Day 2 - From Poole to Westbay and then Paignton Bike Night
Starting mileage 41,926
Day 2 Finish mileage 42,095
Day Total Mileage 169 miles
Trip Total Mileage 373 miles
Left Poole around 9:30am, went to Portland Heights, arrived Westbay around midday and Paignton 2:30pm.
Fabulous route from Poole to Weymouth, then Portland Heights and from there took the jurassic coastal route to Westbay - fabulous road.
Point to note: watch out for the Men in Black taking photos, very expensive photos and often in black n white, it's a complete scam! I saw at least three today. I have to say lots of respect to local car drivers for alerting me to the Men In Black 👍🏻
Paignton Bike Night - my home town, so i feel a special affinity towards this one. This has been running for fours years in it's current form and before that BMAD. When I lived in Paignton bike nights didn't exist, we just met at the pub 😉 and it was the best biker pub i’ve ever experienced, The Black Horse - which is now, unfortunately, a shadow of it's former self; at least it's change it's name so the legacy of the best biker pub remains.
Paignton Bike Night opens at 6pm. It's right on the sea front along Paignton promenade. Tonight there is also the funfair so it pulled in a great family atmosphere. Well run and organised by Ant and Paula but as with other bike nights is sometimes played with idiots over revving and popping wheelies along the road.
401 bikes tonight - with £2 entry raising money for children's charities
Also great to catch up with Chris Sims, who runs Jolly's Bike Shop, where I'll be going tomorrow for breakfast. Tonight Chris was with the AFB (Armed Forces Bikers) charity.
Not only is this a trip in memory of my daughter, it's a nostalgic journey to my past life when I was much younger and life was simple. At 17/18 having my first bike a Honda H100 got me around wherever I needed/wanted to go. I had a job in a pub that paid ‘minimal wage’(before minimal wage existed) but it was enough to buy petrol, a few beers and food. I played for the pub pool team so got to visit other local venues. And then 20 or so years later doing week long adventures on my US imported CB750K, living a nomadic life with camping gear and no plan, finding a campsite was easy, often pitching up in a field. Now, i’m (quite) a bit older, and I have a bike i can't load up with camping gear, so I have to plan a bit more and book b&b’s, which takes away a bit of freedom but still loving being on the road and letting my intuition determine which road to take next - no Sat Nav to tell me or for me to ignore and then listen to the irate take a U-turn voice 😂 life on the road is the best 😄🙏💚🏍
