All over for another year

I didn't sleep that well on Saturday night, or at least I don't think I did. Or maybe I did and I just don't remember. It wasn't alcohol or anything but I just seemed to lie there, listening to the rain tapping away on the tent as the night passed. I don't remember falling asleep at all but the night didn't seem that long so I must have been seamlessly drifting between the two states and not realising it. When I finally decided to face the day it seemed like the air had a much colder edge to it so I shouldn't have been surprised by the scene that faced me when I unzipped the tent.

With all the rain I'd been listening to I'd been expecting the mud to be even worse but the ground was now quite solid. I was amazed at how quickly the transformation had occurred as it was still liquid when I'd gone to bed the night before. It was still snowing and it was going to need a bit of thought if it continued while I was packing up. First things first though, I'd start with a walk over to the bratwurst van to see if they were serving coffee.

Before I could do that I had to solve the problem of how to put my boots on. The previously liquid mud coating them had now frozen sold and with half sleepy fingers I couldn't undo the laces. Everything was frozen into a block of ice. It took quite a bit of time to warm the mud ice up enough with my hands to be able to loosen them and get my feet in. While I was preparing for the rip I read a blog that someone had written about last year's rally and one of the things they recommended bringing was an umbrella for when it was snowing. From previous experience that struck me as sound advice and my chief "sponsor", Poundland had provided one at minimal cost. This was the time I needed it as the snow was starting to settle in my hair and, of course, I no longer had my hat. Sadly I no longer had the umbrella either as it had fallen into a mud pool the previous day and vanished. Maybe it was just as well that this was departure day.

The bratwurst van was about a quarter of a mile away and on the other side of some of the worst mud on the site but much to my amazement it was now solid enough to walk on. Maybe not in the middle but certainly round the edges and the journey was a lot quicker than it had been previously. Despite the early hour the van was open and selling coffee and half a cup later I started feeling a lot more awake. I then thought I should go and have a look for the hat in the daylight. Martin's tent was only about 100m away and open sided so I could look around without having to unzip anything. As I approached there were two people sitting on the straw bales pointing at something they were examining together. It was the hat and they were looking at the older badges. One of them explained they'd just found it in the mud by the side of the tent and once they realised it was mine they were happy to hand it back. I was so pleased to get it back and a big thanks to whoever found it even if it's unlikely you'll ever read this.

Back at the tent a few other people were starting to pack up as well. Graham and Mark, two guys who'd actually thought through how to deal with the conditions, whether it was snow or mud, were packing their their tents as well. Their solution had been to bolt two bikes together so solving the problem of falling off when the going got slippery. Back on normal roads a few minutes work with some spanners to remove the trellis arrangement and they were back to normal. We were all packed at about the same time and I managed to cadge a lift with them up to the entrance - or at least my luggage did. It meant I could get everything back to the bike in one trip rather than three. Thanks for that guys, I really appreciated it. All through the time we were packing up there was no sign of life from Dave's tent - to the point where I began to wonder if there was anyone in there. I called out a couple of times but there was no reply so I never got the chance to say goodbye. Later on I began to wonder if he was ok but it's not been unusual in my rally experience (!) for Saturday night to still have an "effect" on Sunday morning - and so it turned out to be.

Back at the bike this is what greeted me -




Half an hour of packing frozen or soaking wet bags and then trying to struggle into the remainder of my bike clothes while it was still snowing and I was ready to set off. The Bloop started straight away - not quite much to my amazement as I'd been more and more impressed by its reliability, but these were conditions about as tough as it gets and a thirty five year old bike that had been stuck in a shed for twenty years was up and running where all around me I could hear the sound of struggling starter motors and flat batteries. It wasn't quite a schadenfreude moment though as I soon found out I wasn't going anywhere. The inside of the left handlebar muff had collected quite a bit of water while the bike was parked which had then frozen, trapping the clutch lever in the ice so I couldn't pull it in. It took a good five minutes of pushing and pulling before I managed to free it enough to be able to get into first gear.

My destination for the day was a hotel! Somewhere to warm up and dry out but I had well over two hundred miles to cover to Wurzburg before that would happen. A slightly more direct route back to the autobahn took about half an hour and I was heading north. First surprise - the autobahn was nearly empty. Eventually I remembered it was Sunday (on a trip like this the days tend to merge into one after a while) so that would explain the absence of trucks. No trucks meant no tows and the Bloop was now heading into the wind rather than running with it as it had been on the way down. For most vehicles that wouldn't make any real difference but for me it meant that it wouldn't pull top gear, even on the flat. I could buzz it up to about 50mph in third but when I changed into fourth it would gradually slow down. At 45mph I would change down to third and repeat the process. This was going to be a long day.

It didn't occur to me at first but an empty autobahn without trucks and with long straight unrestricted sections means that some of the cars come past at quite substantial speeds. That wasn't a problem as long as they moved over into the left hand lane to do it but a few of them couldn't even be bothered to do that, coming past my 40mph motorcycle at somewhere around 140mph and in the same lane - just moving over enough to clear me by inches. This happened again and again until the motorway filled up later on so it wasn't just one drunken reveller heading home while texting with one hand and retuning the radio with the other. They all had one thing in common though - every single car that did it was a BMW. This isn't a rant about BMW drivers, despite the same thing happening the other day when I was out road running, it's just an observation. No Audis or Mercedes or any other make did it despite many of them coming past at similar speeds.

About an hour after getting on to the autobahn I came across two bikes stopped on the edge of the carriageway. It was Graham and Mark. Mark had a rear wheel puncture and they were just about to start taking the wheel out to repair the tube. I stopped to see if I could be of any help but it was quickly obvious that Mark knew his way round a set of spanners and within five minutes or so the tyre was off and the damage to the tube was being assessed.

It wasn't good news though as the tube looked like it had been severely abraded. It needed to be replaced and they didn't have a spare. I'd brought a spare tube for the Bloop and although it was far from being the right size I was happy to donate it and they were quickly back on the road. Start to finish I suppose the whole episode took about 40 minutes, somewhat better than the day and a half it took me to replace the rear tyre on the CCM - and that was at home in my garage, not under a bridge on the motorway. I heard later that they'd made it back without further problems, the substantially undersized tube holding out ok.

Later on, as Wurzburg approached, I programmed the sat-nav with the hotel address and started counting down the miles. I knew I was getting tired when I managed to ride straight past the junction without realising it until it was 100m too late. I turned round five miles later at the next junction and rode back - and managed to ride past the junction again! This was getting silly. I eventually found the hotel after a twenty mile detour and arrived at the check-in desk seconds after a Japanese engineer with a somewhat complicated schedule who then spent half an hour trying to sort it out with the receptionist. I know he was an engineer and that he was visiting the BMW car plant in Munich and quite a few other details of his week to come as all the conversation was carried out in English. Some years earlier I'd sat in another hotel listening to a Chinese businessman negotiating with an Indian businessman using English as their common language. At least I didn't feel so bad when I had to use English to register after the Japanese engineer had finished.

It took about an hour or so to unload the bike and get all the wet clothing spread out on the radiators - I don't think I mentioned that it had been raining, but it had been - again. By the time this was done I was so tired I think I was asleep by about 8.00pm.