Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

If you can’t work with plan A, go to plan B – always a good motto. We’d planned to try out our new tent on the North Coast 500 last year (a route that hugs the Scottish coastline), but illness prevented that. We then planned to use it in France and Italy this summer, but the very late delivery of my driving licence prevented that – and Covid-19 would have made it a bit dodgy, too.

Plan C involved a three-day window of warm and sunny autumn weather in the Lake District. Sunday dawned bright and sunny in Stockport, so for the first time in more than a year we loaded up the Valkyrie with tent, sleeping bags, high-tech air mattresses and as few clothes as we could get away with. We’d pre-booked a campsite in the Lakes. There wasn’t much of a selection to choose from, but it was out of season and maybe Covid had closed the better ones. Compared with the sites we use on the Continent, these looked a bit sparse in the facilities department, with one boasting of a new shower block! We tend to take an on-site bar, restaurant and extensive washrooms for granted, but maybe we’ve just been lucky over the years.

We set off up the M60 and the M62 in warm sunshine, enjoying the feeling of being off on a road trip again, albeit a short one. Traffic was light and stayed that way as we branched off on to A roads, but then it got busy – especially with bikes. We passed probably 100 scooters coming back from a rally somewhere. I’d forgotten how reckless some riders can be on open roads. A reminder came when we slowed to a crawl at the scene of an accident, where the tail of a sports bike was sticking out of a hedge, and not quite at ground level, either.

As the road climbed higher, the sky grew cloudier and the air cooler. The clouds looked ominous in the direction we were heading, enveloping the hilltops in the distance. It started to drizzle, and the drizzle changed to rain as the patches of blue receded behind us. The rain became heavier. Peter on the pillion was reporting that her new Shoei Neotec was hurting the top of her head, just as mine had, so I resolved to give her my sponge pad to try. The joy of our new Sena intercom was the ease of discussing whether to abort the trip or not.

We stopped for fuel and a sandwich and watched the weather get wetter and gloomier. The prospect of setting up a new tent in a wet field, sleeping through a wet night and waking up to a wet morning didn’t have huge appeal – not compared with the nice warm bed waiting at home. We’d crossed the M6 motorway only a few miles back, and it seemed to promise a fast route back to sunshine, warmth and maybe dry roads. That’s what we did – it turned out to be Plan D! Some people think nothing of riding and camping in the rain; I’ve done a lot of the former and a bit of the latter and see no pleasure in either, apart from that recent ride home after a year off the road. Happily, the rain stopped within minutes of joining the motorway south, then the clouds parted, and the ride home was sunny and warm; it was like visiting two climates in the space of 30 minutes.

A few days later we headed out for a day trip. I gave Peter my helmet sponge pad and tried my own replacement liner instead. She was much happier with the pad in place. The new liner solved the roof-of-the-head issue for me but instead transferred the pain to my forehead, which was why I’d chosen the larger liner in the first place! Motolegends kindly supplied another skull-cap sponge for me and now we’re both sorted, even if it’s a bit of a Mickey Mouse solution for a top-of-the-range lid. The tent, however, is back in the attic till next spring.