Last day riding in the UK

It was hard to believe our time together was over as we said our goodbyes over breakfast.

It was 18 months since I floated the idea of a Scotland ride when we first knew we were coming to the UK. That was followed by many emails, messages, links to YouTube clips of Scotland rides, and conversations about specific things, routes, and places we wanted to see and experience.

By the time we got our gear down to the bike they were disappearing around the corner and heading west.

Our plan … head south east … we hadn’t really thought about a plan beyond that as we were just getting back to our base.

Reviewing Google maps and we would be close to Nottingham castle. That would be a cool castle to finish our ride on. However, that was not to be as Nottingham castle was temporarily closed.

We found a couple of other castles to look at – Bolsover castle, and the ruins of Newark castle. Both of which were largely on our route.

*First glimpse of Bolsover castle on the top of the hill*

*Entrance to the main castle which was described at the time as an “exquisite little castle”.*

*Most of the rooms are lined with wood panneling, this one with gold lining, but others also contained murals.*

*Sitting in an alcove in the back gardens of the castle*

*From the front of the castle looking over the countryside*

*Having coffee and a scone looking back at the castle stables and horse arena.*

From Bolsover we skirted Sherwood Forest so we stopped in at the visitors centre … largely a tourist trap. I was disappointed. The only real thing they had was a few walks in the forest and even if we wanted to do the short 1 mile walk to the famous Major Oak tree, there was nowhere for us to store our bike gear and as it was pretty warm so we weren’t prepared for such a walk in riding gear while also carrying our helmets and jackets.

So we left with only this photo … and a 5 pound parking stub.

*Statue of Robin Hood at Sherwood Forrest*

Newark castle ruins didn’t take much to walk around.

From Newark we simply hopped onto the A1 … pointed the bike towards Hitchin (where my daughter is living) and dialed the cruise control to 70 mph.

My next bike needs cruise control.

By the time we dropped the bike back to Superbike rental the next morning, we had ridden over 2,100 miles (3,400km) over the last 2 weeks. I was really happy with the bike and will put together a couple of posts covering my thoughts on the bike and an overall summary of our motorcyle route.