Apologies for the recent radio silence . . . I’ve been thawing-out and recovering, following the demanding journey
Apologies for the recent radio silence . . . I’ve been thawing-out and recovering, following the demanding journey.
Thursday, potentially the last day on the road for Hope and myself, “the final push into Lublin”, poor, tired Hope took considerable coaxing and additional TLC to get her over the line. Even as we entered Lublin ring-road we needed to take time-out in order to let her cool down.
Basically, when she nipped-up earlier in the week due to running low on engine oil, I’m guessing she probably broke a piston ring. She’s burning a tad more engine oil than I would have liked (and than she had been doing throughout the earlier part of the journey).
Therefore, the difficult decision to leave Hope in the care of LubHotel, who’ve kindly offered to safely store her in their underground car-park until I can return with a suitable vehicle to collect her, was made.
The result of this decision saw me board a Ryanair Lublin to London-Luton flight wearing full motorcycle clothing on Saturday morning, carrying two motorcycle pannier bags. Arrival at Luton airport was followed by a National Express coach journey which took me as far as Birmingham International, before two final train journeys resulted in my arrival at Shifnal station, with Marie kindly collecting me, early evening.
Yesterday, Monday 6th March was my mums 87th birthday 
As I say, I needed to maintain radio silence in order to surprise my mum - for this I sincerely apologise 
“Hope” remaining in Poland provides the basis for another trip, I feel . . .
Discussing with Maciej Budka, Director at PCK Lublin (Lublin division of Polish Red Cross) the list of humanitarian aid requested by his Ukrainian counterparts, he very kindly portrayed this to me in great detail.
Watch this space for the next installment. . .
In the meantime I’d like to thank each and every one of you for your generous donations, kind words and inspirational phrases of encouragement throughout the entire journey. It’s been a blast, although it was also extremely cold too 
