So we're now back from our trip having covered a total of 1800 miles and how do I begin to describe what we've just been through?
As a learning process, it has been imense. The first I learned from my two day trip to Wales last year was that plans need to be kept fluid. You might want to camp out but if the weather has other ideas, then it's probably not going to happen. What I didn't take into account was that the weather could potentially become so bad that it would make it near enough impossible to ride or very uncomfortable if you tried to. This was our first delay in Belfast when the winds picked up to 70mph gusts.
Secondly, keep tools and a stock of small parts that can easily break. After dropping the bike in Dunfanaghy, if I'd even had just a spare brake lever, we could have carried on and even possibly made it round the Ring of Kerry. As it stands, a lack of preparation on our part for this eventuality meant we wasted yet an extra day and a half just waiting to try and get parts.
Third, google maps can be a great source of information on how long a trip may possibly take. It doesn't however take into account road surfaces and rain which on a bike can severly hamper travelling time. The roads around County Donegal were attrocious. In a car, you could quite easily keep up a 50mph drive but on a bike, taking into account the amount of bumps, gravel on the roads, especially on bends and the wind which was still blowing very strongly and I would estimate that our average speed had been brought down to no more than 35mph making the days riding a lot lot longer than planned.
Fourth, road signs are great. At least they are when they point in the correct direction and have the same spellings for names that you've seen on your map. Unfortunately in Ireland both of these don't seem to apply very often and as a result, we quite often missed turnings having to retrace our steps.
Fifth, spending a day on a bike can be a great source of fun and can offer time to reflect on your own thoughts. 11 Days on a bike without anyone to talk to unless you shout when you're doing below 40mph can get very lonely and boring.
From this, we've now decided that we need to splash out and invest on those things that I'd mentioned before in the blog that we could really afford before we left.
A replacement brake lever, clutch lever and possibly even brake pedal and gear lever will be things that I look for in the eventuality that I drop the bike again. I didn't think it would happen after last year in Wales but it did so you can never be sure.
Planning shorter days travelling. In my opinion, it would be far greater to have reached our destinations early and been able to carry on going rather than finding that late in the afternoon we still had miles to go and the disappointment of not being able to see everything that I'd built my hopes up to see.
A sat nav is essential! Especially in a land where they don't speak the same language!
The intercom system should be good to have in that at least rather than pointing in a random direction, I can actually talk to Nikki to let her know what I've seen and even just to have a game of I Spy on the longer roads!
In conclusion, it was a great trip. I never expected everything to go smoothly but I did expect it to be a bit smoother than it was. On reflection this is no bad thing though as hopefully we will be far more prepared for Scotland and hopefully completely prepared to have a fantastic trip around Europe.
There won't be much more from the blog in the next couple of weeks. The rear brake isn't operating the brake light, the headlight has blown and I still need another right hand wing mirror which needs to be fixed for the bike to go in for its M.O.T which has now expired.
Maybe a couple of weeks rest is no bad thing!
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