5 April - Commute Route Change and West Bay Easter

May 01, 2010

Windy and windy

Many of the conversations PeterW3035 and I have had at recent Ride to Eat bacon butties has been dominated by his mock IAMs assessment ride and my hopes to join Solent Advanced Motorcyclists (SAM) and also attend IAMs training and assessment. One of my repeat themes is how rarely I ride off commute on roads I don’t know so well – something Peter and his planned meets has certainly helped address once in a while.

Still, it got me thinking so during a moment at work where it was both quiet and I wasn’t being watched I opened up Google Map and checked for options on the route between Fareham and Reading. The A3349 north out of Alton cropped up with the A3006 south toward Petersfield and the A3.

So, without feeling I’d abandoned our stretch of the A32, Shadowfax and I turned right off the A339 instead of left for Basingstoke and had an exploratory tour through fresh Hampshire countryside for a look-see.

What a route! The A339 has its moments but suffers long sections of restricted movement through traffic density, double whites, and more traffic congestion. Certainly, traversing rush hour in Basingstoke is neither fun (despite some extreme filtering) or efficient (throttle jockey ;)) so any alternative that took +/-10min was open for negotiation.

In the event, there’re are choke points but also long easy stretches of overtake zones. There are villages with speed restrictions down to 30mph, but equally long stretches at 50mph. Best of all is that the worst rush hour choke point is at Hook, which only takes 6-min to negotiate a path through on what has been the worst of days so far.

The time checks are as follows:

Okay, so I can blast quicker times over the alternatives but this route is so chilled; how could I turn my back to it? It’s more scenic; there are more twisties (including a 20mph bend); there’s substantially less traffic; the Sun’s shining…it’s just so much nicer. A real treat.

The record home trip is still 1hr 10min – but I’ll not even hint at how high we were flying to achieve that little miracle!!

West Bay

PeterW3035 throws up an idea to ride to West Bay in Dorset again (the last on 1st Jan left me on my own because everyone went fair-weather) and I gladly accept.

The background is on ST-Owners.com at http://www.st-owners.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81619 but there's no detail on our ride.

I left home at about 9am for a 9:30am rendezvous at the McDonald's at Omer (south of Romsey) and arrived unusually early; leaving me worrying if I had map-recce'd the right place. I passed the time chatting to another biker waiting for a buddy to assess him. At least this was Peter's day to practice and I could afford to lounge about and wait for m'bacon buttie.

Shortly after checking for texts, Peter tipped up and we rapidly set off for Salisbury up the A36.

Now, Peter rides quite conservatively compared to my normal style - and of course within speed limits while practising for his Institute of Advanced Motorists pass with the Solent Advanced Motorcyclists (SAM and I found the pace easy - but here's the surprise: not boring. I loved it. A really sedate ride through the countryside was just what I needed to chill down some. It was great.

In fact, I have to be honest and acknowledge I did get a little impatient in Shaftsbury (I think) where Peter didn't filter down the left lane of a 2-lane que of traffic at a roundabout where I could see clearly an opportunity to skip 40-cars and 5-minutes. Later he explained he wasn't actually sure of which way we were going. But entering Bridport and taking the lead to West BAy (as I knew the route here) I pushed on at a commuter pace filtering through the dense weekend traffic. Peter fell behind.

Once at the cafe in West Bay, I gave Peter a debrief (like I know IAMs!?!) on his ride an quizzed him about the filtering. It dawned on me then; I have had a vast amount of intensive riding experience over the past 2-years that equals many riders that do 4,000-miles a year over 10-years. I find some of the closer to traffic riding second-nature and the sedate legal limit riding easy compared to my more normal seat-of-the-pants-get-to-work-on-time or home early style.

I lead for the strech back to Rownhams - not exactly technical but Peter brought up my keeping too close to the traffic in front of me. A good point, I guess, but then I'm always looking for the pass, I guess.

It was a great day and Peter is a pleasure to be in the company of.

A few weeks earlier still and we'd enjoyed a meet for buttie at Pophams Airstrip on the A303 near Andover with Bloodhound Steve, also from ST-Owners. Between the two trips I think - with the social and bacon aspects of the rides - I have found a new way to ride for pleasure that I didn't think I'd see. I'm actually enjoying the odd ride for the ride's sake. We've even crossed into the Downs for the sheer thrill of riding new and as yet unexplored roads.

Shit! I'm becoming a hairy-arsed biker!!

Almost...

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