It’s all packed up and time to Go Go Go!!!

It’s my last day in Melbourne before I fly out to the Northern Hemisphere

First time in a couple of years, 2020 when I was locked down in Spain and the UK

I took the mighty Breva for a little ride to warm up the oil before it went into hibernation.

I have to admit late April and almost summer weather in Melbourne

Almost made my question my decision to leave ALMOST

But I did get a last swim in for the season

There is an method to storing motorbikes

Both bikes got a good wash, petrol stabiliser in the tanks to ensure the fuel doesn’t go off and over inflating the tyres to ensure no flat spots. Then there is hooking the batteries up to chargers so they are not dead when I return in 6 months or so.

My dear biker friends if you haven’t got a lift table to work on your bike do!!!

No more laying on the concrete to get to the sump plug or trying to get the oild tray around the centre stand. Agh Bliss.

So my Melbourne bike fleet is all packed away and my Northern Hemisphere Breva is serviced and ready for its next adventure.

There is always something quirky in a blokes garage.

Mine is a clinker rowing boat I built back in my sailing days.

The bow seat makes a great hanging space for my riding gear.

It’s a long haul flight from Melbourne to London.

And by the time I got to London the full planes on the flight left me in no doubt that long distance air travel was back following the pandemic.

It is two years to the day that I left London at the first of the covid 19 onslaught on a repatriation flight back to Australia.

It’s time to recommence the journey I was on then when I was locked down in Spain on my way to Morocco.

It’s spring here and the flowers in the local park add colour to the day.

And the familiar sites of London, the old Red telephone boxes and the red double decker buses are there.

In a couple of days I pick up the mighty Breva ii and make make final preparations to catch the ferry to Spain late next week.

So yes cautiously international adventures are back.

So let’s raise our glasses and have a drink to that.

Australia’s Summer of Discontent

When I arrived back home in Australia in October 2019 the bushfires had already started.

The amazing temperate rainforests of Northern NSW and Qld were already on fire

Rainforests don’t burn we thought but things have change

Beautiful ancient forests dating back to Gondwanaland were on fire

It was heart braking

The long summer of bushfires cast a pall over the country

Dead wildlife, rare forests burning, towns and cities choking on the the thick smoke

My long Bike trip in Europe had left me sore, depleted and nursing some nasty Shoulder Tendinitis

So my mood was low and the acrid smoke that clung to the skies of Eastern Australia only darkened my feelings

Dark like the smokey sky and the burning bush

Dark and disturbing

On a ride to Omeo in Victoria just after Christmas , I was spooked by closeness of the fires the smoke so thick

The town cut off from electricity

An eerie smokey foreboding of the horror fires that were to be unleashed on New Years eve in the east Gippsland forests.

Spooked a bit by the smoke ad proximity of the fires I left

Leaving I had a fall off the bike on some leaf litter while pulling off the road

Dislocated thumb ouch, nothing todo but pull it back in and ride the 400+ km home.

So the New Year was seen in with a cast on my hand and Australia Burning

Indeed a summer of discontent

This summer say the sale of Futura

I did the last slip, scrub and paint

And as I write, she with her new owner is approaching her new home in Whyalla South Australia

As the final blow there is now Coronavirus

Emerging and spreading

Quiet leaving Melbourne Airport

Planes only half full

A friend has told me that I’m stubborn and wont change my plans for anyone or anything

Maybe right

As here I sit in London

I’ve collected the Mighty Breva

And on Wednesday I head to Portsmouth to start the journey south to Morocco on the ferry to Bilboa

The summer of discontent, though, is a weight on my enthusiasm

And as I have been reminded though I’m 35 between the ears im actually in a 62 year old body.

But in the world of the traveller a summer of discontent doesn’t lead to winter.

Its spring here

The daffodils are in bloom in Perivale Park

And life’s adventure must go on

London East End – Brick Lane

I first heard of Brick Lane a dozen years ago through a film

Brick Lane is a thoughtful story of Bangladeshi migrants who came to this area of London.

The movie also iintoduced me to the beautiful music of Natacha Atlas.

The area has changes over the years but there are remnants of it’s Bangladeshi migrants

In the food

The best vegetable samosa have taste.

In the Mineret

Stylised and respresenting the forming artist colony

Art even in the Street signs

And modern artistan

Spilling over from the close by Old Spitalfield Markets a real centre of Art and Design.

Once again probably not one of Londons big tourist attractions but worth exploring.

London quirks for the tourist in London who wants to think they are not a Tourist!

If you can find Perivale Park on the Western edge of London you will discover the Nicky Hopkins Memorial Park Bench

Nicky, a session muso, played with them all: the Beatles, the Rolling Stone, the Who, the list goes on.

On the the North Walk on the Thames there is the Temple which is the centre of the English law fraternity and where in the 1200s the Magna Carta was signed-making even Kings subject to the Rule of law.

It also has a beautiful garden in the centre of London.