Autopilot engaged

I blundered into conciousness as my alarm went off. I was still fully clothed and had just collapsed onto the bed with all the lights on. It then slowly dawned on me that, somehow, through the mother of all hangovers I had to ride to Santander.

What made things even worse was that I had forgotten to set my alarm to Spanish time so I now had 15 minutes to be on the bike!

As I struggled into the garage those sensible enough not to have gone to bed at 3am were already pulling out. Ramming everything onto the bike I tried to hold them up as little as possible.

Breakfast consisted of a few gulps of yesterday's Camelbak water, now tepid and tasting of plastic. Quality.

Fueled up we were soon heading north, many of us running on full autopilot and slowly recovering from yesterday's excesses. The air had a definite hint of autumn about it as the sun struggled to warm the day.

After a couple of fuel and coffee stops we arrived in Santander. The main drag down to the ferry port was packed with traffic all jostling for any tiny gap. As we weaved our way through the cars one of Julian's panniers (probably the one full of smelly shreddies) decided it could take no more and just fell off.

With cars swerving to avoid it Jim showed excellent motorcycle football skills by kicking it into the kerb. It now looks decidedly second hand. We were just thankful that it hadn't jumped ship when we were blasting up the motorway. Coming across a tumbling case when riding on autopilot could have been catastrophic. Coming across a pair of Julian's crusty undies would have been fatal!

We loaded the bikes onto the ferry and the word began to get round that there was a force 8 in the channel. As I write the ship is crashing through big swells in the Bay of Buscay. Let's hope the big bloatar is OK and strapped down well.