Had to dash off last night. Now where were we?
Broken down in the middle of nowhere. But at least it was a sunny afternoon, not stuck on a busy main road at night in the rain.
Spent some time looking for anything obvious that might have shut the engine down. We wuz at a remote group of cottages and the folk were very helpful. They knew about the road and have told the Council - local solution is drive past the fault on the wrong side of the road.
I said '
Can I leave the bike on your land, I'll hitch home and come back with a van, might not be till tomorrow?'
They said,
'Do you have a breakdown service?' Yes I do, but I never even think of using it . . .
The insurers were called, the AA was despatched and without going into all the ins and outs - for example, Richard the AA man and I had to make a hundred mile round trip to get the right sort of bike trailer - eventually Miss November suffered the considerable indignity of coming home seven hours late towed behind a van.
Yesterday (Tuesday) mostly spent going over the bike, fixing problems. The detective work took a while. It seems that when we hit the road imperfection, the massive wallop the seat gave me broke the fuse box. Must be what I felt break and pretty obvious to see. All four fuses looked fine, checked at the scene by me and Richard. But one fuse has been damaged internally and still gives brief continuity if you wiggle the right wires. Hard to find and not something I've seen before.
New fuse box ordered. With a new fuse temporarily wired in the engine starts and runs. The other fault I found was rear and brake lights not working - the earth wire to the tail had been ripped out.
The forks and rear shocks appear to be fine but I'll be keeping an eye on them.
I'll write to Northumberland roads dept stressing that this is a road safety issue - I could have lost control of the bike with much worse consequences - but I don't expect much response.