It was the day after the night before, and time to see what I'd bought in the harsh light of day. Exhibit A, Your Honour:
The previous owner proclaimed to have never tightened the chain, which explained why it had managed to come off in the crash - it could be unhooked by hand. After standing on the breaker bar the axle nut finally gave way and the axle was moved back by a couple of metres..
This didn't cure the stiff links but at least it wasn't going to fall off any more, so it was a great improvement.
Next up was to find out why the numberplate was so blimmin' wobbly. Check out this load of guff that passes for motorcycle design:
I pulled the R clips and fitted a couple more washers to try and pack it all out, but it didn't seem to help. It turns out the wobbliness comes from some rubber grommets at the back of the plate which basically do not fit or work at all. Less than 24 hours into the ownership of my first Kawasaki I was seriously starting to wonder what I had done.
Next up was the front disc - the main problem. The first step was to pull out all the magnets that the Koso dash reads to calculate the speed, these are popped into the brake disc bolts like so:
Thankfully I have a collection of magnets, including this one from an old hard drive which is really quite fierce.
Don't ask me why there is copper grease all over the axle, I don't know. Soon enough all the magnets were removed!
I bought a Brembo replacement disc for just under £100 because of course I was never going to buy OE Kawasaki. Later I discovered that the disc is the same on the 300s and I believe the post-08 Ninja 250s, so perhaps I could've found a lightly used one somewhere for less. Oh well.
Still seems a lot for a laser cut steel disc but what can you do. A trolley jack under the exhaust header because this is a silly sports bike with no centre stand, a few bolts here and there, a quick wrestle with the frankly awful plastic speedo drive (really, it's completely plastic) and she was all ready to go.
I reused the paper gasket that goes underneath the disc because why the hell not, what does it even do? The bolts were torqued to about 20Nm but it doesn't matter because they all have varying amounts of threadlock left in them anyway. Moving on..
I ran the bike like this for 80 miles (during which time I was incredibly unimpressed by basically everything about it), by which time it emptied the oil sight glass. I placed a little faith in Kawasaki's basic engineering prowess and decided it must be due to the oil leak. Time to strip the plastic off and see what's up..
I decided to take a punt and see if I could tighten the bolts holding the clutch cover on, as that seemed to be the general area where the oil was coming from. There also seemed to be gasket goo underneath and around all the bolts, as if someone had tried to stop the leaking with goo instead of a new gasket or even doing the bolts up. Bizarrely I managed to get an extra quarter, sometimes even half a turn on each bolt and after this the leak stopped completely! I have no idea what has happened here, either someone who has no mechanical aptitude at all has been in there for some reason or Kawasaki have massively messed up during assembly. If you look closely you can also see a bolt has been replaced on the clutch cable bracket, the previous owner did this after the original fell out. The exact same thing happened to this chap so I really do wonder about Kawasaki's ability to tighten bolts.
During this I took time to marvel at the state of the frame..
What a mess of pressed and bent steel it is. No wonder they felt the need to cover it all up with a super cheap plastic thing! Plus all the water in the world is going to pool in that bottom bit, but never mind eh.. I'm sure it can't be that badly built. Right? Right??
Also, a tip for any unsuspecting Koso buyer - the magnets have different poles, you have to get them all the right way around! It took me a lot of fiddling to discover this..
With the CB250 dead from the Spain trip I was in need of some every day wheels. I'd been a fan of Kawasaki's Z250SL ever since it first appeared in the biking press, it looked like a modern version of the CBX250RS-E with very similar specs and yet hopefully a lot more reliability thrown into the mix - 30 years of development must count for something, surely?
I'd had an ebay search set up for months already looking for a used example, but they rarely come up - the model has proven to be very unpopular here in the UK, where people on A2 licences want the 300 as it's closer to the power limit they are allowed and people interested in economical transport are likely to find something cheaper/older. And yet, lo and behold, there it was right when I needed it - a black 2016 Z250SL, crashed and fixed up with a Koso dash and generic round headlight with 3200 miles under its wheels and a chain slack enough to be pulled off the sprockets by hand. A very unpopular bike indeed! I won the auction at £1000, added the bike to my Carole Nash policy with an extortionate £40 admin fee slapped on top and bought a train ticket to head down from Leicester to That London, specifically Erith near Dartford. The obvious plan was to turn up, hand over the money, tighten the chain and ride it home. Yeah right..
