Slow Road through Wales to the Isle of Man

twowheeler

two wheels are best
To graduate from New Marshal status to a plain ordinary Marshal at the IOM TT & ManxGP, besides attending mandatory training courses, you need to earn 10 points on your Marshal Association account (IOMTTMA - google it, anyone can be a marshal). 1 point is allocated for every practice session attended, and 2 points for a race. I’d only accrued 3 points in 2017 due to a short stay and a couple of bad-weather cancellations, so this year I booked 10 days on the island which would be more than enough to be able to swap my L-plate yellow ID card for a white one. Or so I thought .....




With only a 2 week ride window on this trip I rented a bike instead of buying/selling one like in 2017 – http://www.austouring.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6285.
In the questionable spirit of going the whole hog and getting a fully-dipped immersion, I booked a Ducati Multistrada 1260S from a rental firm in Woking, London.

A summary of my renting experience is on page 6 & 7 in this thread – http://www.austouring.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6391&page=6 .


First though, a short family holiday, starting in Polruan, Cornwall –




where we breathed-in along the main road into town :eek: -




and did some beautiful walks -




before choofing off to Portsmouth to catch an overnight ferry –




to Brittany, staying in Rennes. -




Ned Flanders' ancestors clearly come from around here -




After a few days, champing at the bit :wink:, I left the family to it at 5am one Friday morning, caught a train, walked across Paris –




then caught more trains and did more walking to get to Woking. My planning for connections didn’t anticipate UK holiday-weekend crowds, which rippled back to Paris, so the magnificent plan on paper soon fell apart :doh:. By the time the rental paperwork and bike familiarisation was done, it was 4:30pm before I set off for Wales into full-blown Friday arvo London traffic on a new-to-me, fire-breathing-until-warm, almost-zero-rear-brake (they’re all like that sir), vlarge-insurance-excess 1260cc Ducati.

Melbourne peakhour has nothing on London, but not in the way I was expecting. Melbourne is all aggro with stressed drivers owning their piece of road while staring at their phone or checking they’re not doing 1kph over the speed limit lest they die or get fined a squillion $. London (& the UK in general) was all courtesy. WAY more cars and trucks jammed onto their roads, but most actually moved over to let me split or overtake, some gave little waves or head nods, it was really quite enjoyable :wink:.

5 hours of heavy holiday traffic later, I arrived in Dolgellau ("dol-geth-loo") in deepest darkest Wales :woot: -






More to come ...
 
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twowheeler

two wheels are best
Relaxed the next morning by attempting to climb Cadair Idris.

Through local farmland and forest -



past Gwernan Lake -




then up. Increasingly low cloud then rain put paid to any idea of scaling the steep ridge to the Cadair Idris summit, but getting as far as the lake at its base, Llyn Gader, was worth the effort -








Trudged back to the B&B to rug up, - it might be nearly summer but it was bloody freezing - pickup the bike and go ride some local roads. The GOR-like road near Llwyngwril -




Looking up the Mawddach Estuary with its Barmouth Viaduct -




The next day I had to be at the Liverpool docks by 6:30pm for the evening IOM ferry. Liverpool isn't that far in a direct-ish route from Dolgellau, but I had a big day out planned, meandering all over mid and north Wales. But at 10am I was still standing in the shed where the bike was parked, shivering despite full thermals :cold:, willing the rain, which had been going for hours, to lessen a smidge. It was absolutely drumming down, deafening even on the slate roof :thun .

Shortened the planned route a bit, then got out and sloshed through Wales. I couldn't remember nor workout how to lower the Multistrada's full-power mode to Rain mode - even youtube didn't cover the crucial keystroke - so it stayed in full-whack 158bhp mode throughout :eek:.

