From where I live it's 130 miles to the ferry at Dover, all bar the first six miles being on motorway. I'd booked an 8.30am ferry so arriving at 7.45am would be just about perfect. Calculating back I concluded that if I left around 4.30am that should be plenty of time. I didn't quite make 4.30 but by 4.45am I was on the road. First shock was how bad the lights were. After about a mile I stopped and turned on one of the spotlights; wow, what a difference, I could see about as well as I would in a car. I didn't bother with the second one and the few cars coming the other way didn't veer off the road so all seemed well. I switched it off as soon as I got on the M40 as much of it was lit and concentrated on getting some miles done. The next shock was the performance with 50mph seeming a distant vision. I could just about buzz it up to 50 in third but there was quite a gap between third and top ( the bloop is basically a 60's design so only a four speed box) and as soon as I changed into fourth it slowly drifted back down. And that was on level ground with a slight tail wind. Progress consisted of a continuous cycle of accelerating up to speed in third and watching it ebb away it top. After a while I took the only option available to me.
No, that wasn't turn round and go home. Having paid for the ferry on a use it or lose it basis I was going attempt to get to France at least. The answer was to make use of the free help that was all around me - on the M25 anyway. I soon noticed that a number of the trucks that overtook me were not going that much faster if they came past at the top of my speed cycle, just as I changed into top. If they pulled back in soon enough I could get an aerodynamic tow up to their 55mph and if luck was with me (ie no hills or they didn't turn off) I could sit there for some considerable time in their wake. Reading this you might think that this was a somewhat risky venture, tailgating a huge lorry on wet roads (did I mention it was wet?) on one of the busiest motorways in Europe and in the dark. Well, lorries or not it was still going to be dark, wet and busy but I quickly found that the aerodynamics worked for quite some distance behind the truck. With the really big container sized lorries, or even better, ones towing a similar sized trailer, you could sit back at 60 -70 meters and still be dragged along. At the speeds we were going 60-70 meters is about a two second gap, a perfectly normal distance. I got to be very good with getting free lifts from the trucks and some of them went on for some considerable distance - 13 miles in one instance before our paths diverged at a junction.
Even with the "lifts" it came as shock number three when the bike went onto reserve after eighty miles - fortunately within easy reach of a service station. Filling it up and running the numbers in my head came up with 60mpg! Sixty to the gallon from a commuter 125, what on earth is going on. The period road tests I'd read all said it would do around 90 - 100mpg and even one test where they flogged it it flat out for a couple of thousand miles got 75mpg. Perhaps I hadn't filled it up completely before I started or maybe my mental arithmetic ability had suffered from the ravages of time. I decided to reserve judgment until the next time I filled it up, but at 60 to the gallon this trip could get rather more expensive than I'd anticipated.
I got to the port just on 8.00am. Nobody, either French or English, wanted to see my passport and the booking in queue only had one car in front so by five past I'd arrived in my allocated lane - just as they started loading. I had time for one very quick snap and then it was straight onto the boat.
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