{"id":8509,"date":"2012-12-03T12:18:51","date_gmt":"2012-12-03T12:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=8509"},"modified":"2012-12-03T12:21:14","modified_gmt":"2012-12-03T12:21:14","slug":"trip-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=8509","title":{"rendered":"Trip: done"},"content":{"rendered":"

as usual, if you click on each image and, when it’s loaded, click on it again, you’ll get the full-screen option<\/em><\/p>\n

Mid-morning on Saturday, despite the -2c, I sat on the Bandit in the freezing sunshine and pointed it westwards.<\/p>\n

I chose to avoid the motorways and as many main roads as possible.<\/p>\n

Conditions were really not that bad, despite the chills.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I stopped in Monmouth for a medicinal Pain au Raison and an equally medicinal hot chocolate.<\/p>\n

And then continued westwards until I saw the sight of – bizarrely – what I consider to be home:<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The bend, if you’re interested, is here:\u00a051.815885,-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!)<\/p>\n

On top of the mountain I stopped at Keepers Pond for a view-check:<\/p>\n

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I then rode the bike over to the other side of the mountain for a look at the view there:<\/p>\n

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Back at the pub I\u00a0put the Bandit to bed (the pub owner very kindly offered me a garage space) and went walkabout and foraged for food.<\/p>\n

Much later, about 9pm, I went for a drink.<\/p>\n

I left that pub after midnight, slightly well-oiled, and having flirted somewhat with one or two girls on Twitter.<\/p>\n

I can’t help that. It’s in my genes. Jeans?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

And then I trundled home.<\/p>\n

The poor old Bandit, after two days of thrashing around the Black Mountains in winter, was a state:<\/p>\n

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The quick application of two runs of warm soapy water and a wipe down soon had her looking like this:<\/p>\n

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And then I went to Sainsbury’s and bought food.<\/p>\n

What did you do this weekend?<\/p>\n

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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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}