Day 1; The departe'

Its official, the Duck and I have boarded the cruise-ferry Cap Finestre without Chris. We're already underway, Chris is headed back to Epsom by train.

It seems Chris's knees developed a problem due to the weight of his touring bike, so retiring was the right thing to do. He may join me later in the journey by plane.

When we tried to work out what needed to swap back and forth between bikes, there were only a handful of items that needed to transfer (as I most of the shared gear was on the trailer). It seems odd that I still need almost every thing now that its just me & Duck, but essentially everything is scaled to two people: bigger tent, bigger pots etc, so being as I can't shrink them I'm stuck with the extra weight.

Before we parted ways at the International Port, we did a fair amount of mucking about in Southsea and Portsmouth.
Being the big, tough touring cyclists that we are... we spent much of the morning skulking in our tent away from the rain, and substantial sea winds.


Sat on a tank at the D-Day museum in Southsea.


Upon learning of Chris's plan to withdraw from the tour, Pirate-Duck urged Chris to reconsider, with the aid of a Sherman tank.


The hover craft departs for Ryde.

We were ejected from the Naval yard, which was fun; they had apparently sussed our plan to short cut the ferry crossing by commandeering a ship of the fleet.


Above photo is for my pirate obsessed friends Mike and Jenn; regrettably after being kicked out of the naval yard, this was as close to capturing a rigged vessel as we got.

img src="http://i1189.photobucket.com/albums/z426/Dan_Bowen/SAM_8875.jpg" width=70% />
I bid Chris so-long at the International Ferry port.

Shortly after I joined the the ship, having staggered up to my cabin (Deck 8, starboard side towards the bows) with all of my touring gear, save the bike and tent we set off for Spain.


Also for Mike & Jenn: the masts of H.M.S. Victory, appearing from behind an Invincible Class Aircraft Carrier; demonstrating just how diverse the spoils offered by her majesty's fleet are.

The scale of the ship warps the perception of speed, the vessel appears to lumber forward, but my GPS reports that we are making headway at around 30mph. Stood out on the deck, near the bow of the ship, the wind is fierce (I was seriously worried it was going to blow my tripod and camera overboard) and I can better apprehend our speed of travel.


Unfortuantly a thick bank of clouds on the horizon deprived me of my desired picture of a sunset, but this was close enough.

By night fall my GPS showed our position as being in the English Channel, directly south of Exmouth and North of Perros-Guirec in France. The sky had become overcast, which was disappointing as I had hoped for a brilliant star-field, being so far out from shore (and hence light pollution).



Although the stars weren't out, the lights of other vessels in the busy shipping lane of the English channel could be seen across the horizon.

Wish us luck!