This weekend was nothing out of the ordinary, although I covered 360 miles, which seems average for a weekend on the East bike.

I did have a call to meet our sister blood bike group Hampshire SERV at Warminster Services at 10:30pm to transport blood samples from Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth to the Blood Transfusion centre at Filton, near Bristol. It was essential that the package had to be at Filton no later than midnight. They arrived in a Transit van (which made me worry that the package was going to be too big) at 10:25pm and after the necessary exchange of paperwork I dropped the package off at 11:20pm, well within the time. I assume the blood had to be matched for a patient in Portsmouth.

Closer to All Hallows, I had a trip to Frome Birthing Centre to collect blood samples to go to Royal United Hospital Pathology Laboratory in Bath. The nurse there was so grateful that she kissed my motorcycle helmet! Other calls were to Chippenham (again with grateful comments from the nursing staff) on both days, Bath Mineral Hospital and the Bath NHS walk in centre.

Temperatures were below freezing most of the weekend, particularly after dark but the roads were dry and so safety was not compromised. However, I am not sure I would have been happy to do 360 miles without the heated grips and seven layers of clothing!

You should tell the pupils at All Hallows that the bike has a spin off benefit, in that all drivers that see it assume it to be a Police bike and their driving improves immensly (except at night, unfortunately). I suspect that the Bentley driver that overtook on a straight between Chippenham and Marshfield before noticing me some way back would not have stuck rigidly to 55 thereafter, or the modified Nissan Sktline GTR driver that pulled out in front of me in Bath and drove impecably at the 30mph limit. Which all goes towards keeping the roads that little bit safer. It is also amazing how many times you see drivers dropping mobile phones.