Leaving Felixtowe

We left the Grafton Guest house after an early breakfast. The owners Anne and Jeff were absolutely wonderful. They agreed to store our additional items and suitcases in their basement storage area till we returned from Europe. They were devout Christian people who understood very well what we were about to do on our trip. We'd spoken to them the previous evening and interestingly Jeff gave us one piece of advice. He told us to be aware that a significant number of even younger German people were still upset that Germany had lost the war all those years ago. He suggested we don't advertise our mission widely and always be cognisant of our surroundings and the people who could potentially impact on us directly.
We took the advice even though we were surprised to hear it from people like this.
The morning was cold, we uncovered the bikes, quickly loaded our luggage. We developed procedures we had practised back in Australia and they certainly held us in good stead when the real deal was upon us. We gave Anne and Jeff our farewells and took off on the wet roads with the rain almost imperceptible. Hopefully, we could avoid the worst if we made tracks.
So confident were we that we had not even donned our wet weather gear. That is until we arrived at the petrol station near the port to top up fully. The rain began as soon as we filled our tanks.
The wet weather gear came on and we headed off.