Setting off for the Mohne ....

Tuesday afternoon - heading off to catch the 23:15pm Stena sailing from Harwich to the Hook of Holland at the start of the Dambusters 2012 Charity Motorcycle Ride following in the footsteps of Dambuster Sqn Ldr David Maltby and the crew of Lancaster AJ-J. Plan was to meet with fellow rider Victor Chevens at the Hilton Hotel at the A50/M1 junction around 4pm. First picture is of Simon just before setting off with his bike lettered up as AJ-J in commemoration of the Lancaster flown by Sqdn Ldr Maltby in 1943. Thanks to the team at 617 Sqdn who supplied the letters and badges to do this:

From there Victor and I travelled down to Harwich in the unseasonally cold may evening and arrived around 8pm and then holed up in a pub just outside the port to wait for the southern contingent of dambusters2012, Gary Dougan and Mark Ryan. However, a phone call from Gary at around 8.30pm brought the sad news that his bike had died with an electrical problem on the M25! Rightly, given it was dark Mark had decided to stay with Gary to make sure he was OK and the recovery truck was on the way. Dambusters2012 was down to 2 bikes and we hadn't even caught the ferry!!
10.30pm, and we rolled onto the ferry and helped the crew tie our bikes down. Plan was to get up to the cabin and get some sleep as we did not expect to be sleeping again until the return ferry jouney a day and half away!
Here we have Victor with the bikes safely tied down on the ferry (excuse the poor quality photo!):

More posts to follow later about the Dambusters2012 journey and time at the Mohne Dam.
In the meantime, please do visit www.bmycharity.com/dambusters2012 and make a donation for Help for Heroes. If you watched the Diamond Jubilee event this morning - those men and women are what dambusters2012 and Help for Heroes are dedicated to support. Show your support too!