Day 1
On my newly purchased Royal Enfield Himalayan I left Folkestone to ride the 500 miles or so to Glasgow on the motorways on the East coast of England. Riding this new bike was strange after having powerful large capacity sports touring bikes for the past 20 or so of my life. The Kawasaki ZZR1200 that I had just part-exchanged for the Himalayan produced around 160 brake horse power (BHP) and was restricted to a top speed of 186 mph (290 kph). This bike only produced 24 BHP and I was still to discover what spped it was capable of.
Different as it was from most of my previous bikes, I was enjoying the more upright riding position and the quickness of steering as I found it very easy to change direction without much effort. I rode North on the M20, then around the M25 till I came to the A1 which I then rode North on. I stopped for petrol and coffee after a couple of hours and then suitably refreshed I pushed on. The bike could maintain 70 mph on the motorway without much difficulty but I sensed that this was near to the top end of it’s performance and I though that it would feel more comfortable around 60 mph. I continued North on the A1 until I came to the A66 at Scotch Corner where I turned left and planned to head for Penrith and then North to the Scottish border.
By the time that I was on the A66 it was about mid afternoon and the traffic was light, so having a deserted downhill stretch of dual carriageway to myself I decided to see just how fast my new bike would go, bearing in mind that it was also laden with me and all of my worldly possessions. Eighty three miles an hour (83 MPH), absolutely flat out.
Settling back down to a much more sedate 65 MPH, I continued the rest of the journey to Penrith, again stopping only for fuel and coffee, and then I continued North on the A6 and M74 to Glasgow where I finally arrived tired but in one piece. Over the next week or so I passed the time stripping down the front and read suspension of the bike, finding that the steering bearings and rear suspension linkages were badly in need of greasing. I also took as many parts of the bike off as I could without causing myself serious work in refitting them, to check cable routing and bolt tightness etc. which gave me a good basic knowledge of how the bike was put together.
Day Two
Once my registration document arrived, I again said my goodbyes and headed South for the Eurotunnel to catch the train to France and to really start my RTW trip in earnest. The 500 odd mile journey South was again made on the motorways out of Scotland and down the East coast of England on a sunny but very cold winter’s morning. Stopping only for petrol and coffee, I made the long boring journey at a reasonable 65 MPH whilst constantly being overtaken by 40 ton lorries and everything else on the road. By late evening I was in a large but very run down and non descript hotel on the seafront in Folkestone. Later, as it was getting dark, I strolled about the town and I could not help but speculate about what my adventures on my new bike would be and where they might take me to. For the first time in a very long time, I was genuinely quite excited at the prospect.