It's mostly a disaster of my own doing.
1) A bit ambitious. My first few days were planned to be rather long, and with little room for things to go wrong. So obviously things went wrong.
2) When using a Garmin, one should know the difference between a
route and a
track and all that involves. I've used
route without any problem, including when I did my test run a few weeks ago. As I set off from my official start point I saw the purple line did not follow roads but connected points - definitely not useful on a trip like mine. As stated up-thread, I detoured back home to recreate my
routes. Quick look showed it now followed roads, so set off back across the river and on to Canterbury. Around Dartford the
route finished. Aargh! I knew I could get myself to Canterbury and work out a route to Dover (I had mapped out cycle routes to the east of the A2, but decided to shadow the A2 to the west as I didn't have a detailed paper map). I was fine as far as Barham. At some point after that I missed a turn/took a wrong turn and found myself heading south-west toward Folkstone.* At this point I was LOST. Found a house near Elham and the residents pointed out how far off-course I was. At that point the only sensible thing was to get a taxi to Dover.
I was shattered, disappointed and rather upset. But I decided to press on to France. Things were bound to get better, right?
3) If you copy a new map onto your Garmin make sure you can load it before you start your trip. Friday morning I fired up my eTrex and went to load my map of France. What map? Spain was there, France wasn't. At this stage I had a garmin which was of no use, no way to sort it out before my scheduled ferry, insufficient paper maps to navigate a quiet route from Calais to Amiens and too much distance to cover working out a route on the fly if I could get maps on the ferry or in Calais. So I bailed.
Getting home was an adventure. They wouldn't let me on the train at Dover, regardless of all my begging and pleading. I chose to start riding back toward Canterbury to try my luck (and get to familiar-ish road) rather than head straight for London. The Canterbury decision would also give me opportunity to try other stations. The next station north of Dover, Kearnsey, was unmanned so decided to try my luck. Even if I got chucked off I'd save a bit of time and effort. Train manager came around eventually, and without comment sold me a ticket to Bromley South (no way I was going to go all the way to Victoria then have to cross town). A new manager came on at some point: he checked my ticket and made no comment. I was going to make it home! At Bromley South someone on the platform told me off, saying "no bikes on or off trains". Should I have been grateful he let me get off the train?
Another member of staff in the ticket hall had a go at me, shouting across the room rather than coming up to me. At this point I almost lost it, but restrained myself and said "I've completed my journey, so I don't give a toss." I've never cycled in Bromley, so pointed myself north hoping for the best. Once I saw signs for Lewisham and Catford I knew I'd be fine. Except for the north lift of the Greenwich foot tunnel being out of order.
At least there weren't many people using the tunnel at that time.
Now that I've calmed down a bit I need to decide next steps. I'm off work until 16 August, so have plenty of time. Will try to sort out my Garmin issues, then look at trains to France, probably Bordeaux, to carry on with my Camino.
* Adam, I think this is where things went wrong on your ride to Dover a few years back.
