The Dom way round: Still not on the road

Monday, 1 August 2011

Still not on the road

I had hoped that by now my bike would be on the road. Not so. I've had the bike tested for road worthyness (Single Vehicle Approval) and it passed that and it's had an MOT. I've got it insured. All I'm waiting for now is the Customs and Excise people to tell me how much I have to pay. I think I'm going to have to pay 20% VAT. I hope to here in the next few days, then I send off all the paperwork to the DVLA and it should then take a week to get a number plate issued. It's all taking longer than I hoped and I'm getting very frustrated having my bike here but not being able to use it.

The wait goes on...

1 comment:

Angela / Daryll2 August 2011 at 15:03
Things could have been a lot worse.
Daryll
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Hello

Hi. My name is Dom and in July 2010 I rode a motorcycle (partly) around the world. I started in Alaska and headed for Panama. It took me 6 months and I covered 21,000 miles. I then shipped my bike from Panama to South Africa. I returned to the UK for February and in March 2011 I flew to South Africa. Starting in Cape Town I took three months (and 9,000 miles) to get to Nairobi.

As well as riding a bike I stopped off and did some voluntary work along the way. In Mexico I worked on a turtle rescue project for two weeks and in Costa Rica at a Sloth Sanctuary for three weeks. In Cape Town I taught for three weeks in a Primary school in a township.

In North America my wife, Tracy, came out for three weeks and also joined me for two months in Central America.

I returned to the UK in June 2011. Although I'd kept a blog (obviously) throughout the trip I honestly had no desire to try to write a book. But that changed. Within days of getting home I started writing. Then in Autumn 2011 I found out about The Ted Simon Foundation and applied to be a Jupiter's Traveller. Unbelievably they accepted me and I starting a whole new, and much more frightening, adventure... Trying to write a book about my trip.

'Gone Riding' was published in November 2013. Signed copies are available direct from me at www.domgiles.co.uk. The book is also on Amazon where you can also get the kindle edition. There is lots more information about my trip and the book on my website where you'll find links to my Facebook page and Twitter account.

I now use this blog to write about my current bike trips. In 2013 we went to Scandinavia for the summer and in 2014 we went to Romania. Summer 2015 was spent solo around the Balkans. In July 2016 I went to Poland, the Baltic and Finland.

In the summer of 2017 we went to Northern Spain and France and in 2018 we went to Ireland.

I sold my bike in January 2019!!!