Today was all about riding through several counties to get to our second compass point down in Cornwall. First, though, we travelled just a few miles down the ride to meet up with Bradley, Graham’s youngest son (and Allister’s brother, of course) who joined us for the day. It is lovely to have Bradley and his Triumph TT with the group. We met Bradley at Winchester Services where BBC South were stood waiting for another memorial ride to come along – we had a chat with their police outriders about their bikes and saw them another couple of times during the day.
From there another short trip down to Avon Heath Country Park where we met with my good friend Dawn and her family. It’s nice to get a hug from a friend in a sunny country park – she even brought cake!!
On through the New Forest, including a couple of pony sightings, and then up over the cliffs to Honiton – seeing the sea on a clear sunny day was fabulous, we all enjoyed that. We also enjoyed the stop at Bridport for bacon sandwiches… [For the record, I am currently being asked to include information about the various types of roadkill we saw en route – I said no but they keep going on!!] Once we got Exeter we headed off the main road to go into Dartmoor, following a lovely winding road to Mortenhampstead. The idea was to continue from there through the cattle gridded part of Dartmoor but sadly our fuel was running out so instead we headed back to the A30 to the safety of a petrol station (bikes don’t work so well on fumes) and then down to Truro.
We arrived at Lizard Point, the southerly most point of mainland Great Britain, just before 6pm. What stunning scenery – it’s just as I remember from when we went as kids. The bright blue warm sunshine certainly helped, we spent a little while wandering around, taking photos and enjoying the scenery.
So all in all a successful day on the Graham Homes Memorial Ride, even with the volume of traffic we encountered (well it is a bank holiday weekend). Can the weather stay like this all week please?!
Mileage so far – 566.2 (287.3 today)
Compass points visited – 2/4
