Round the Bend 2007 - Richard’s Story with apologies for the length

Part 5 - Day 4, The Sarf Coast - old ladies and illegal immigrants

We were up and at 'em very early which was down mainly to having a great night's sleep and also getting into the swing of riding 10 or 14 hours per day.  It's amazing what becomes normal!  So 8am and we hit the road back down to Brighton this time turning right back onto the coastal route in bright warm sunshine and morning rush hour traffic.  We dropped quickly into Combat Touring mode hopping to the front of the queue at lights and snaking our way through the traffic as quickly as we could on the basis that we thought we'd be fighting all the way.  The roads were good and although the traffic reduced the further we got from Brighton so they narrowed so the apparent volume of traffic remained the same.  We had expected to be battling our way through traffic made up of Chavs and old biddies but we were surprised at just how biker friendly everyone was. Anywhere else and we would have been literally fighting with the traffic!

With 391miles planned we knew we had to be cracking on and indeed we did and after only a couple of hours we found we had cleared most of the heavily populated areas and were riding over pretty undulating countryside.  I had always imagined the South Coast to be rather plain and flat but it was anything but. For sure it didn't have the big climbs and mountains of Wales or Scotland but nevertheless it made for fun riding.  What made our day so enjoyable was the way that drivers were so continental in their attitude to bikes. The roads were generally single carriageway with a wide hard verge (ie about 2' or 3/4m of tarmac on the other side of the white line and 90% of the cars on both sides would move over enough to let us sweep majestically past.  Something that is a hallmark of such epic rides is that you generally only have a notional idea of where you are going which, I suppose, is part of the definition of adventure which, in turn, is why Combat Touring means you take every overtaking opportunity in case you get to set of lovely bends or some decent scenery and are stuck behind some moron or a dirty great lorry.  After 2 or 3 hours of such royal treatment we came to the conclusion that there were so many illegal immigrants in England that they had finally knocked some sense into the driving consensus.

Things went swimmingly as we blasted along the M27 as we rushed past Southampton to get to the New Forest.  We knew that we had a chance of biking pleasure in Devon and Cornwall as well the possibility of gridlock so pace was everything (are you spotting a theme here?). Through Dorset, Tolpuddle and a steady stream of villages with 40mph limits which would have been an annoyance if we hadn't made such good time and had an early start.  There was a new wrinkle in the RTB comfort blanket: after three and a half 14 hour days of riding with only a disembodied voice for company we were beginning to suffer from an odd form of cabin fever.  Little jokes like cutting each other's music off or shouting out "I can see the sea" every 3 minutes were becoming the norm and when something new popped up it could cause complete hysteria. If you remember from Day 3's report, it had been very foggy the day before and as we dropped into Dorchester we got stuck behind a red old style Ford Fiesta doing about 15mph in the ubiquitous 40 limit with all her lights on including rear fog lights. I called out to Alan and Karen "Oh, look! It must have been foggy here as well yesterday!", Alan replied "Nah, she's just got cataracts!". I lost it. I had tears streaming down my face, I was shaking all over and almost fell off the bike from hysterical laughter.  Every couple of minutes I would think about it again and another bout of crazy laughter filled my helmet to the point that I was in danger of dehydrating. Did we stop? Don't be silly but it certainly passed the time as for the next 3 days the word 'catarcts' would have all 3 of us in fits.  There were other jokes that had us in stitches, usually from unusual road signs but nothing came close to that first one.