Yorkshire then the Isle of Man

twowheeler

two wheels are best
After a week of holidaying in London and the south of England, and visiting the Norton in Southampton, I was as excited as a young bull in a cow paddock to finally arrive in Leeds. Good friends expat Casey and Sadhana were minding my VFR in their shed and I couldn't wait to see and ride it.
In preparation for this trip, I bought it last year on Casey's advice - http://www.austouring.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5990. Casey knew what I was after, knew the bike and its previous owner. In fact it's registered to him - as a non-resident I couldn't get over that hurdle - while I took care of finances and insured it. Casey did the running around for me for the MOT, etc, too which was bloody brilliant :chug: .

Plenty of luggage capacity -




Took it for a test ride around the local suburbs after committing the route to memory - no Leeds street map and no mobile phone coverage meant getting lost wasn't an option :eek: - and came back stoked. Great crisp condition, comfy, really lovely engine and exhaust note (a couple of baffles removed apparently). Geeky pic grinning like a loon upon return and, in hindsight, the last time I felt strong sunshine on the bike ! -




Packed the next morning and setoff on day#1, an all-day ride through the Yorkshire Dales National Park and a bit of the Lake District National Park, to arrive in Heysham in the late evening in plenty of time for the 2am ferry to the Isle of Man. That was the plan anyway :wink: , it didn't quite work out that way.

Under the cover is Casey's XC Falcon V8 road-registered supercharged drag car, which he'd just pulled from a container after shipping it from Oz. All his own work; you could say it turns a few heads in the UK :woot:.
The XC kicked my arse a minute later as I snagged the edge of a pannier on its bumper. A timely lesson about roomy but super-wide panniers; I was very careful about them for the rest of the trip. No filtering . . . . -




Up through Harrogate then west until the B6160 and the start of the National Park near Bolton Abbey -




More to come . . .
 
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robbieb

Tassie Daddy
Bolton Abbey is a nice spot, as is all of Yorkshire!
Did you go through the arch on the road around the corner from the main entrance that is barely wide enough to fit a bus?
 

glitch

Mapping the next ride...
Staff member


More to come . . .

Hope so.

What a lovely spot + shot!:thumbs:

But those Batman-panniers....I don't know, mate.
Not really traveling incognito carrying your "work-clobber" around like that... :whistle::icon-maffick-:

Did you go through the arch on the road around the corner from the main entrance that is barely wide enough to fit a bus?

You mean, no way to fit the Viffer then?
 

twowheeler

two wheels are best
Swung onto the B6265 then left it just after Cracoe to follow unclassified roads in a clockwise loop over the fells through Malham and Arncliffe -







James Herriot country -




National Parks here are lived in. The unclassified roads are like well-paved farm tracks. Lots of cattle grids, unfenced paddocks, sheep, farm yards you literally ride through the middle of -




Roads follow the contour of the country, yumpy/bumpy, steep up & down, twisty with varying cambers -







Plenty of beautiful stone buildings -




Got lost a few times today with a few unsigned intersections and a small road atlas. I figured it didn't matter :wink: - if I kept going in a certain general direction, it wouldn't be long until a (relatively) major road popped up -




Someone took the sun away. West Stonesdale -







Tan Hill. The highest pub in Britain and surely one of the bleakest settings too. Just after I arrived for a late lunch, so did heavy rain, wind and cold air - impeccable timing :cool:. Great vibe here - it was packed with mountain bikers and walkers doing the Pennine Way, and motorbikers & others, all sheltering from the driving rain on the windows :thun -







The pub's wifi showed rain radar with rain bands for some time. So at the first break in the weather, I donned all my wet gear and got on with it, heading west over the moors toward Winton -







Eventually dropped down off the moors and took some tiny lanes to bypass Kirkby Stephen -



then onto the B6259 south for a while, intending to loop back into the heart of the NP. Until I thought to look at the fuel gauge for the first time to find it at 1 bar (of 8) :doh:. Crap. I didn't know the bike well enough to know how much fuel was actually left, I hadn't seen a fuel station for ages and I was miles from any town, with a wet Saturday evening gloom descending. So when the A684 arrived I bailed and went straight west to Kendal.

Old towns in Britain hide their fuel stations well. I was on my 3rd out & back pass through Kendal trying different roads, with the orange fuel warning light long on, before stumbling on a small Shell down a side street. Phew :eek: .


The cameras were now too misted to bother about photos, so just meandered down to Heysham then, with time to kill for the ferry, waited in Maccas to dry gloves and snoods, use their power and their wifi, eat from their 'healthy selection' - who are they kidding ? - and watch the local teenagers out-cool each other.
 
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twowheeler

two wheels are best
In steady fine drizzle, rolled out of Maccas at 11pm and rode the few miles down to the Heysham docks for the 2am ferry to Douglas.

Then it got weird. Pulled up, alone, to the Steam Packet Ferry car-park-booth guy at the entrance to the ferry carpark. Well ahead is a long queue of bikes & cars, with a big ferry under spotlights ,half hidden behind the terminus building. Steam Packet guy is stressed and tells me to go away and come back in 20 mins.
I do what he says, parking on a back road in the Heysham Industrial Dock area, a spot straight from Central Casting seeking a dubious dark place for drug deals and mafia murders.
Give it 30 mins then ride back to Steam Packet guy who repeats his earlier command. I say I've just done that, so he tells me to "park there" (pointing to a random spot on a footpath) and wait. Plenty of other bikes and vans here now too. The seperate queue ahead is diminishing as they board the waiting ferry.

By 1:30am, a few hundred bikes and vans/cards are now inside the carpark but not going anywhere; at least the drizzle has stopped but we're all comparing notes and wondering when we'll be let on the ferry in the background here. Questions posed to anyone in a uniform elicit confusing responses. There are lots of us foreigners in the queue - maybe they don't understand us ? -



Then the ferry toots and leaves. WTF :mad: .

You can imagine the mood of the crowd. Steam Packet guy then explains that that ferry was the 2PM ferry. As in, 2 o'clock the previous bloody afternoon. Steam Packet were well behind schedule due to a ripple effect. Earlier in the week one of their old ferries broke down and floated about the Irish Sea for a day before being towed in; it was still out of action :poo: ; they were still catching up.

Then a big new-looking Steam Packet catamaran arrives. We all board at 2:30, I stumble upstairs and fall straight asleep in my "Executive Recliner" seat. Could have slept on a park bench by that stage -




More to come ....
 
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glitch

Mapping the next ride...
Staff member
James Herriot country -




National Parks here are lived in. The unclassified roads are like well-paved farm tracks. Lots of cattle grids, unfenced paddocks, sheep, farm yards you literally ride through the middle of -



:glu:glu Oh maaan....how good is that?
Hanging off every pic + word....fantastic stuff!
Thanks so much for putting this up...I just LOVE those buildings...and tiny roads...and rock walls out there in the country framing the paddocks. :drool::drool:
 

glitch

Mapping the next ride...
Staff member
Then a big new-looking Steam Packet catamaran arrives. We all board at 2:30, I stumble upstairs and fall straight asleep in my "Executive Recliner" seat. Could have slept on a park bench by that stage -

.

:bs :clap::clap:

....the trapdoors of travel...
 

dougman1

Part of the furniture
:watch: jeepers, I'm smashing the popcorn while waiting for the next instalment.

It's fantabulous Peter. :chug:
 
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