I eventually arrived outside a block of flats, in full bike gear and with a backpack full of the tools that Ren at BAT had told me I would need to tighten the chain, and called Ben who was the owner. It transpires he has sustained a scaphoid fracture from this crash and can no longer twist the throttle, so he may as well sell up. He dutifully appeared and took me inside to view the bike - there it was, just like in the pictures! Except, upon closer inspection, it didn't roll. We stood around, prodded the gear lever, found it was in gear (which Ben didn't normally leave it in..) and changed it to neutral but it still wouldn't roll. Then we found the front brake disc was bent - some kids had tried to lever the disclock off and mangled the disc instead! This was a major setback but I was too far in to back out, another admin fee and the cost of a train ticket home was not a welcome thought. We go up to Ben's flat/bedroom and look up how much a disc is from Kawasaki - around £200. Ben offers to knock £250 off the £1000 and I agree, as long as it starts and runs well enough.
Ben faffs around and eventually fits the battery, after I find the block for one of the terminals lying on the floor nearby. It fires up after a few pichoos and settles into a disturbingly quick tickover, such is EFI. It sounds sweet enough, maybe a bit clattery for a modern water cooled machine, but soon there is smoke rising from the exhaust under the engine.. A closer look reveals oil is dripping off the motor straight on to the catalytic converter, some is sitting behind the cylinder while more is basically all around the clutch cover. Ben is near panic now, but I don't mind too much. I suggest it may make the bike harder for me to sell on, so after some searching for answers on google for questions like "engine oil leak meaning" he offers to knock a further £100 off the price. A 3200 mile, 1 year old machine for £650.. I couldn't refuse. Poor Ben though, it seemed everything in life went for him like this - he'd even shelled out £450 previously to have a replacement set of locks fitted after some kids screwdrivered the original ignition barrel, and a further £600 or so to have the crash damage repaired. He was well down on the deal, having paid the full £3800 RRP to get his hands on one of these machines. I did actually feel bad for him.
Having insured it with Carole Nash more than 24 hours previous, I could use the breakdown recovery service to get home. Of course their system is slower than this and no one believed that the bike was actually insured with them, and of course CN's offices were closed after 4PM on a Saturday. Eventually someone at AVIVA took my credit card details in case they had to charge me for the recovery and I was on my way, I started phoning at 16:30 and had someone on their way by 17:30. Unfortunately they didn't arrive until 23:30, and they are with a low loader. I explain that the bike doesn't roll, but the driver doesn't care. He tries to push it and realises it doesn't roll, but he is absolutely not allowed to let us help him, which prompts him to phone his boss. He passes the phone to me at one point so I can explain to the boss that the bike doesn't roll, and if he winches it on forwards he's not going to be able to winch it off backwards at the end of the journey! "However my man wants to do it is how it'll be done" says the boss, and asks to be handed back over to his man. The man starts to winch the bike on, is most of the way up the ramp to the beaver tail and then the light comes on, the penny drops, both me and Ben see it - he looks at us. He says if he winches it on, how is he going to get it off again at the other end? Slow clap. He pulls the bike back off the trailer, apologises for it being the first bike he's ever had to leave behind, and goes off to his next job.
After another hour or so someone from SOS Motorcycle Recovery turns up in a proper van - hooray! I help him load it in (finally, sense prevails), I bid farewell to Ben who stayed with me the whole time (bless him) and we set off at warp speed, it was like Need For Speed but in real life. Sadly he could only take me to South Mimms services, he was not allowed to leave the London area as he was the only person they had down there. I waited a further 45 minutes or so and then a guy on a low loader turns up, you know this doesn't roll right, what they never said etc. etc. and I help him load it on. He goes on and on about how this is the correct way to strap a bike down, never strap them by the handlebars because they'll bend, yadda yadda and breaks the front mudguard in the process but it was too dark for me to notice at the time. He took me as far as Watford Gap services and left me.
By this time it is around 3AM, and I get a text from CN stating that they don't have anyone available to pick me up until 5:30. Twenty minutes later I get a call from a lady with an Indian accent, oh joyous Leicester.. A little bit later an Italian guy turned up, strapped the bike down hard on to his low loader and we set off for home sweet home. We eventually arrive in the street, lights blazing, big diesel rattling, and get the new purchase off the trailer. I can't even roll it into the driveway, just abandon it in the street. Bed time. Strangely there was no "new bike joy" this time, it was already tainted by this experience. I was also majorly annoyed with Carole Nash, what a piss poor service that was.
Way back in September, while I was working my way up through France on a very sick CB250, my K100RS was nicked off the driveway. Thankfully it was found parked up on the side stand in Garden Close, Thorpe Astley, Leicester after some very lovely member of the public phoned the police three times about it.
