One last hurrah with the bike and more Couchsurfing

5/6 - I'm going to miss having a motorcycle. It was such a bummer to have to ride the bus again today. But not before taking the bike on one last adventure, this time to Dancing Ledge, located near the small village of Langton Matravers. This is a former quarry on the coastline where there is a flat shelf of rock in the sea. It's a good spot for rock climbing, as there was one man preparing to descend while I was there.

The walk on the way there was very quiet. Since it's a bit difficult to find and you have to turn down an unmarked residential street, drive up an unmarked country path and into the parking lot behind a farm, there weren't a lot of people there. The only sounds were my footsteps crunching on the gravel and the wind blowing through the grass. You eventually end up in a grassy meadow, with livestock on either side of you and the great blue sea directly ahead.

And the hill that slopes down to Dancing Ledge is so beautiful it's unfair. You can see coastline featuring cliffs for miles, and it borders the deep blue sea with wispy clouds floating lazily along. The walk to and from Dancing Ledge is about 1.5 miles. I'm just glad I discovered another cool spot that further highlights where I live.

But back to motorcycles. I'm a fanatic now; I can't stop talking about it. My head turns every time a motorcycle drives past me on the street. I'll miss being a part of the club you're automatically a part of if you ride. Riding a motorcycle is like being on a roller coaster, especially when you lean into a downward-sloping curve.

And the grand total in terms of mileage while I had the bike? 721 miles, approximately £60 for fuel, 5 days, two national parks visited, two very friendly cats and one sore-as-hell backside.

I'll try to get the video done next week. I have at least an hour of footage to go through. But if there's a stretch of road I wished I recorded, it would have been either the coastal road of A487 south of Aberystwyth (because its curves were long, gradual and frequent, making for fast riding) and the A350 north of Poole (because that road had sharper curves, and I had to focus the whole time; plus, that's where I hit my fastest speed of the week).

6/6 - I'm a Couchsurfing host this weekend to Meike, who is from Germany. She's visiting this area because she's interested in the postgraduate program for media production. But I've made it very clear to her I have a lot of work to do, so I can't spend a lot of time with her.

So this is it for a while. Time to get to work.