Plymouth

The ferry leaves Roscoff France daily at 3 pm for the 6-8 hour crossing to Plymouth. By now it was of course raining again.

You arrive 45 min early and check in at the gate. Here they will ask for your booking reference and passport. After this you drive ahead to the French immigration control where they again want your passport and give you an exit stamp. Drive ahead as directed and to the designated bike parking on board. There were about 20 bikes, but there were several staff there to quickly secure all the bikes with tie downs. They you go up on deck for the 6-hour journey.

The sea was fairly rough for the first 3 hours, but then calmed down. Arriving in the UK at 2030 we were directed to off load. All the bikes were then asked to lane split the cars to get to the front of the line for passport control.

This was an easy process and we were out to meet our friend Steve. He and his wife Maggie had kindly offered to host us. We had met him at the moto GP last year in Argentina and then again in Cusco, Peru. We hosted him in Vancouver last summer when he was on his way to Alaska. They were incredible hosts in their classic English village.

Steve took us around the city to run all of our errands. He then toured us around the city of Plymouth including an exclusive tour of the Citadel. He is a retired 29 th Commando.

We had a walk along the waterfront.

The Mayflower left from these steps on its historic journey to the new world.

We also sampled scrumpie at the village pub the Oak and came back for the Morris dancing that evening.

Riding your bike on “the wrong side of the road” is actually not as easy as it looks. Your instincts are all wrong here. The worst are the multilane round abouts or when you turn right onto a divided road. If you glance down at your map or GPS the car that appears to be oncoming can freak you out. The narrow lanes are also an issue since you have to stay so far left all the time.