Eunos Chump

Had a couple of nights in Snowdonia, and covered 700.2 miles.  Wales mid-week is excellent - very little traffic and no police!  Rear tyre is very chewed up now... Of course it rained a little, even though the rest of the country is enduring the heatwave, but it wasn't much. Stayed in a Fawlty Towers-style hotel with no mobile reception, very unreliable wifi, uncomfortable beds (that gave me a nightmare about being chased by a bear), and a very steep drive of loose stones that the VFR definitely didn't like.  Nice people though.

After more than 40 years of walking past it, I've finally been in the Red Mount.  There were no faceless nuns or skelingtons, but there are a surprising number of rooms and staircases.   Also, Hunstanton.  Tomorrow, Wales...

All of these bikes carry my personal seal of approval :

Spotted these at the Beaulieu ride-in day: I regularly got a lift to school in one of these when I was about 10.  I sat silently in the back, breathlessly marvelling at the state-of-the-art interior.  It even had a red light that came on when it was low on fuel!  Many years later I got to drive a Solara, and it was a right load of rattly wobbly shite.  Disappointing. Matra Bagheeras look surprisingly exotic up close, I want one Pranged Simca had a wonderful honesty about it. In other news: the CBR broke down on the work to yesterday.  It eventually responded to a bump-start, but either the battery is goosed or something is wrong with the charging circuit.  It's been on the Optimate all night, I'll see how it is today.

It's back on the road, now with 100% more patina.  Here it is in Southsea, the furthest it's been so far.  The brakes are still pretty poor, hopefully they'll get better with use (this says a lot about how lax the brake requirements are for an MOT).  I've used the autotune feature of TunerStudio MS  to sort out the fuelling, seems much smoother now and has even been giving reasonable economy. After 3 years of bikes, the car feels... blunt.  It's still fairly fast, but not bike-fast, and desperately lacking in agility compared to a 2-wheeler.  It's hard work trying to drive quickly, there are far fewer opportunities to make progress.  It's still great fun though, and when I briefly drove the Picasso today it felt like a double-decker bus after the '5.