Wednesday 18 September 2013

Day 13 - Hastings, Playing Field to Southend-on-sea

 
 
Today will be a really easy one compared to what we've had so far. I contacted a good biking friend based in Southend-on-Sea who kindly gave us his front room for the night.

Though today looks heavy with rain, so we put all our wet weather gear on, unfortunately for Paul he slit his in a very inconvenient part so by the end of the day Paul was a bit conscious of himself. Riding with cold water somewhere inconvenience the whole days not fun; been there done that.

Before we headed off from Hastings we stopped off at the petrol station again and had a quick bite to eat for breakfast. There was a lot of traffic to we stopped there for half an hour to let it die down a little. Was interesting to see the stress on people’s faces as they struggled to work and also I noted there was a lot of cars with only one person in them!

We gave up on waiting for the traffic and joined the fray stopping off at Folkestone services for a coffee and breakfast. Whilst we sat outside enjoying out overly expensive coffee and wafer thin bacon butty's a Triumph with French plates rode in. We haled him over and soon found that both side new very little of the others language. But thanks to Google translator we managed to get by. Turned out he was from Paris and was over here to do a bit of touring and his first stop was a famous biker’s haunt in east London called the Ace Cafe. He needed direction so I popped into W.H.Smiths and grabbed and map of London for him, unfortunately the exact place he needed was just of the page but again with the help of Google he managed to get some useful directions and with some parting advice from Paul 'London is a dump' he left happy and another aspect of being a biker was experience from both sides. Doesn't matter who or what you are as long as you’re on two wheels we look after each other.

Paul then had a text about doing a recording for the radio to be played the next day. So we waited for them to call and for Paul to then do his bite before we hit the road again. We were chatting about what not to say on the radio when I suggested he suddenly get Tourette’s half way through the interview when the phone went. I stared at Paul who had the hold his mouth to stop laughing so I quickly went to the other side of the car park and left him to without any distractions lol.

Ps, there was this random frozen text on a TV monitor at the services I took a photo off:


You never know we might just be, jot having seen any news for two weeks lol.

We then headed off to Dover, from there on I had drove these roads before so for me a little the trip was over. We stopped at Dover a far while, chatting to the fisherman catching whiting from the pier, had some bad seafood from a small trailer food stall but much better tea and cake at the end of the pier cafe. Siting outside the cafe we were contemplating a cruise liner that was birthed on the opposite pier. I did a quick wiki search and entertained both of use by reading out all the incidents that had happened in its life staring of by the Judy Dench not being able to brake the bottle on its bow to it nearly capsizing a few years ago and all the other unexplained by the company incident. We wish we had a megaphone we would have wished the passengers a safe journey lol.

Back on the bikes we coasted up to Southend-on-Sea and my good friends, soon making the front of their house look like a bike paddock. We had a very good evening with lots of bike chat and had a good lunch at a favourite Indian restaurant of theirs.

 

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