Day 5 - Goodbye Devon / Pop Pop Bang

Day 5 Starting mileage 42,356

Day 5 Finish Mileage 42,536

Day 4 mileage 180 miles

Trip Total Mileage 814 miles

I left Westward-Ho at about 9am this morning, after a very disturbed nights sleep. Took the A39 to Barnstaple, then the A361 to Ilfracombe - a bit busy with holiday traffic and multiple traffic lights within 100m's of each other. Went through Ilfracombe and headed towards Combe Martin on the A399 - where i stopped to take a couple of scenic snaps. Past Watermouth Castle. Again the sea is really calm today and the weather dry and hot but there's a nice breeze making it excellent biking weather.

Then back on to the A39 to head towards Lynton and the Valley of the Rocks, yay, I can tick it off my bucket list. The roads around here are great real twistees. Leaving the Valley of the Rocks I had to go back through Lynton and here towards Lynmouth down a 25% twistee decline. Then there's a 25% incline, the i noticed here as two cars were coming was the stench of burning brakes from those cars.

I continued my journey across Exmoor and you notice the temperature difference, it drops by several degrees due to the altitude, which was good as at sea level the temperature was rising.

I took the A39 all of the way to Bridgewater and then had a quick blast up the M5 to get me to Weston-super-Mare to meet Dale and a few other local bikers we had a good natter for a couple of hours - a place I'd never visited before, whilst I lived in Devon for many years most of my relatives were based in South Wales so we always by-passed Weston-super-Mare. Dale runs a YouTube channel showing the bike nights he's been too, so hopefully, one day he'll make it to Kent and we can show him around.

I then set off to attend Grills and Gears, a bike event hosted by Custom Clutch Motorcycles, this one is geared more towards the younger generation, which is good to see, unfortunately this came with many pop pop bang bikes and the obligatory burnouts. I met a few locals, a 78 year old called Andy who worked with Mike Hailwood and was an member of the 59 club at Ace cafe in the 60's/70's really interesting to hear his stories of the old days. He may join our group so hopefully he'll join us on a ride maybe in Sussex.

I left Grills and Gears after a couple of hours to find my accommodation for the night and have a well deserved beer or two 😁

Tomorrow i have a few planned meeting places CTL Motors, Rev Automoblia and the Oily Rag, about 100 miles. Before the return leg on Monday, via Rykas, which is a 180 mile trip so I'll definitely break the 1,000 miles 😁

A common reaction i get from people when I tell them what I'm doing is, “you're doing a 1,000 miles on a Gixxer 😱”, yep, for me it's one of the most comfortable bikes I've ridden. The bike fits me. And, yeah, I love it's sound 😁