Planning the route (Scott)

Over the past few months I have sat down with Google maps and tried to plot a non-motorway shortest route to Sestri from Petersham. It's bloody far. 900 miles-ish. Each way. Without cock-ups. I tried taking different ferry routes from Portsmouth and Southampton, as well as Dover, and all were long. Very long. For the conference we are riding to we will be doing logistics, which means trying to herd 250 Europeans and their accoutrements about a small resort town in Italy. It's hard work and we will be exhausted at the end of it. I was starting to have the cold feet about the trip. Then Tim got his lovely wife Laurie on the case. Finally some brains on the team. I always sort of imagined Laurie a bit like a Navy Wren in an WWII operations room, pushing with one of those long croupiers sticks a couple of markers in the shape of two berks on Vespas around an enormous map of Europe trying to find the best route.
As Tim mentioned the France train from Paris to Nice idea was quickly rubbished with their cretinous anti-scooterism, but the new route is awesome, 3 countries each way, still a decent length adventure and a sleeper on the train through Germany, then hoon around the lakes in Northern Italy. And hopefully arrive in Sestri refreshed and have a relaxingly quiet trip home.

Anyway all I want to say is that Laurie is awesome, and if the UK Armed Forces had drafted her to do the planning for Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, it would have been all done sensibly, quickly and economically and it would be all over by now. And she would have found there were no WMDs in Iraq long before invading and not bothered with even going there at all.

Thanks Laurie. You rock.