The annual Billy No Mates Tour

All gone.
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I’ll grab some dinner then consider another pitcher but there’s a limit to the amount of alcohol you should consume then ride a bike the next day.


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Nice one andy are you doing a youtube vid of it ?
taking my son dan 11 for his first european trip next year on the bike minus the missus so looking forward to it already cheers wayne.
 
The biggest laugh was today as I strapped the bike down when a bloke with multiple black rat stickers on his bike and both his and his pillions crash helmets started chatting about our trips and he said they were thinking about doing the Baltic States at some point and what was the high point of that part of the trip. Naturally I replied that getting banned and buying my licence back from bent cops topped everything so he went a bit sulky.

Love it, have a good night.
 
A bit late, but great news about your wife!

Thanks. It’s been a bit of an up and down summer but all’s well that ends well.

We’re off for a spot of sun on Saturday and while she’s a bit down about missing a decent bike trip this year she’s quite pleased that she avoided this one.

Silverstone next year?
 
Andy, sounds like a great trip and has been a most enjoyable read. Enjoy your 'proper' holiday with SWMBO.
 
Is that bat and chips? :eek::D

Apparently it was chicken :nenau

Whatever it was it didn’t taste too good but by the time I’d got through my bucket of beer there wasn’t a lot left which should but won’t teach me a lesson for the future :D
 
The bike is now standing outside our garage waiting to be unloaded while I have a cup of tea for the first time since I left home.

Well all things considered I reckon I’ve had a decent road trip. I grabbed myself 3 new countries to add to the list of ones I’ve ridden my bikes in which is good but every year that target gets a little bit tougher though nothing’s impossible and I’ve got a year to keep changing my mind before getting on the ferry and wondering where the fuck I’m going to :D

In the end I covered just over 3.5k miles, did 60 hours worth of riding and thanks to that handy little road trip app that I use when I’m away I know that I’ve spent £366.23 on fuel and got an average of 55.7mpg. Add in ferries, hotels, food, drinks and bribes makes me think I’ve spent about a grand which would have paid for a nice little all inclusive week at a beach resort. Well fuck that, I wanted to ride my bike :rob

High point? Now I’ve had time to consider it I reckon buying my licence back takes that prize.
Low point? Being told I was banned for speeding.
Would I do it again? Not unless I spent a lot longer and went with my wife. When I’m away on my own I don’t stop to look at the scenery and take photos, I just look at the sights as I zoom around and if I think somewhere was particularly good I go back another year and spend some time there. It works for me and to be honest if I’d stopped for a look at places like Gothenburg, Stockholm, Helsinki, Riga and Vilnius I’d have needed at least another week and I still wouldn’t have spent any time in the smaller towns that I rode through and thought they looked worth a stop to wander around for a few hours.

The only day off I had was in Tallinn which I’d wanted to visit for ages and I’ll fly there for a long weekend with the wife at some point in the future.

We’ve been talking about taking the motorhome to either Imatra for the road races or the MotoGP when it finally gets to Finland and now I’ve ridden it I think it’d either be use the Frederikshavn - Gothenburg - Stockholm - Helsinki route both ways and take two weeks or add a third week and come home through Estonia and the way I’ve just ridden. The route I took to get to Finland was easy and is less than half the mileage of the route I took to get back so if anyone reads this and thinks about going there all I’d say is you can do the whole thing on a bike in a fortnight but it’ll be a hard ride home if you leave the circuit on the Monday morning and go home the long way.

The KTM, well what can you say about a bike that’s been stupidly overloaded, ridden for 8 hours every day and hasn’t had more than a cursory glance at the oil level every morning? I lost one of the bolts that holds the Ventura rack together but luckily the straps holding my rollbag to it stopped it swinging over to one side so I rode the next 200 miles knowing it was a bit dodgy. The next morning I looked for my little bag of spare fasteners and remembered it’s on the garage floor here at home so I had a look over the bike to see where I could remove a bolt that’d do the job. That’ll be one of the ones holding on the rear grab rail so that’s what I did. The originals were M8 countersunk screws and they’ve had a habit of coming loose before so I really should have used some threadlock on them but didn’t. If I hadn’t had the additional straps on there then it would have been messy and having the whole lot swing round like a pendulum would probably have seen me on my arse. Anyone thinking of using the same system needs to be careful and either use threadlock or check them every time they stop if they’re on shit roads. I’ve only noticed one other fastener missing and it’s one of the ones holding a side panel on but once I’ve ripped everything off the bike and given it a clean I’ll check everything else is tight and where it should be.

I’ve still got plenty of meat on the tyres which have now done 5k miles but they’re a bit square so unless I can get same shape back into them by acting the idiot around here I’ll change them for some more rounded ones. They still felt ok even when filtering on wet roads white lines can make the bike squirm around a bit and my little blast around the Erzburg region on Tuesday evening/Wednesday morning didn’t have any nasty moments so that was good.

It’s been fun.
 
Fuggin' great stuff Andy,have enjoyed this thread for sure,thanks for taking the trouble to not only write it but also to post up all the piccies.

All the best,welcome back to England

Kimbo :beerjug:
 
Roberto has produced a link to a site showing the speeding fine I should have picked up and it appears the conniving bastards had a bogus folder showing penalties that they obviously use to con stupid tourists. It’s my own fault for speeding in the first place so I’m not worried about it but what I will be doing is printing sheets showing speeding penalties in different countries that I might visit so I can show it to cops if I think I’m being turned over.
 
I’ve found something broken!

It’s one of the stupid little P type brackets that holds the luggage frame to the rear subframe but fortunately I’ve had Rokstraps going from the frame to other parts of the bike holding a tent down under the luggage so nothing went astray.

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As soon as I got to Harwich after leaving home I took the tent out of the rollbag, put it in a waterproof bag then compressed it onto the pillion seat with straps before dropping the Ventura pack over the top then removed some other stuff and shoved it into the top of the panniers to get the weight off the frame.

I’ve contacted the suppliers to ask for a replacement plus a spare but I may rethink this using Ventura luggage. It’s designed to take the 50l pack sitting on the rack part when you’ve got a pillion and the weight of the pack was never taken by the frame so even though I did a lot of miles on shit roads it shouldn’t have broken.
 
Thanks. It’s been a bit of an up and down summer but all’s well that ends well.

We’re off for a spot of sun on Saturday and while she’s a bit down about missing a decent bike trip this year she’s quite pleased that she avoided this one.

Silverstone next year?

Will depend on weather forecast!
 
The biggest laugh was today as I strapped the bike down when a bloke with multiple black rat stickers on his bike and both his and his pillions crash helmets started chatting about our trips and he said they were thinking about doing the Baltic States at some point and what was the high point of that part of the trip. Naturally I replied that getting banned and buying my licence back from bent cops topped everything so he went a bit sulky.

:D:D:D; that would do it. Do you reckon doughnuts would work .
 


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