Mid-May and Donington

May is now half over, and still no real signs of summer coming in, just the odd day of decent weather.

I went over to Donington in England for a morning doing the Ron Haslam Race School on a Honda CBR600RR. Harry, Mark, James and I caught the afternoon Seacat and drove down to the Melbourne View Hotel next to the circuit, where we met Al who came over from Norwich. A night in the hotel, and then up bright and early for signing on.

Annoyingly, the trip down on Tuesday had been in bright sunshine, but Wednesday dawned overcast and with rain forecast. We got changed into our leathers at the circuit, and then got called through for the pre-school information talk. Then, out to the bikes to be allocated to an instructor (one instructor to two riders).

Then we were straight out onto the circuit for the first session so that our instructors could see how good or bad we were :-) We came back in after about 20 mins and the instructors talked us through changes they wanted to see. As we were chatting, the heavens opened!

For the second session the rain was bouncing off the track, so much faith was put in the front brakes to stop us safely from over 100mph!


















A great day all in, even though I didn't do as well as I'd hoped - but then coming from an adventure bike to a sports bike was always going to be strange!

We left straight after the third session and final talk, heading straight back up to Liverpool for the evening ferry, whch left us plenty of time to see the new Star Trek film at the cinema - very good film too!

I've sent my confirmation back to the IOM Government accepting their offer for my apartment, and have decided that my leave date will be 29th July, to allow for any delays in the funds moving. I've also measured up and found that all my large furniture will fit at floor level in a LWB Transit, so no need to spend £1,500 on a removals company! Mum and dad to organise the rental from down in Yeovil :-)

Still can't see much movement on house prices in Yeovil, but hopefully I'll be able to afford a 2-bed Victorian terrace house, and it'd be great if I could get one with access to the back garden from an alley - shed/garage for the bike!

A few people starting to tell me that they'll miss me, which is nice, but I'm not going to change my mind and with no romantic ties to keep me on the island, a new chapter is still on course to start! Romantic ties would've been nice, of course, but no luck for me on that front, unfortunately.

Back to work, I suppose!