At Cwmystwyth, where friendly folk at a cycle-race aid station raised my core temperature with free hot coffee and cake :lao -




Then onto the unclassified Elan Valley road, which a Welsh mate put me onto. Highly recommended :so -







Penygarreg -





Then followed a roundabout route. The Carno wind farm from the B4518 -




Then dialled in the satnav to take me to Liverpool, which took me to the Runcorn bridge which of course was closed for works this weekend. Of course it was :mad: :(. Signor Satnav could not be dissuaded so thank god again for paper maps to see me over the Mersey to the docks. The sun came out -




The Manannan, proudly built in Tassie -




Excitement in the air :D:wink: -




Note bike from Latvia - there were people from all over -




More to come ...
 
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glitch

Mapping the next ride...
Staff member
OH YES!! YESSSS!! YESSSSSSSSS!! :glu:glu


There he is again!


Sooo looking forward to this and a shame to just skim over the top.
Back later tonight with a glass of red and maps open for a real gawk and slobber.:chug:
 

twowheeler

two wheels are best
Night was gathering as I pig-rooted and clutch-slipped off the ferry – the Multi hated being ridden from cold but the ferry deckhands understandably ban engine warmups – and headed straight over to Peel on the west coast to the B&B I stayed at last time, with its OK view :wink:




Toured the island the next day in mixed weather -




then picked up my marshal kit from the Douglas grandstand paddock. Something a bit different, ridden from Switzerland -




From the race paddock, open to the public.

A million pound Mugen. The Mugens totally dominate the electric-bike class; the difference between them and the rest is like night and day. Properly quick and they sound a lot like one of Virgil Tracy's Thunderbirds -




The lineup of Paton Lightweights. According to one of the crew chiefs in the tent, their colour is a "happy accident". I like it a lot -




Ozzy Ozzy oi oi (David Johnson's) -




I’d nominated marshalling on sector 5 again as it’s easy to get to from Peel. Late arvo, headed over to Burnside and signed on –




One of the marshals rode his home built mongrel Moto Guzzi from Hamburg :so. Parts from a LeMans, a California and a Griso with some homemade bits like the tank. Ground clearance not a priority.




Spectators ready -




One of the frustrations of the IOM is that it can be sunny near sea level but cloudy on the mountain. Cloud on mountain = grounded medi-vac helicopters = no practice / racing. Which is what happened tonight – the Chief Marshal called it off about 15mins prior to the scheduled start :(:(.


But Tuesday was sunny :D, and stayed that way with what turned out to be the only practice all week :( .

Sightseeing. Laxey, on the shortcut back from the unlimited mountain section -






Lovely RG500 in Ramsey's town square, everyone waiting as emergency services mopped up yet another dickhead :mad: who'd ridden past their talent on the first part of the mountain which starts just after here. This became a bit of a theme during the week -




So I wound up using this little road a few times as a shortcut to Snaefel to at least get the second half of the mountain section in. Got 8 circuits in and confirmed my average-punter ability by still failing to even touch the record average speed of 135mph; I fleetingly saw 130mph before calling it quits. The Multistrada is pretty composed at that speed but my head isn't :???::looney: -




More ...
 
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twowheeler

two wheels are best
I feel another fantastic story coming.
Looking forward to this. Thanks Peter.

Sooo looking forward to this and a shame to just skim over the top.
Back later tonight with a glass of red and maps open for a real gawk and slobber.:chug:

Please take us along for the rest of your ride, Peter

Thanks. The photos won't be as good as the last trip unfortunately as I left the Olympus at home. I soon regretted doing that - the Galaxy 9 is pretty good but it can't match a DSLR. It would have been worth the extra bulk.
 

twowheeler

two wheels are best
The weather went south from here so the next 3 days were repeats of arvo standby and evening scheduled practices cancelled at the last minute due to low cloud.

Irish sidecar at our B&B. It refused to start all week :sick:. No idea how they got it home -




So plenty of touring was done around this beautiful island.

