Salisbury Plain Surprise 19/5/21

Mike Wain · Post by **Mike Wain** » Fri May 21, 2021 9:51 pm

Chris B, JD and I left the Tog Hill layby 0945, dodged rain showers for about 140 miles and 10 hours, but got wetter from the huge amounts of standing water than what was falling from the sky, the heaviest of that being hail! Mostly sunny wherever we happened to be though and managed to spend one of the 2 showers that did catch us under the canopy of Burbage petrol station. I'd found my battery flat as I was about to leave as had forgotten to switch my USB off after the last ride and then discovered that running the bike and LED running light, plus charging my phone running viewranger equals a very slow battery recovery, then the power lead kept falling out of the phone, but somehow it kept going mostly on 1%! Luckily I'd given Chris the route as he had to lead one short bit when it conked out completely, but nothing slowed us down seriously. Switched to my back up battery pack for the phone and the bike battery started charging then. We went through an Army exercise where a tank crew watched us take on a huge water filled hole they'd made in a byway, we got overflown by a Hawk taking off from Boscombe Down as we rode through the runway end lights and JD finally worked out what the surprise is when we were at the place were you see my bike below! Chris twice told me he'd never done that last lane - then I reminded him that he did the same ride with me last year the other way round!
But they do say the world seems very different after Covid!!!