After paying £180 for the privilege of getting my own property back (S99 of the RTRA1984 does not allow you to charge me, police!!) the poor K100 looked like this:
Very sad. The little tykes had chopped off the wiring to the ignition lock and then thrown the lock away, as well as battering the lock of the top box even though it was unlocked the whole time.. But most importantly, the indicators were still in one piece - these are now near impossible to find in decent condition. Because of this, and the fact the clutch still seemed to work, the bike was worth saving. Anyway, a quick search revealed that ignition locks don't really exist any more for these bikes, and I didn't much fancy having two keys for it. I also didn't fancy having it put back to standard trim when it is easy to steal. A plan was formed..
What I initially wanted was something like keyless ignition, where I would just have to be near the bike and it would all turn on - very sci-fi. There are many kits like this for cars but the fob has to be placed inside a little ring-shaped receiver, which is totally impractical on a bike. I turned my attention to remote blipper kits instead, not so sci-fi but more practical.. After some reading it was unclear of what exactly I needed, nonsense from poorly translated Chinese like "remote flameout" not helping, but it seemed a good idea to have remote start as it may provide a constant 12v at the press of a (remote!) button, which is what I need. Sure enough, for £10 this fabulous piece of Chinese engineering was mine:
The old Master Racing Alarm System Of Motorcycle, a classic of our time.
It's actually a neat little kit if you can put your reliability worries to one side. The instructions are, quite honestly, faintly bemusing and not helpful if you want to just use this as a remote control ignition switch.
I eventually deduced that the orange wire, the one that is supposed to bypass the original central locking circuit, provides a constant 12v which we can use to switch a big relay that can take the real load. Check it:
Knowing this, the rest is easy.
To fit this kit to your bike, you will need the following:
A somewhat hefty relay. If your switch is a simple on/off then a simple normal relay will work, there are plenty of automotive ones out there that can switch 45A if you really must. They also often have suppressing resistors or diodes for when the magnetic field of the coil collapses when you turn it off, which can help save things (apparently). The switch on the K100 happens to connect two pairs of contacts, so I had to get a Double Pole Double Throw (DPDT) relay. I used a JQX 38F 3Z which is actually 3P3T but was readily available at a reasonable price of £5.84.
An inline fuse holder, I bought mine from Maplin (£2.69, but not any more..) but they can be bought from Halfords for an extortionate amount or, better yet, online. Beware the mini blade fuse holder is the same physical size as the normal blade fuse holder so there is no point buying the mini one, it'll just be harder to find a replacement fuse.
A bunch of female spade connectors, plus a wire stripping and crimping tool - these really are useful.
Some wire, preferably black and red. This can be garnered from Halfords for a lot of money.
Probably a multimeter so you can find a suitable feed and ground.
So, you gets yer wrecked bike..
And you pull out the bit of wiring that used to connect the ignition switch to the rest of the loom..
Strip the knackered ends off the wires and fit spade connectors so that it all snicks nicely on to your relay.
This is to bridge the contacts that the old switch would've bridged. If you didn't understand that, you may be in trouble with this job.. I also added a spade connector to the end of the orange wire of the black box and made a black ground wire for the other side of the switching circuit of the relay.
The next step is to find a power source for your new black box of remoteness. I took the opportunity to remove all the wires from the connector block that I wasn't going to use, such as wires to the indicators to make them flash with the alarm and the wire that would churn the starter with the remote start. I don't want any of that.
I eventually decided to use the +12v on the input side of the starter relay (so this is straight from the battery, basically) and a spare ground that I'm not entirely sure what its origin was. With the new Chinese box being fed straight from the battery the inline fuse was important!
With that sorted, cram it into whatever space you have. I thought the electrical gubbins box underneath the tank on the K100 would have loads of room but it was a surprisingly tight squeeze.
I also connected the speaker, not because I wanted the alarm but because I wanted the bleeps to say whether I had armed/disarmed (or enabled/disabled) the system. This fitted just nice..
And so, you end up with this.
Steal it now, tykes!! The alarm system is also surprisingly good, on the least sensitive setting I have to punch the seat to make it give some warning beeps and the wind has never set it off despite blowing the cover about.
Some people have reservations about remote blippers on bikes, stories abound of being out for a ride, needing to fill up and realising the key for the tank is at home. These people must be rather special, I just put the blipper on the keyring with the other keys. I have, however, had the lock button get pressed while the fob is in my pocket, which of course totally disabled the machine - I am now much more careful about where I put the fob in my pocket. I am also of course completely at the mercy of at least two Chinese relays but you can't spend your life worrying about that kind of thing, at least the kids can't hotwire it any more.
