Finally…. the beginning!

3,2,1…..GO! It really is as simple as that! Our adventure finally started on wednesday morning.

It was pouring down out of the sky when we left the train to drive to Donnington Park where we had to be for the HUBB UK meeting and it kept pouring down untill thursday evening, but that couldn’t kill our fun! We had been to one Horizons Unlimited meeting before, in Germany, so we knew a bit what to expect, but this one  succeeded our expections by far… So many likeminded souls, co-travellers and even some people we encountered on previous travels. Richard for example who we met in Morocco on an overweight bike, turned out to have swaped the bike for a Honda C90. He had a shopping basket on the front of the bike where he could just fit his dog, who seemed to love travelling as much as he does… We also saw Ian again, who we had met at the previous HUBB meeting in Germany and who had told his wife: “lass, I’m going on a trip of around 4 months… See you soon.” He said this 14 years ago and finally made his way back home, just in time to come to this meeting. O yes, he just turned 70!

We had to give two presentations, one on our previous trip to the North of Europe and one about on the road photography. Expecting only 10 people to come to our presentations, we were surprised to see at least 120 people showed up for both of them. All of them laughed their heads of when I explained them why we don’t want an intercom system and when they saw my look, that kills, in Norway. In the end I hope we inspired a few people just to pick up their bike and go, because we ourselves got inspired for our next trips…. Ooopps, did I really just tell you there would be other trips? 😉

Seb competed in a contest for the best modified/prepared bike for overland adventures and guess what, he won! When they were announcing the winner we saw a picture of Seb’s bike on the huge screen and still we couldn’t believe that his ugly jellow duckling had won!

On the last day, there was a big send-off for us and Anders and Petra who were going on an 18 month trip around the world. They sold everything at home, said their good byes to their children and are now looking for a new place to settle down.

Before we could go, everyone wanted to take one last foto, so we had to pose a few times next to the bikes and smile untill my lips cracked and my jaw hurt.

Everybody lined the road and they did a proper countdown before they waved us off. We said our goodbyes, waved like queen Sheeba, smiled a bit more and off we went…

On the M1 towards London Seb was giving me the sign that his bike was dead, so we stopped on the hard shoulder fearing the worst…. After a few seconds we found out what the problem was, Seb had been so overwhelmed by the send-off that he had forgotten to stop for gas! He just ran out of fuel, but by pulling the ‘lay your bike down on it’s side to get the last drops of fuel on the right side’ we managed to just reach the gasstation before it died again….