Greetings, from Pompey UK
 

Feeling the winter blues here in Hampshire,

Been about 6 months since i'd gotten out and ridden, still yet to head abroad on two-wheels and reading travel books is making me restless.

I have an F4 Hornet600 in the garage, and the last bike I rode was an XJR 1300, lovely machine.

Well, as i'm sure alot of people have heard/read from similar dreamers; looking to just head off, don't know where or how long, but my soul needs it.

• i'm practically broke,
• clueless with offroad bikes,
• don't even HAVE an offroad bike,
• can't navigate in cities...
• but strangely I aint to shabby with a paper map & compass in featureless wilderness.

Right now Portsmouth, long working hours and commuting on 4 wheels has become about as uplifting as a stroke. I need saving, slapping or euthanizing.

Yours respectfully, from a self pitying tw@t;

John.

Hello mate, welcome to the HUBB from Italy!!!!

hi john your not alone, plenty of us sit and dream of faraway places but cant/wont go for whatever reason. an adventure doesnt have to be a long way off though, youre in pompey it doesnt get much more adventurous than that! for a start get the bike out and go to work on that, save yourself a bit of time and feed your soul before a days mind numbing. pompey traffic sucks, in fact its getting sucky everywhere i live in fareham and work in gosport and its a bad joke, weve been forced to start a flexiworking scheme because so many are late in the mornings.
as for going away, just do it mate. a long weekend camping in france wont break the bank. at least you wont have far to go to get the ferry, LDlines to le havre is £70 return, we're going over for d-day week. 2yrs ago we toured the benelux camping, did 5 countries in one day and one of us was on a hornet. nice nippy bike, just stay off the autoroutes

Dave, what's your secret for getting Portsmouth-Le Havre return for £70. I was quoted £180 return for July. :confused1:

That's too much so they've lost my business. But it wasn't the worst by any means. Portsmouth-Santander for 3 bikes and 1 cabin £1426 (£475 each) I can fly to the USA for that kind of money. They're living in cloud cuckoo land.

The cheapest return I found was the tunnel at £60.

WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?
literally not a month ago i phoned LDlines up (because the website wont let you book groups of riders. 1 bike and 4 people is fine though, derr...) to travel in first week of june, £82 each for 4x bikes, 4x blokes and 4 berth cabin. the £70 deal is the standard 1 bloke 1 bike reclining seat or kip on the floor deal theyve been doing for years.
in october a mate and i went to santander with brittany ferries, booked the whole holiday through them on the phone and paid £305ea for 2 bikes, 2 blokes, 4berth cabin both ways and 3 nights 3* hotel accomodation.
dont know what youre doing wrong or im doing right, i always try and phone them up because the girls sound bloody gorgeous, especially the brittany ferries frenchies.

yep, just had a play on LDlines website, a single biker with reclining chair is still £70return, even in july

You're a very bad man.

We have a supplier who sounds sooooooo luverly. They are local but I never want to meet her because it would spoil the picture I have in my head. Me bad too ???

Hello people,

I find prices over this side of Europe disheartening in general. Walking through the city centre watching everyone rush about for their January 'bargain', it doesn't look cheap to me.

I'm living like a student to save enough money to get an overland worthy bike and sod-off. De-junking, de-cluttering, selling or binning all that accummulated crap and trinkets to lift this anchor holding me to England.

Those niceties like an HD-TV, Xbox (with obscenely expensive games), It doesn't interest me anymore, I want rid of it. Travel's the fire burning inside me now.

Travel and live light used to be my ethos, i've allowed myself to stop and gather moss. I want to be able to say everything I own fills two panniers and a bergen.

Heading across to France for a weekend sounds good Dave, but in my current mindset I'd have a nagging feeling that i'd still have to return. Return to the Daily-Grind. It's like being attached to Portsmouth by a bungee-cord, a bloody short bungee cord.

Right now though, i'll settle for a pint and a steak 'n' ale pie.

Yes i'm a whinging w_nker. The whinging w_nker that wishes to find out that there's more to life than stagnating in the same place, going back and forth from work to home over the same ground, like a nutjob.

That's my pennies worth, ah and relax.

John.

a BERGEN?!? They're massive!

:laugh: It's a 3/4 bergen with the side pockets removed. Still big, but I'll take it as part of the luggage just incase something on the bike goes phut or wang, I can shoulder it and head off on foot to find fixers.

Well, that'd be the plan...

John.

Thats the good thing about the older italian bikes, no need to find a fixer anywhere! Although the entire pannier full of tools and spares does mean your ability to 'travel light' is a bit compromised.....

This is an issue I wish to avoid, having seen the mistakes that EM & CB made by taking ludicrous amounts of tools and spares (I believe they even effectively doubled-up the tools by packing their own bikes, rather than splitting it! Regardless; I'd be on my own).

It must be possible to reduce a overland-worthy toolkit down to a decent manageable size, maybe by replacing as many fastners on the bike for use with the same sized tool?

John.

the best way I have found is to strip the bike (I needed to do this before my big trip anyway) and put some insulating tape around any tool I used putting it back together. It was mainly engine 'consumables' that did me in for space. Can't get belts of filters for ducatis outside of europe....

I reckon on something like an XT 600 you could fit all the required tools in a pencil case.

As a friend of mine who used to work for Land Rover said once "I can remember the size of every bolt I ever did up or undid on those defenders. They were 10 mil."

ps a mountain bike multi tool or similar will have all the small allen sizes covered so probably better taking one of them than messing about with the fasteners on the bike

I like the insulating-tape idea, I'd have sat in the garage making a laborious list or perhaps made seperate piles of 'needed' and 'not-needed', then forgotten which was which.

This task won't be for a while, as I lack the bike to crack on with.

You've also turned my attention back to the XT600 as an option, if it really is the mechano-landrover of the bike world then that outweighs any faults it may have regarding power.

John.