Salisbury Plain was a total hoot today. The day started with the most almighty horrible nasty rainy weather, and I kind of hoped that we'd be fixing bikes all day. The Gods smiled on us, brought out the sunshine and it turned into a lovely day.

We wheeled out the bikes - an assortment of PR3 and PR4 - and did the various bits and pieces needing done. The brake pads on the PR4, the side stands on the PR3, the fork seals on Jane, tightening and oiling and generally just making things solid.

Then it was time to get suited and booted, which we duly did. The orangey brew in my Camelbak now has a great tangy taste to it - it is definitely starting to ferment. I have a theory about this - the bacteria in the orangey brew is cancelling out the equally nasty bacteria on the mouthpiece which gets all covered in mud, roost and cowshit during an enduro. Cleaning out the orangey brew will kill that status quo I reckon.

Since we were on our own, we knew we'd be going fairly quick. It was very very slippery with all the rain, so the weapons of choice were PR3s since they are so sure-footed in the mud.

We took off along the main roads, and it got a bit amusing. The PR3s are geared for offroad, which means they've got lots and lots of torque but not a massive amount of top speed - about 65 mph. Since both of the bikes are identical and rolled off the production line at the same time, there's not a lot of power difference between them - if there's any at all.

So here's me and Martin, booting along the road on full throttle, managing about 65 mph. Being lighter, I was getting about 65.004 mph versus Martin's 65.000 mph. This made for some quite interesting - and very l-o-n-g overtaking manouvres. Both of us were hunched into little balls, to keep the wind resistance down, trying to squeeze every ounce of speed we could get. Martin had a harder job of this than I did - I only need to breathe in to make myself completely invisible. Very amusing.

The job for today was to ride between the artillery ranges in order for me to figure out how all that fits together - we rarely get to go down there. This is so that I can take people out on my own and have a good idea of where we're going. We came to my ITM's puddle - the big one with the deep deep mud at the bottom - and we stopped to get the maps out. As soon as I fixed our position, something just went click. I now knew how it hung together, I now knew Kung Fu.

We rode down to Tilshead, Martin almost ending up in a fence when he swerved to avoid a fox which ran out in front of him. I almost ended up in the same fence trying to avoid Martin avoiding the fox. The fox wondered what all the fuss was about, then just avoided us.

There is a guaranteed recipe for accidents. What you do is take two guys, two motorcycles and a video camera - guaranteed there will be some mayhem. Luckily, we didn't have the video camera, but it didn't stop us having a laugh.

I flew over this jump and gave it 'andful as I cleared the top. Still giving said 'andful as my back wheel hit the deck, my front wheel flew into the air and nearly threw me off the back of the bike. This little bike can make you a bit cocky. Cockiness and slipperiness do not mix well.

The amount of water and mud in the tank traps was huge. A lot of the time, Martin and I took different lines through the mud - where we thought the going would be easiest. His experience almost always won out. Lesson to learn here - just because it looks less nasty, doesn't mean that it's less nasty. I ploughed my front wheel into a foot deep of horrible sticky mud. On a PR4, or on a KTM, I'd have been screwed. The PR3 just dragged out and we kept going.

When we got back, we went over the PR3 with a fine toothed comb. We were looking for where the bits would fit. The biggest problem is the fuel tanks. It turns out that there are two mounting bolts on either side of the frame - about halfway down - that are strong enough to take the weight of more than twenty litres of fuel - more than anough for a rally. But how to shape the fuel tanks? This is going to need some thought.

My Nautical friend has reach Hawaii on the round the world yacht race. There's a great photograph of him looking an awful lot like Jake from the Tweenies on his SailorV blog. He's now sailed more than halfway so, in a sense, he's on the way home. It's a funny thought that - you keep going in one direction long enough and, sooner or later, you start coming back again.

My ITM has settled back into work, inbetween waking up in the middle of the night draming of riding bikes and feeling like he's just ridden 500 miles of rough trail. Because of all the running repairs, his bike is effectively a bunch of cable ties, gaffa tape and a couple of wheels with an engine slapped in there somewhere. The toll that Heroes Legend took on bike and body was considerable, more so than he anticipated it would be. As you'd expect, he's very very glad to be home with the ITM-ettes and the ITM-ess. As you'd also expect, he's starting to think about "What Next?".

Piece of advice he gave me which stood out - "Don't do TransOrientale on your own!".

Hmmm. Good advice. I wonder if there's anybody who would be up for doing it with me, show me the ropes kind of thing. Possibly somebody with experience in long-distance rallies. Irish perhaps. With a KTM 525 Cable-tie special. An onwards and upwards kind of guy. Can't think of anybody off the top of my head ...

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