WHIRL2026 Day - 0

Day 0, the first day of this tour, named thus, because it doesn't include Grizzly at this point. He joins the party tomorrow. Today took me up into Lincolnshire, then across to just south of Manchester and my overnight stay.

I left home at 9:45, a bit earlier than I'd planned and by 12:35 I was at my first stop, just outside Newark. It's called On Freedom's Wings and is a full-sized steel replica of a Lancaster Bomber commemorating Bomber Command's efforts and losses, during WWII.

On Freedom's Wings

 At the moment it is only open to the public on the occasional Sunday,  so I had to make do with this view, from what they are calling, the viewing area,  which is a dusty layby several hundred metres away. 

Lunch followed the stop, the first McDs of the trip, unlikely to be the last, and then came my fuel stop at Morrisons in Mansfield. To my surprise, unleaded was just £146.9, 6p cheaper than back home.

The ride had been fairly uneventful, a smidgen of rain on the way up but it wouldn't be long before I took a wrong turn. Not Tomtom's fault, I misheard the instruction and took the A617, instead of the A619 whilst negotiating Chesterfield. No big deal, it only cost me a few minutes. 

My overnight stop is with my auntie, my mum's sister. It's my first visit since before covid, the first since she lost her husband. The house has a double garage, so Ginny is safely tucked up for the night.

Tomorrow I'm aiming to leave about 10am and will be aiming for Holyhead, where hopefully my Irish ferry will await.

Till tomorrow. 

 I start here, following on from the last post in my Totally Excellent Adventures blog, where I had still to sort Ginny's insurance out. The renewal wasn't too bad, with it only being about £15 more than last year but still I like to shop around. As it turned out, nothing giving the same cover came in near the renewal. But that wasn't the end of my search. I did a totally new quote with my existing company. You probably know where this is going, yes, it was a bit cheaper than the renewal, so having already turned off the dreaded auto renewal, I took out a new cheaper policy and will also get some cash back, as I used Topcashback to get the quote. I particularly like the company I'm with, because they include full european RAC breakdown cover, which given most of Ginny's miles have been abroad, is a big plus.

Weather allowing, I've put a few miles on Ginny and she has now covered over 45,000. Anticipating I'll be clocking up around 2,300 by the time I get back from Ireland, I have already booked Ginny in for her 48,000 mile service. I expect she'll need some new tyres by then too, so I'll get them done before I head off to the British MotoGP in August.

A couple of weeks ago I took myself off to Motolegends in Guildford and came away with a new summer jacket. The one I have been using over the past 8 years, was what I bought with the whip money I got when I left work, so it was time to change. I also got some new summer waterproof gloves. The old ones have seen better days and if I'm totally honest, have never been very comfortable. These new ones might get a good workout, given where I'm heading next Saturday. I'll be happy to see them stay in the topbox though.   

Focusing on the trip, I have downloaded all my routes to Tomtom (Grizzly has his Garmon versions too) and I'm busy going through my packing list and getting everything together. It's a shorter tour than the usual euro tours, so I shouldn't need to pack quite as much. I think there's always a tendency to fill the available space though. We shall see.

Not much else to say, Ginny will need a couple of things doing this week to fully prep her for the trip but otherwise it'll just be a case of getting packed up, togged up and hitting the road (not literally, obvs).

Bye for now.