Today we said goodbye to France for now. Who knows if some day we will be back - probably will! Our Brittany Ferry, the Mont St Michel left right on time at 8:30 bound for Portsmouth. As we rode the 500m to the dock we saw the Gendarmes rounding up some "immigrants" attempting to make their way to the dock to 'migrate' to England - they were unsuccessful in their migration attempt today due to great police work.

The ferry was able to carry 830 cars and had a capacity for 2120 passengers served by 140 crew - it was probably less than half full today with many of the passengers being French students off to the UK on a school trip. After adjusting our watches back an hour we arrived in Portsmouth at 1:30pm. Customs clearance was easy and we headed off to ride the 22 miles to Southampton to Greg's cousin Betty for the night. As we sailed in to Portsmouth we had a great view of HMS Warrior, Britain's first iron clad battleship and we also went straight passed HMS Queen Elizabeth, Britain's newest aircraft carrier - not even in service yet.

Our first task back in the UK was to get the bike serviced. We booked the bike in last month to a Triumph Dealer not far from Southampton. We have travelled about 7000km so far on the trip and decided to get the next scheduled service a bit early. No sooner had we arrived at the dealership than the heavens opened up and it poured rain for the next three hours - we just hung out and drank the free coffee until the bike was ready. We were entertained while waiting for the bike by the arrival of a truck to unload 10 new Triumph bikes for the dealership. We watched as the bikes were unloaded between showers of rain, we were dry but the poor workers were saturated.

When the bike was ready we rode off - in our wet weather gear to Loomies Cafe for our lunch. Loomies is a bikers' cafe - just like the Outpost at home without the meat pies. We arrived in the rain but it had cleared up by the time we left. Unfortunately the rain returned for most of the 200km we had to ride to our hotel at Hockley Heath.

The decision was made to have a late start the next morning - only 87 miles to ride and it was still wet - the weather was supposed to clear towards lunchtime. At the last minute we decided to travel via the Triumph Factory at Hinckley so that Chris could share The Triumph Experience that Greg and I did 5 weeks ago. The rain stayed away until we got there. Chris managed to snag a Factory Tour at 1:30pm so Greg and I decided to ride on to Buxton in The Peak District and meet up there with Chris later. We encountered light drizzle for most of the ride and fog for the last 50km. Our Hotel is called The Palace and looks like a large English Manor House from the 19th century - 4 star and very luxurious (check out the photos).

Next morning we continued north through the Peak District with two destinations in mind. First we would visit the Derwent Dam. Most of you would wonder why this would be on our list to visit - another history lesson follows. During the Second World War this dam was used by RAF pilots of the 617 Squadron for practising low-level bombing needed for Operation Chastise - commonly known as the Dam Busters raid on the Ruhr Valley dams in Germany. During Operation Chastise, the RAF pilots had to use the newly developed bouncing bombs against German dams. We intend to visit the dams in Germany later in our trip so Greg decided we should see where this section of history originated.

We then rode on to Morecambe, our destination for the night. This is a convenient spot to stay before our crossing to the Isle of Man tomorrow morning. It's almost TT Time!