Trip postponed – sometimes the best laid plans don’t happen.

I had plans in place to be away and on the road for a couple of weeks. I had been planning to head off this coming weekend to some of my favourite biking roads and places (and some new ones).

Plans included ferry bookings with Stena Line initially from Holyhead in Anglesey to Dublin in Southern Ireland and then a week or so later from Belfast to Cairnryan in Scotland.

Readers of the blog will know I was in Ireland a couple of times last year on my bike and absolutely loved it. My first biking trip in 2022 was mainly down in Kerry (see this post) and my second trip was when I pretty much did a full circuit of Ireland you can check that trip out here.

And then back in the car

Later on in 2022 I was back in Ireland for a couple of weeks when I had a brilliant holiday with my wife. We stayed in three separate places and spent time in both Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. If you missed that one you can read about it over on the rainycity.blog at this link.

And because I enjoyed myself so much, I travelled back to the Emerald Isle again for a third bike trip there in a year, when I was there last month (June 2023)

So why did i postpone the trip?

Well I don’t mind motorcycling in the rain – living in the UK means that it’s hardly an infrequent event. But the impact of the current extreme weather conditions caused by the Cerebus heatwave across southern Europe and the subsequent impact on low pressure systems is without doubt causing some odd weather in the UK.

So what we currently have is pretty un-seasonable strong winds, heavy rain and/or showers across much of the UK and Ireland and the forward weather outlook isn’t great.

Although there is seldom absolute reliability in long range forecasts it’s also fair to say and  probably true that waiting for the good weather in the UK is often a triumph of optimism over reality.

Given my plans were to travel on my own and that I can re-schedule at pretty short notice I took a fairly pragmatic view and didn’t let my normal optimistic take on life cloud reality.

So last night I decided to postpone my trip – of course that leaves me disappointed, but as much as I love motorbiking in Ireland and Scotland it sort of males sense to use the flexibility that I have and just move things back a little.

It’s an extra blow because …

It feels like an extra blow with additional disappointment because I have been really looking forward to getting out and doing some miles on my new bike the F900 XR, and if you haven’t seen that bike you might want to check this post.

The weird weather along with some other commitments have severely impacted my riding time and I’m itching to get some miles in on the bike. I’ll be off and away as soon as I can and I really do hope I can soon make the same trip that I had planned in Ireland and Scotland.

On the positive side I’m not stuck for something to do and the reality is I don’t quite have enough hours to do all that I want to do – so I’ll be getting on with some other bit and pieces including sorting travel plans for Pat and I and which will be over on the rainycity blog in due course

Some bits and pieces on the bike …

I have also added a couple of bits and pieces to the new bike and I’ll write soon and post here about what I’ve been doing.