I spent the first few hours wondering if I'd done the right thing
in letting Paul go like that, but at the time it was clear that I
couldn't have stopped him. I felt bad that I'd let him set off to cover what must have been a thousand miles to get home on a bike that had broken down twice already and he had no phone to call for help. But he is also a big boy and if he wants to inflict such a silly scenario on himself then he can. This feeling quickly passed - I was still in the Pyrenees on my trusty old CB250, the motor was starting to move about in the frame again as the makeshift bolt was wearing but I felt confident we'd make it home. I felt okay about things at this point. The Pyrenees were much the same as before, too twisty with wet patches everywhere, gravel all over and an awful lot of road works. On the D118 I even passed another bike with UK plates, even if you feel far from home there's always someone else out there with you..
I made my way out of the Pyrenees and passed Carcassonne at about 2PM. I'd had to rely heavily on the Nav to find my way out, I wondered how on earth Paul would manage with no sat nav and no phone.
I stopped after a while to have a break from the oppressive heat and humidity, and the boring flat landscape, and had another read of the text that had been sent from the group we were originally supposed to be meeting in Austria. It turned out they hadn't gone with the original backup plan of the Languedoc at all and were going to be at Camping Moto near Crest. Thankfully I was heading in roughly the right direction, but could plan in a couple of stop offs recommended by Mr Pape - the Millau bridge and the Tarn Gorge. I stopped for some utterly delicious pork and mustard on tagliatelle and some awful Pelforth branded lager before heading up the motorway (yawn) to Millau. The CB250 probably didn't enjoy this at all, I certainly didn't enjoy crawling along at 45MPH uphill, but we made it.
The bridge is big. Quite good if you like big bridges. Shame the toll is €4.90
though! No doubt the super swanky camera system needs a lot of upkeep..
I was soon in Millau. It's actually a bit of a dump, this was next to a horrible retail park.
There were lots of camp sites to choose from though, and once I'd finally decided which one to use (the price and number of stars is highly variable) I found there was Leffe and burgers on tap just down the road. Lovely! The French make some strange burgers though, they still insist on using a baguette.. The night was admittedly subdued as I was on my own, compared to what was often alcohol fuelled mayhem with Paul it didn't seem quite right. I wondered if I am cut out for lone camping trips, despite having done a few in the UK.
I packed up camp the next morning feeling quite refreshed and strangely un-hungover. It turned out the people in the caravan next to my plot like to feed the ducks at a certain time, and this was that time.
I set off from Millau and headed for the Tarn Gorge, which was pretty damn impressive and actually a great riding road. This was also recommended by my new friend Mr Pape, who clearly should be listened to (forget Rocamadour)!
A video of the loveliness that is Tarn Gorge:
On the way out of Tarn Gorge on the eastern side a guy on a
Transalp starting following me rather closely, so I decided to show him
what Us Brits are made of. I essentially raced him through a few miles
of the gorge, often outrunning him if any corners were involved. We
finally came out of the gorge and into a little village, he pulls up
alongside me and I expect he's about to congratulate me on my riding,
getting so much out of so little. "parler francais? PARLER FRANCAIS??". I
wiggle my hand as the international sign of not really, so he tries in
English. "YOUR, err, TRANSMISSION! IT'S MOVING". Ahhh, a wave of disappointment washed over me. The rear sprocket
is wiggling about, and he is so concerned by it he has felt the need to
stick with me to tell me. What a come down. I pull into the next
carpark and explain that I know, and that I've ground down the studs so
it can wiggle about a lot. He clearly thinks I'm a complete crackpot. He
also doesn't seem very impressed. I guess I wouldn't be either.
According to him the sprocket is wobbling around by at least a
centimetre. By the time I got home this particular situation would be very desperate indeed.
Thanks Mr Frenchman, no one else ever mentioned it though I knew it moved a lot.
And then set off to Camp Moto somewhere south of Grenoble, kind of near Crest. This is
where the other guys were apparently staying, the ones we were supposed to meet on
Sunday.. Except I only made it by Wednesday evening and Paul never made it at all. Nice scenery
though, and the roads here from Tarn Gorge were occasionally brilliant, which I had learnt is a rare treat for most of France. I
also had the most excellent steak and chips on the way, served by a
young French fellow who had spent time as a student in Birmingham! The steak was cut into bitesize cubes so I could just stick them in my gob, and the Dijon mustard tasted all the better for being near Dijon..
