Working backwards through the UK’s 4-day weekend, a recap of what happened:

Easter Bank Holiday Monday: Visit Alan Cox & Telsa Gwynne

Swapping mail with Telsa a couple of weeks ago, I promised to come and visit her and Alan, and the Bank Holiday Monday was the soonest opportunity I had free to make the 160-mile trip up the M4 to Swansea.

It was meant to be an early start, scotched from the outset by getting home late from Bridget’s place the night before – the alarm went off as scheduled at 0655 but nothing was going to get me out of bed before 0730, due I suspect to my still being slightly out-of-sorts from the recent shift to British Summer Time.

Bikers everywhere will agree that riding on motorways is possibly the most boring way to run-up the mileage on your bike, but on the other hand if you are essentially forced to be using the motorway, then a bike is a preferable way to travel especially if there is a high risk of meeting traffic jams. Thus the two-and-a-bit hours passed, through rolling countryside, over the Second Severn Crossing (no toll for bikes, yay!), through tunnels and past steel mills, into the heart of Swansea… only to become lost in the traffic for 20 minutes, trying to find the referent Swansea railway station.

Eventually I arrived Chez Cox, had coffee from Telsa’s shiny new cafetiere, discussed the pros-and-cons of washing machines, tried out the new sofas which fit people of Alan’s/my size well, but cause Telsa’s legs to dangle.

For lunch we walked to a local baguette shop, founded by “Welsh Woman of the Year” Marlene Meadon; I had a superb spicy chicken and chorizo baguette-thingy, and a slice of extremely gooey treacle sponge, washed down with coffee. Superb stuff, and all the nicer for being the product of a successful local business.

We walked through the Bangladeshi quarter to Joe’s Ice-Cream Parlour – a famous local landmark; pineapple and vanilla sundae, and back to Chez Cox to look at his new and growing train-sets, in OO and Z gauges.

We talked blogs – Telsa is being barracked to provide a RSS feed for PlanetGnome, but since Alan’s machines are frequently ground-zero for skr1pt-k1dd13s he has a definite preference for static content on his webservers – not that he reads blogs in the first place.

Incidentally: on the topic of blogs, Telsa mentioned she’s a big fan of Rich Burridge, not least because of the diversity of his writing. She also said that she felt PlanetSun is way too big – although I believe she’s not alone in coming to that conclusion – plus passing a variety of other editorial comment with which I was in firm agreement.

We passed a pleasant hour by administering an Eccentricity Test to me – I scored 75%, where 66%+ was considered “borderline eccentric”, but a considerably lower score than that which some colleagues of mine would have achieved – and as the light began to fall, I suited-up and Hobbit had a sit on the BMW.

Apparently it’s “rather scarey”, but then it is a very tall bike.

Stopping for a rest at Magor Services – a chance to check oil levels and re-stretch legs – I started chatting to a guy on a Yamaha Drag-Star, him dressed in combat fatigues, boots, leathers, a number-2 haircut, and various badges: “PROSPECT”, and “SOUTH WALES CHAPTER”, etc. – it turns out he’s a member of the Iron Horses and is returning from a big shindig in Germany and Belgium. Apparently he had to do the trip on his own, so I got the feeling that the whole experience was part of the club initiation – hence the “prospect” badge. I spotted a bit of irregular wear-n-tear on his front wheel, which neatly explained the appalling handling he’d been suffering.

He was a really nice guy. ‘Tis a pity that prettymuch everyone else there would have written him off as a Hell’s Angel. We shook hands, and parted, in opposite directions.

I got home around 2130, and went down the pub with PJ, Grant and Lisa. Niall had just plumbed-up a new barrel of Pedigree.