Catching the sun rise

We decided to get up early to catch the sunrise on camera. We ended with some nasty coffee in the bow caffeteria with Pat complaining about me waking him to the non event of sunrise.

The Santander ferry crossing

Saturday night was concluded with a lovely dinner in a cosy carvery in Cardiff in Wales. We had a great time with Mark and Paula, previously from our Ireland church family who now live in Wales. As an added bonus we were joined by Paul and Caroline visiting them from Dublin. What a lovely way to close out our first day on the road.

We turned in around 22:00 and slept like logs as soon as our heads hit the pillows. We woke around 08:00 well before the alarms went off, had a warm shower and went for a hearty English breakfast, packed the bikes again and burned down the last for hours down to Plymouth port to the overnight ferry crossing to Santander in Spain.

We arrived in time as they started boarding, driving down the ramps into the huge belly of the ferry where the bikes are strapped down for the 18 hour journey. We were met by a stewardess handing us our boarding cards with cabin numbers and keycards and instructions how to get to the right deck. In typical sailor fashion the compartment covered the bare essentials with bunk beds and a claustrophobic ensuite shower unit, but served it's purpose. We could position ourselves horizontally and recharge for the next day.

We explored all 8 decks and my concept of ferries was altered dramatically. Growing up in South Africa when I read about a ferry, I always visualised this chap pulling a platform on a couple of forty four gallon drums on a rope across a river. This ferry is more like a luxury cruiser, with shops, dining room and luxury lounges, a cinema, swimming pools and bars and even a lounge with a piano player.

We had a steak dinner and turned in early to get up for 05:30 to catch the sunrise over the ocean.

At 06:00 we jumped out of bed, grabbed the cameras and ran out to deck to be greeted by a cloudcovered gray morning to our disappointment. We were looking forward to some sunny Spanish weather after the last two miserably drizzly gray days on the windy motorways. The outside deck was surprisingly warm thou in spite of the cloud cover.

We settled for a lousy bitter cup of vending machine coffee waiting for the restaurant to open for breakfast.

It's now ninety minutes before docking. Time for a shower, packing the overnight bags and getting ready to put our feet down on Spanish soil, find a campsite and figure our what's we'll do with the day ahead.

Thankyou all

Thanks to all for the words of encouragement, support and feedback. We get all your comments and feedback and makes it just the more worthwhile taking the time updating the blog.

We're waiting our turn to disembark in Santander port.

Pitstop for fuel and break at Sedgemoor

About one hour 40 minutes from our target for the day Plymouth ferry port.

The big day arrived.

I've spend the last couple of soldering connectors for headsets, weeksexperiment with building compact portable camping stoves, setting up my PDA with GPS software, headset connections and data roaming to update our blogs and we've spend a whole day meticulously packing our bags to have the weight balanced properly on the bikes and just trying to have everything as close to perfect as you can possibly get it.

I went to bed at 22:00 unable to fall asleep for hours. I honestly think, the last time I was this exited about something was when we went on a holiday to the coast when I was still in primary school. (This is a big deal in South Africa, especially growing up in the desert.)

I eventually fell asleep way past midnight, woke up again at around 02:00 checking my watch to make sure I didn't oversleep, drifting off again till 03:45 waiting 5 minutes longer for my alarmclock to go off at 04:00 and just gave up, got up turn off the alarms and started dressing.

At around 04:40 I had the bike packet and the luggage strapped to it and texed Pat to make sure he's on schedule.

Pat arrived just after 05:00, on schedule and we took the last familiar route down to Rosslare in even more familiar Irish weather. But even rain and dark clouds today, could not affect the great mood I'm in.

Everything went to schedule, boarded the ferry on time and as we crossed the Irish sea leaving the familiar horisons behind one can not help but feel insignificant and small when you're surrounded by the vast ocean with no land in site. Not so long ago explorers risked and lost their lives to make this last crossing to the "end of the world", today this is just another modern day formality taken for granted by thousands a day.

We arranged to meet some mutual friends close to Cardiff and booked into Premier Inn for the night, turned on heaters and started drying out our gear.

Arrived in Rosslare

We arrived safely in Rosslare, had a bit of a drizzle on the road and it started raining now. Pat says:"get me out of this country, hope this is the last of the bad weather for our trip."

We're boarding the ferry in 40 minutes. I am so exited!

A dream come true

We've created our tour blog for a couple of reasons. Firstly to serve as a personal diary for us to capture and remember our experience and secondly to try and share our adventure with all our friends and family and allow all to participate and leave us feedback encouragement and moral and spiritual support for our adventurous journey.

This adventure already started when I got my first motorbike when I was sixteen where we spend most of our time finding reasons to go somewhere on our bikes. One school holiday we organised a week long trip 80 km from our hometown, packing our 50's with our gear for the week and hit the road. It's an amazing experience of freedom and adventure when you swarm about in a group of motorcycles.

We read about guys doing long trips through Africa and Namibia in our local biker magazines long before Ewan McGregor made bike adventures famous. Ever since those days I've been dreaming about a serious bike trip, crossing borders, thousands of kilometers from home.

When I moved to Dublin the long forgotten dream was awoken again by my biker buddy Pat Taylor, only problem was, Pat was still getting his bike and every year the money was just not there to actually do the trip. Pat challenged this excuse of mine and said that if we saved just €20/week over the next year that we can afford the trip. I opened a savings account the same week and plans started developing and becoming more and more a reality as time went by and the account grew bigger.

By February this year we booked and paid for the ferries from our savings and all that remained was the costs for petrol, food and accommodation. Now it became a reality and we started planning in detail, and here we are, the last night before we kick off the long awaited trip, bags packed, bikes serviced, routes plotted.

We invite you to share this experience with us, follow us on http://tour08.blogspot.com

Jattie and Pat