The first leg...








The first of probably many many many petrol top ups THIRSTY




So yes straight on in to the updates, mainly because where we are staying tonight has wifi and we aren't sure where we'll be tomorrow aaaaaand did I mention I was just so excited?

Imma start back in London... Sam was determined for us to take the panniers on my bike, me not so much. One, I wanted to keep the amount of stuff we were taking to a minimum. Two, panniers make you wider (obvs) and I'm only juuuust used to how wide Hobs is - yeah I named it, and Three, I knew I'd end up with everything but the kitchen sink strapped to me. Hello, I'm still learning...anyway, so the panniers happened and somehow I'm the packhorse...we brought a bunch of food with us, like easy just add water stuff cos we are planning on doing a lot of camping just wherever and not being in big towns, so I guess we will free up space as we go....

It's SUCH a nice upgrade to get going with though the new bike, going on the motorway feels easy not like the bike is about to explode - Yeobikuuuu wasn't the greatest going fast in my opinion. The hand me down BMW is where it's at. We made it to Folkestone just in time, and our train through the tunnel was delayed. Boo. After some confusion getting on the train (we had to wait for all the cars, then they made one single car wait and said for us to go on. Seems odd right. We drive in and park and the lady says of if you could just back out again we will put the last car in first. 'Just back out'. Righto. Even with the extra-low seat I put on it, rolling it chocka full of gear over uneven ground inside a train, ah, no, the opportunity to drop it looming, Sammy graciously came to my rescue.

WE ARRIVE IN FRANCE YAY it is warm and we are on holiday and HOLY WIND TUNNELS yeah wasn't prepared for that dang wind! So there's always going to be some wind blowing you round, yes yes. But the sudden gusts are hard to get used to when you're on the open road, it wasn't nearly so bad in the uk and we were hoping it would be less by the time we got in to France but no. Thank god the speed limit in France is 130kms/hr (not hat I go quite so fast) but to get out of the windy parts quickly hahah. Hopefully today is the only day we really get on 'motorways' for so long, we just wanted to cut down as quickly as we could to get to the areas we'd looked up great roads.

As soon as we left the motorway it was rolling hills and farms and forests and dreamy slower roads to relax on - after the motorway imma need some sort of muscle relaxant injections that get my back in order I swear hahhaa. But it was dreamy, sunny, 27 degrees and oh so beautiful. Deserted quaint villages, farms, windy back roads. Lush. We pulled up to our first stop just outside Jonchery-sur-Vesle, an airbnb as we correctly assumed we would be dead tired after the first day, and the lady gave us four massive fresh tomatoes from her garden to put in our dinner, lovely, and also a garage to park the bikes in which is great.  BUT I forgot my dang earplugs so mine ears art still ringing. Not from the bikes just FYI it's from the sound of the wind whippin on by for such s long time. Will have to pick some up tomorrow lest I get tinnitus. Another cool thing though - we have Bluetooth headsets so we can talk while on the go,  though when it got super windy for some reason Sam could understand me and all he was getting back were WHAAAATS as I had no idea what he was saying. Will have to work on the positioning inside the helmet, it's so nice to still be able to talk between us.

Distance so far: 419kms



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