Incidentally, I felt there was another good reason to go motorbiking in bad weather.

My thinking was:

To learn how to ride in bad weather that may surprise you out on a tour, it may possibly be a good idea to try riding in it when it won’t surprise you at all.

I first encountered the joy of 60mph side-winds in September 2001, on my first-ever bike tour. It was a five mile stretch of the A82 over high open moorland, on a day that (I later learned) hurricane-force winds were hammering the southern UK.

In such circumstances you learn very quickly to drop your speed and countersteer against your tendency to drift across the road; even so one gust did rip my tankbag off its magnetic mountings… I would have pulled-over, but there was literally no cover anywhere, so it wouldn’t have been a great help.

Hence today: same again, but with planning, much more preparedness, more experience, and a desire to learn. You observe the flight of birds, the whipping of branches and the dancing of leaves in the road – and with this awareness you can infer much of what you need.

“Sunlight on the road means there’s a gap in the hedge 200 metres ahead; the road surface is especially wet there. Be ready…”