Maughold Head; the easternmost point -








Maughold's churchyard has a cross-house full of medieval stones. This one dates to the 7th century, written in Saxon about an early Manx bishop. There's lots of Celtic and Viking history on the island, uninterrupted by the Romans who never made it here -




The road leading into Bride -




The foghorn at the Point of Ayre; the northernmost point -




Ginger Hall, with some of the thousands of despondent riders moping about, all willing the weather to lift -




The seafront at Castletown -




Up on the mountain with this beautiful, exciting bike :party: -




Riding by braille along the B10, just before it joins the TT mountain course. 158bhp utterly pointless; 25mph was too fast ! -




Tricky little B22. Gets a tad windy here I reckon :wink: -




Wandering around Peel. The island had lots of moneybox charity-wallabies all over. It's themed on the IOM's wild population of around 150 wallabies, descendants of a handful which escaped from a local wildlife park in the '70s. Largest wild population outside Australia - there's a trivia-night fact for you :wink: -




Peel's main street. It's just ticked over into summer; note plentiful jackets and hoodies -




Only the IOM would have a Fireblade for sale in a local charity shop :lol:-




:???: ... hhmmm ... :???: -




Peel had a Sunday Fair on. Chatted with the copper who was with this bike, on loan from Ducati. The copper is with the Lancashire Police, who have the contract to supply 4 motorcycle police during the TT to supplement the resident police force. It's a merit-based scheme to get chosen; this guy was clearly chuffed to be here :lol: -




The Mini in the background of the previous pic. It sounded magnificent :cool: -




The weather started to co-operate just in time for the end of the practice schedule and the start of the racing. Given the lack of practice, the Chief Marshal juggled things a bit and we wound up with some extra practice and shortened racing over the next couple of days. The marshal points were juggled too and I wound up with 6 points for this visit, so I'm still 1 point short of the magic 10 :doh:.
When I work out how to upload videos to Flickr, I'll post a couple of short vids of last practice & first race :).


All things come to an end though, so on Tuesday I joined many others to catch the arvo ferry back to Liverpool. Fittingly, racing was cancelled that day :( -




Once off the ferry, it was a couple of hours or so through the wet gloom down the M6 to overnight at Hagley, then on the next day straight down the M40 to London to drop off the bike. No photos from this stretch, however riding the UK motorways when they're not jammed, bombing along at 90mph-ish with the other fast traffic, all lane discipline and awareness, while not actually legal was very pleasurable :endu.

More to come ....
 
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twowheeler

two wheels are best
After dropping the Ducati back to the rental firm in Woking, I took a couple of tube trains before boarding the big train to Glasgow and family :cdle. Give me 5 hours of train travel :cool: over 1 hour of plane travel+2 hours of airport faff any day !

No more motorcycling on this trip :( . But I did use the next 2 weeks wisely to suss out more good Scottish roads and places for future motorcycle ventures :wink:.


Inveraray -




Glen Orchy next to the very yumpy B8074 -




The entrance to Glen Coe. I scrambled up Beinn a'Chrulaiste on the RHS -




for spectacular views over Buachaille Etive Mor, surrounding glens and mountains -




On the walk back -




The Ovlov (a V60, pretty nice except for its cursed electronic handbrake) at the start of the A884 into Morvern, sparsely populated even by Scottish Highland standards -




Took the ferry over to Mull. Really liked Mull - big, empty, natural. Potential motorcycle-trip exhibit A, the B8035 -




(not my pic but gives a better view of the road) -




Tobermory -




Rubha Nan Gall lighthouse, looking over the Sound of Mull to Ardnamurchan -




which we took a ferry to -




Looking back from whence we came -




Potential motorcycle-trip exhibit B, the B8007 approaching Ardslignish -




Castle Tioram -




Then over to Armadale on the Isle of Skye -




Potential motorcycle-trip exhibit C (etc etc :wink:), the unclassified road to Tarskavaig -




The Cullins over Loch Eishort -




Neist Point -




Home spun tweed at Colbost. An epic contraption - 3 hours pedalling per 1 yard :eek:, no wonder he looks stuffed -




The Quirang -




In Portree :drool: -




Then meandered eastward. Ben Nevis in cloud behind the Caledonian Canal -




The east coast is picturesque too, at Pittenweem -




No thread about Scotland is complete without a picture like this -




The Ovlov might have been dry and warm but next time, Scotland will be done on a bike (again) :endu.
 
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