Well, the hour arrived: 0830 at Cobham Services. The crew were all present: me, Dale Caesar, Punchy Pete, DA, Hogsback Harry, Noddy and his mate, already christened Big Ears. And our leader for the weekend, Tidy Tim.

This was the first time Big Ears had met the rest of us. He’s stepped up to come to Spain with us, so it was a bit of a baptism of fire for him. Luckily, he seems like a nice chap – and even more luckily he seems to have a sense of humour.

I’m one of those route planners who will go to extravagant lengths to avoid motorways when riding for pleasure. Tim had taken a different approach and, even though 8:30am on a Friday is a challenging time to be on the M25, he led us off bravely. Round the orbital, onto the M40 all the way to Birmingham, a leg of the M6 Toll and then the A515 to Ashbourne. By 12:30 we were having lunch in Matlock Bath.

From there we had a nice run up to Snake Pass, taking the M6 from Manchester to Kendall. A short detour through the Lakes and over Hartside Pass before getting back on the motorway at Carlisle for our final run into Moffat, our base for the weekend. A long day – over 400 miles in all – but by 8pm we were all in the bar. Not too bad.