Longer journey to the Midlands

I had a long overdue trip planned to visit the National Motorcycle Museum with Rob. The weather forecast was really good - no rain and temperatures starting to creep up. At just about 100 miles, it was a longer journey than I’ve done so far on Gloria but everything has been running fine so I decided to put my faith in her and give her a longer journey to stretch her legs.

We stuck to A roads - A41 south, then the A5 (the route of the old Roman road known as Watling Street) towards Tamworth and then the A38 down past Birmingham to the Museum which is just near the NEC. 

All in, it took just over 2.5 hours with a couple of short stops just to stretch my legs.

Rob arrived shortly after and we went into the museum to be met my hordes of men carrying pistols and rifles - there was also a “military” fair on there 😳. 

The museum is amazing. Over 850 British bikes on display and apparently at least one example of the more than 130 British bike manufacturers that have existed at various times.

It was nice for me to see an example of how my Royal Enfield would have looked when it was newly delivered to a dealer in 1961. I appear to have got most things right on mine and entertained Rob by turning into a super-geek, identifying a couple of areas where they hadn’t quite got it right. God, I never thought I would turn into one of those “types”!

We got to saturation point and couldn’t stand to look at anymore - fortunately as we were in the last hall - so we mounted up and took the back roads for a 20 mile spin back to Rob’s place in Tamworth.

So 120 miles today and Gloria didn’t miss a beat. My confidence in her has taken another leap forwards.

Monday morning we had a lazy breakfast and then I hit the road for the journey back. Slightly shorter at about 80 miles. The weather was gorgeous although it did get quite blustery for half an hour or so. 

I stopped off at the Lockside Cafe - one of my favourites if I’m passing through Whitchurch on the bike - and had a bite to eat and a coffee sat outside in the sun, watching the canal boats go up and down the staircase lock there.

So, another excellent adventure. We aren’t doing the Manx Grand Prix this year but have an even bigger adventure planned in May. This was a bit of a trial to see how confident I was in Gloria managing longer distances and she passed with flying colours, so we’re Full on with planning “the big one” now. Watch this space.

First trip out of 2023

The start of February 23 has seen the early indications of spring. Most of my time over winter has been spent working on the house and, more recently, a big push to finish the restoration of my 1962 Royal Enfield Crusader, but I've been itching to get back out on Gloria.

My son Rob was visiting the area for the weekend on his 125 Grom, so we took the chance to get out for a couple of hours around the lovely roads of North Wales. 

I'd been really slack, putting Gloria away after her last trip out sometime around October and hadn't drained the fuel tank, so I was half expecting some problems starting but, after pumping some fuel through on the starter and quickly cleaning up one of the spark plugs, she fired up and settled into a nice steady idle ☺ I put a dose of Redex into the tank to give any winter fuel build up a chance to clear.

I forgot to take any photos but we did a lovely 75 miles through two areas of outstanding national beauty, with a stop in Ruthin for lunch and to warm up! Gloria ran faultlessly.

Lovely stuff and can't wait to get out again soon.