I left home at 6.45am on the Friday, in order to meet up with Ant, Kiran, Andy & Adie[1] at Dover to try to get on the 9.15 ferry. Fail. But we got on the 10.00 anyway, which was good. Once off the ferry we left Andy & Adie to pootle at Tenere speeds, whilst the four of us knocked the first 100 miles off on the A26, with a fuel stop, when Andy & Adie went past. We got off the A26 at Laon, and then did the D967 and D386 through Fismes, Epernay and for to Montmort Lucy at about 5pm. Beers were drunk, food was good, and had a (relatively) early night, turning in at about midnight. On Saturday morning at about 11am, Ant, Kiran, Andy, Adie, Statto and I headed off for a pootle through Dormans, towards Chateau Thierry, and then picked up the other bit of the D967 towards Fismes. We tried to have lunch here but the bar we stopped in wasn't doing any food, so we moved on, via the abandoned Circuit de Reims, and into Dormans. Here we found a lovely cake cum chocolate shop, which also dod very nice grub, and a lovely Artisan Beer. Well, it was nice iof you didn't pour the *whole* content, sediment and all, into the glass whereupon to took on the clarity and consistency of mud. All in all, a great ride out on some very nice roads although some were *very* lumpy in places. Saturday night, we had a few beers outside our hotel, when it started spitting with rain and everyone started moving indoors, so Kiran and I decided we go on a pub crawl. This consisted of walking 50 metres to the other hotel in the village. It made a nice change, and group of what looked like a French version of Morris Dancers came in, although no dancing took place. Ant joined us here too, so I think we were the only three all weekend to drink in The Other Bar! Our foray across the road, meant we were late-ish for dinner, so we were sat on the "extra" table like three afterthoughts, but again the food was pretty good, with a decent-ish bottle of red to help wash it down. We headed off to the bar for the usual beer & talking bollocks, up until about 1am. Saturday morning, and again the three of us (me, Ant, Kiran) headed off cross-country, pretty much reversing our route down. After a while it started raining. Hard. So we stopped to don waterproofs and carried on, wherupon the rain promptly stopped. Hey ho. I will admit to my concentration not being good at this point, which led to a couple of Oops! moments, but I didn't crash, so it must have been safe. At one point, we came across a road closure due to an accident, so we turned round and let Ant lead us down some dodgy lanes[2] which took us right back to crossroads where the accident had happened. Still, it got us past and off we went. The rest of journey was uneventful, the "highlight" being overtaking the same blue Audi about 5 times, as we kept stopping for fuel. It only started raining about 15 miles outside of Calais, which wasn't too bad, and we rocked up to the port at about 3pm, and boarded for the 4.10 departure shortly afterwards. The ride home from Dover was wet, cold and windy until I got a bit past Maidstone whereupon it dried out a bit. I pootled home at 80-ish, following our chat with the men from Kent Constabulary, and I was home before 7pm. The Hayabusa went really well, with the only grumble being that the speedo overreads by over 10% at three figure speeds. I'm hoping that this is due to non-standard gearing, so I'll investigate that. Apart from that minorr thing, I love it. It is truly a Gentleman's Touring Motorcycle. [1] And LN, but I didn't know that at the time. [2] If he'd been on the Hypermotard, I'd have been *really* worried.