the freezing sunshine and pointed it westwards.

I chose to avoid the motorways and as many main roads as possible.

Conditions were really not that bad, despite the chills.

The run through the Forest of Dean was brilliant, I do love that road. I used to ride an old BSA Bantam over that route, as a schoolboy.

I stopped in Monmouth for a medicinal Pain au Raison and an equally medicinal hot chocolate.

And then continued westwards until I saw the sight of – bizarrely – what I consider to be home:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found a pub doing B&B, checked in, and went for a bit of a hooley through a piece of the Black Mountains that I know so well from my youth.

Painful long-dead memories were reawakened. Emotions ran high. And also, I managed to get my right knee down (intentionally!) on a brilliantly sharp mountain pass bend that I have been aching to try that on for decades.

The bend, if you’re interested, is here: 51.815885,-3.05399 (I can’t even begin to describe the uphill gradient that road is on. It’s amazingly steep, like looking up a mountain. Oh. It is!)

On top of the mountain I stopped at Keepers Pond for a view-check:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I then rode the bike over to the other side of the mountain for a look at the view there:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back at the pub I put the Bandit to bed (the pub owner very kindly offered me a garage space) and went walkabout and foraged for food.

Much later, about 9pm, I went for a drink.

I left that pub after midnight, slightly well-oiled, and having flirted somewhat with one or two girls on Twitter.

I can’t help that. It’s in my genes. Jeans?

The next morning I had a semi-full Welsh breakfast, then headed more or less back the way I’d come in to Wales, out through the Forest of Dean.

I stopped en-route for a coffee at Rich and Dawn’s house and admired their new addition (it’s a human, this time, not another racing car).

And then I trundled home.

The poor old Bandit, after two days of thrashing around the Black Mountains in winter, was a state:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The quick application of two runs of warm soapy water and a wipe down soon had her looking like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then I went to Sainsbury’s and bought food.

What did you do this weekend?