The heat was finally fading away into the evening, I was closing in on some familiar faces, the scenery was becoming better and the CB was still purring/whirring away like it always did. Things felt pretty good.
The CB garnered much interest upon its arrival at Camp Moto, far more than all
the new BMWs managed. This was nice. You also get a beer shoved on you
as soon as you get there, which is also nice. I sat at a table after explaining that a tall, loud man is expecting me - the landlady of the site knew exactly who I meant. Soon enough Tony turned up, beaming and shouting. After giggling at my lack of BMW he realises that there's something missing..
"WHERE'S HIMSELF?"
And so I have to explain that Paul is a teenage girl with the mental constitution of a Cadbury's Flake. Then the rest turn up and I have to explain it again.. Thankfully there were beers on offer. Supposedly they were already known as the hardest drinking group on site, of course I couldn't let the side down..
Camp Moto, with the UK BMW And Rukka Owners Club. How sad for them.
Heehee, look at them. They're so far in they have no idea how ridiculous they are. They do fry up bacon in the morning though, so there are up sides to being associated with them.
When I first turned up, Tony confided in me that he had worn out the rest of the group. They all looked knackered, but I thought it might be down to the oppressive humidity. While mooching around the camp later, with some beer in all of us, I started to find out what the deal was - it quickly became apparent that Tony was trying to cram in high mileage days on very twisty, very gravelly and very hot roads with no let up. Everyone except Tony was also hanging on my every word about Spain, the easy roads, the dry heat, the lack of traffic.. It must have sounded like heaven compared to what they were being put through. More 9% lager from the pannier please..
The next day dawned. I was originally set on going to the top of the Cime De La Bonette as it was only a few hundred miles and the highest open, public road in Europe. However I was also well aware that the CB was not at its fittest, the handling starting to feel rather strange, and that perhaps it wasn't the best idea to go break my ride home and be stranded in what appears to be a moonscape. The UKBMWAROC talked me into seeing some Alps with them instead. I figured the Cime isn't going anywhere and it might be nice to ride in a familiar group for a bit even if I hold them up so off we went to Les Deux Alpes. The Alps are in the background, behind that enormous boxer monstrosity if you can see them.
Some bits of France are alright too. It soon became apparent that I wasn't holding them up at all because the roads really were twisty and not so much gravelly as had surface dressing applied without the tar! No wonder they were all frazzled, this was very hard work.
Whenever we stopped, people ignored the BMWs and stared at the CB250 instead. I was beyond proud. It was definitely deteriorating though.. Almost like the steering head bearings have a big notch in them but they're taper bearings, that is surely unlikely. I figured I'd find out when I got home.
Some mountains are pointy. Apparently people strap planks to their
feet and slide down them in the winter, and here in summer they pedal
bicycles up them instead. Weird. Here in super posh ski country the CB250 was not viewed so favourably, it was just like being at home for a bit!
Me and Tony somehow got split from the rest of the group, and then Geoff appeared. We decided to leave the other two to it as everyone has sat navs and went off to get something to eat. We ended up in a very strange cafe where about the only food on offer was croque monsieur and tiramisu, both of which are of course very acceptable but I would've loved some chips or even some more bread. While in this cafe a very friendly (!) old lady started babbling French to Geoff, who of course did his best to respond because he is a gentleman, and some older French bloke started talking about how much he likes Motörhead and how sad he was that Lemmy had passed. Of course I was with him 100%, having been a heavy Motörhead fan for years but unfortunately that particular t-shirt was back at the camp site. An opportunity for free drink was surely missed..
The area of Camp Moto, just a bit south west of Grenoble, is for
some reason moth heaven. We came back from the cafe in the dark
through a kind of moth storm, like riding through snow. Horrendous! The UKBMWAROC had decided they were going to use toll motorways
to get back home in 2 days from Grenoble, which I really properly didn't fancy. I made
my excuses that the CB would disintegrate under such abuse (possibly true!) and left a
day earlier, so I was on my own once again.
I made my way north past Lyon and then, annoyingly, through Dijon. Things were not going swimmingly because I hadn't loaded maps on to the Nav for this part of France, it was never part of the plan - this meant the Nav had base maps only. This would have been okay were it not for the fact that the base maps didn't know which roads were toll roads, and after ending up at a toll (that promptly went blank when it saw my numberplate!) I gave up with it for a bit and just headed northwards by myself. It's easy really, just keep the North Star back'ards like Paul must have done.
