NC500 by NC700: Friday 02/09 - Saturday 03/09
mood: 
hot
A member of the Honda NC700 forum, Clive, suggested a trip, and was kind enough to put together an itinerary and find some hotels. Howard and I joined up, and the eventual group was ten people on nine bikes.
Clive's suggested start point was near his home in Hemel Hempstead. Howard and I spent the previous night with family in St Albans, knocking a good hour and a half off our journey in the morning and sleeping with a wiggly Labrador on the bed too. We even got a packed lunch!
The morning was sunny, but bad weather was promised, and a few spots of rain fell as we made our first stop to collect Hubert and his wife Jo, riding two up on a white bike with lots of luggage. I decided to don waterproof trousers and gloves now rather than regret it later. This was the right choice.
It absolutely threw it down for the rest of our journey: up the M6 Toll, to Lymm services to pick up another fellow-traveller, along the UK's highest stretch of motorway at Shap Fell in Cumbria, and finally into Carlisle and our hotel. Another two members of our party had already arrived and were happy to see us, but for some reason declined my hugs. We dripped indoors, festooned every available surface with wet bike gear, and made ourselves reasonably presentable for dinner in the bar.
Miles: 337
If I ever get a motorcycle, I would love to travel on Route 66. :)
Edited at 2016-09-13 03:12 pm (UTC)
The interesting bit of trivia I do >know about Shap is that just south of there the two carriageways of the M6 spend five miles separated from one another. For a while, there's even a B-road down the middle. There's also a curious special bit of road here, with a bridge and everything, which they built just so it's possible to contraflow half of that stretch. It looks a bit scary and manky; I wonder if they've ever used it?
Also, I was going to say that I wouldn't have expected hotels to be necessary for a jaunt of a mere 500 miles. But then I remembered you had to get there and back. (-8
The farm in the middle of a motorway is also on the M62. :-p
Given the weather that was to come, I suppose that counts as acclimatisation!
Oddly, I'd never heard of the North Coast 500 before! I'm familiar with the route from the start to Ledmore Junction a little way past Ullapool, but I don't recall seeing any mention of the title. Strange.
Edited at 2016-09-13 06:10 pm (UTC)
It may simply have been precautionary. If you were approximately 99.4% water by that point, you might have collapsed into a Ghostbusters style puddle of ectoplasm. (Speaking of which, I do want to catch the new version when it comes to download - looked like great fun! I might try catching Kubo and the Two Strings, though, now that finances are poised to improve)
I was never that into Ghostbusters, so I wasn't all that interested in the new version (I do rather question the value of reboots for that very reason; if you didn't like the original you won't care, and if you did you'll probably be annoyed. HELLO VAL KILMER'S THE SAINT YES I AM LOOKING AT YOU.)