Monday had been a good day. For me, the best riding of the trip. Riding with Stuart is always a treat, and getting to ride with him on his home ground is even better. :ride
Tuesday was our day to head to the IOM. Once again, we rode across the country to get from our base in Yorkshire, over to the ferry terminal in Heysham in the county of Lancashire. It was like reliving the War of the Roses. :laughing One of our goals for the morning was to stop by our hotel where we'd booked for the evening after coming back from the IOM because George noticed that we needed to be checked in by 11 PM, and we'd be lucky to be off the ferry by then.
We found the hotel, and the desk, and it turned out that the ladies at the desk knew all about the Southern 100, and had strongly held opinions about who would likely win (Michael Dunlop). I love this country! :laughing Anyway, we got it pretty much sorted and carried on to the ferry.
I don't have any pictures from our ferry crossing, but maybe George or Kevin do (notice a recurring theme?). I'll post some pics from last year's crossing. The most interesting thing we found while waiting in line was a guy named Steve wearing some well used leathers was riding an RC30 with less than 2000 miles on it! Holy smokes! That's like finding a Porsche 962 to take to watch LeMans!
Coming into Douglas harbor.
When we arrived on Tuesday evening there were already some preliminary races going on down in Castletown, but I was keen to ride a lap of the mountain course, so after checking into the hotel, we went off in search of gas/petrol and a lap.
Evening traffic is pretty heavy in Douglas, so we pretty much crawled down Glencutchery Road, past Quarter Bridge, Braddan Bridge, and even Union Mills. By the time we got to Greeba, I fell in behind a motivated local driving a Mercedes, and noted that when we passed the sign indicating no speed limit, he put the hammer down.
arty
He was carrying plenty of speed on narrow, twisting roads, and I was happy to leverage his local knowledge, particularly coming through the bottom of Barregarrow, where even at speeds less than half of what the racers do, I was a bit puckered up. :wow
My guide pulled off in Kirkmichael, and we continued, getting held up a bit on the way into Ramsey, but just past Parliament Square, the road cleared, and from the hairpin to past Hailwood Rise there was no one in front of me.
arty There are no speed limits from about Waterworks on, though you do need to be aware of oncoming traffic. Cops will still pull you if they think you're riding like a fool, but I didn't see any cops, and I caned the crap out of that poor little 650. :laughing
We overtook a farmer on a quad coming down to the Creg, then pulled up to catch our breath and enjoy the evening. Riding back down to Douglas, it was time to hit the local pub and have supper. While there we got to join the locals watching Brazil's utter collapse in amazement on the big screen. I sure didn't expect that! Ask Kevin about his lamb shank. :drool