Here I am in a very friendly campsite in Saulieu on my own. Camping on your own is
boring but also peaceful, I was shattered by this point and was in bed
by about 9:30! The bloke on the gate let me in for the cost of a bicyclist, and I was most content as I pitched up and finished off my anchovy pizza and cream cake that I'd bought earlier from a boulangerie. It is quite the life.
After packing my tent away wet for the first time in the whole trip (and it only got worse the further north I went..) I carried on. I still didn't have the right maps on the Nav as I
expected to come from Germany/Belgium as was the original plan. After it kept insisting I use toll roads I gave up on its routing capabilities and set it to compass
mode, just generally making my way north. This actually worked really
well and it was a lot of fun to wind my way through empty French
countryside, I'd recommend it. Despite my best efforts I still ended up skirting around Paris but it wasn't too bad at all, and afterwards I found myself bimbling through vineyard territory during harvest. It was near magical, and I couldn't help but chuckle to myself while I thought about the poor UKBMWAROC guys hammering down the motorway, missing all of this lovely(ish) France.
This picture is bitter sweet for me because on the one hand things
were going well as I finally wasn't just going east to west, but on the
other I'd just received a text saying the K100 had been stolen off the
driveway that night and the police were still looking for it. This
didn't put me in the best frame of mind for country lanes.
As you travel north through France it could be argued that the scenery gets less interesting..
As do the roads.
But at least the boulangeries stay excellent, even the weird frankfurter pastry thing was alright. For only the second time on the trip I had to ride through rain, a storm actually, and the sadness of heading northwards got ever stronger. Knowing I still lived way further north than even the top of France was a terrible thought.
The final camp site way up near Arras, only ~80 miles from Calais.
This was also the first municipal site I'd managed to find, these are
much vaunted for having good facilities and being cheap but this was €10
a night (more than Saulieu!) with very basic facilities. The urinals
were on the outside of the shower block in the centre of the site for
all to see! I turned up at 7PM after the Nav showed me where it was (having finally travelled to an area where I had proper maps again!) and was met by people who did not speak a word of English. After learning that "parcel" means tent (makes sense, I guess) I was told to set up my (horribly wet) tent and wait for the man to arrive. Around half an hour later the local gendarme appeared on a bicycle and took my money.. How very French indeed.
I set off into town in search of food, knowing the site was locked up at 10PM for some reason. When I got into town about a mile away there was a fair on in the street, which of course meant everywhere was busy. I eventually found an American style diner and had probably the biggest burger I've seen in my life, with Camembert in it, and chips on the side.. I couldn't finish it at all. Eventually I had to leave and made it back for 9:50, phew. I could hear the gates being locked, they don't mess about!
And so, 10/9/17, the final day had arrived. With so little distance to cover to reach Calais there was no rush, so I packed away my now merely damp tent and bimbled generally northwards while faffing about with filling up and buying yet more food from a boulangerie. The CB was still getting admiring looks, helped by the fact that it was Sunday which apparently means bike day. After wending my way up I found myself in Calais proper, which is actually a nice enough little place, but there was no putting it off - I may as well head for the Tunnel, maybe they'll let me catch whichever train is next - this was the first time I had been early but they're accommodating enough if you're late, what could be the problem.
And so I arrive a mere 4 hours early. I put my debit card into the machine and it informs me that I can either stick with my original crossing time or change to the next train for a bargain price of £41! The bloody ticket cost £42 in the first place! So I had a long wait. Happily, after not that long, the UKBMWAROC all turned up so the hours were whiled away quite amenably. I couldn't believe how cold and miserable the weather was, or how fat many people seemed to be this far north. Get me back to Spain please.
The CB250 at the Eurotunnel, ready to come home - which it just about managed.
Sitrep: Engine mount holes in motor ovalled. Front lower
engine mount destroyed. Upper mounts destroyed. Clutch destroyed. Cush rubbers
destroyed, rear wheel destroyed. Exhaust farts away like a good
'un. Oh and the tacho cable broke somewhere in Spain. It's all round
fucked. It'll be back though. Friendship with Paul was also destroyed, we didn't speak for months after and don't chat like we used to 6 months on..
Ending mileage: 93014
Total trip distance: 3884 miles
80.7 MPG attained, ~£265 spent on fuel
~€750 spent in total
Actually no, it won't be back.
The frame is cracked, this was the cause of the strange handling like the steering head bearings have a big notch in them - it was the frame flexing. This bike is done in.
