Tilbury - Gravesend Ferry.

The black art of moving from A to B on foreign soil
Simon_100
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Re: Tilbury - Gravesend Ferry.

Post by Simon_100 »

SteveW wrote:CCM have just confirmed that my bike will not be ready until Friday of next week. So I'll be heading off on my GSA800
That'll be the Dartford crossing for me then.
It's a shame really because I know it'll be handy enough off road and I wanted to see what it was like after a long day in the saddle on boring tarmac.
G00ner you'll have a PM soon.....
That's a shame Steve. :(

The reason why I was interested is a bit odd. I'm a lifelong insomniac and one 'strategy' is to keep a stack of favourite books to hand that I can re-read ad infinitum. Some of these are collections form the humorist - a lost art? - Paul Jennings, who wrote for the Observer, etc. in the '50's and '60's - very 'little England and cosy and ... zzzz (thumbs)

In one of my favourite stories he describes the Tilbury crossing as a miniature sea voyage, complete with manic off-duty drinking on the fifteen minute voyage and describing Gravesend something like, "a geranium town, with touch of the south" almost as if it was in the Mediterranean!

More bike related, he goes on to describe his onward trip to Sevenoaks, where he encountered a herd of scooter riders, "all that luxury so close to the ground", with their bulbous early crash helmets and goes off the thread fantasising them meeting at night in dank forest glades where they paint hideous eyes and faces on the skid lids and do demonic duals and rights of passage rituals ...

You can date the piece by the last line, "But back in Essex, say Southend, it would be completely different ..." pre-dating the Mods-And-Rockers era by just a few years! (thumbs)

Regs

Simon

PS oddly enough I haven't read books like this in years, nowadays - or nights! -I just think about my accounts, then have dreams about being lost in large empty buildings ... :whistle:

PPS thinking about all this kept me sane in a doctor's waiting room yesterday! (thumbs)

PPPS
g00ner wrote: Personally - I'd delay a bit and go through the A2 to Blackwall / Embankment / Parliament Square or A2 / Blackheath / Elephant & Castle then dawdle a bit around the sights. But then I love riding in London central at night and I don't have another 250 miles to get home :woohoo:
I bet you do you naughty man you! :evil:
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