Aug 2025 - Overland Event 2025

 

July 2025 - Armchair Adventure Festival

June 2025 - ABR Festival

 

Last week I attended the Adventure Bike Rider Festival.  David and I spent two nights at the Shire Camp site at Oxhill and that was great: so peaceful and it only rained once.  We even managed to visit the local pub for a very pleasant meal and a pint.  On the Friday morning we rode over to the ABR event and met up with Jacqui Furneaux and Gordon Mays.  

This event just gets bigger and bigger every year !!  Too big really.  I think I will probably miss it next year in favour of a trip to Motocamp in Bulgaria and Romania.

The weather was very very hot and I did get burnt a bit.

I met up with a lot of old friends but other than food and drink I bought nothing.  The others had a go at off-roading on Royal Enfields; I did a lot of walking and drinking tea.

We left very earlier on Sunday morning and avoided the summer traffic all heading south to the beaches.

USA 2025 - 30 May

I started off at about 8:30 this morning for a slow ride down the 101 and then the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) Route 1.

Some excellent views along the way. Once I reached Malibu it got a bit more real : the total devastation from the recent fires was so shocking. So many properties totally gutted, so many cars, some still in their garages just burnout rusted wrecks.

Apparently they only opened the PCH last week. There were police, fire department and even National Guard everywhere. Such a sad view.

After that it was the battle into LA : one feels so vulnerable on a motorcycle amongst so much traffic and big trucks on a 7 lane road (that's just one side - 14 lanes in total ).

Finally arrived at my final destination, early as usual, and as I guessed the room would not be ready for about 4 hours….. so what to do? I know, let's ride over to Schumachers and check the bike in instead of rushing around on Monday morning.

I rode over and unpacked the bags and panniers in the cool of the warehouse…. a bit of a rush but all sorted now. Caught a Yellow Cab back to the Motel with just my backpack and yellow carry-on bag. Now 1:30pm and the room still not ready - so here I sit in the cool of the lobby tapping away at this blog. Without the bike… strange feeling not having it with me…..

Trip total just 6705 miles. Now the wait until my flight on Monday.