The rain stayed away, although the wind still blew, as we rode through the Peaks district towards our first destination of the day – Birmingham Harley-Davidson. As we got closer to the city, we left behind the wild open spaces of the last week of our journey, and had to contend with traffic, stoplights, and endless roundabouts.

Coming close to the dealer we encountered the mother of all roundabouts, which we nicknamed the Roundabout of Doom – large, with high speed traffic and limited visibility. We all made it through unscathed, but ruefully missed the twisties that we had traded for roundabouts today.

Birmingham Harley-Davidson put on a wonderful welcome and lunch for us, and checked a few adjustments on the bikes, which have now traveled more than 700 miles on our journey. They helped along our departure by blocking the traffic, and then we were off to our second stop – the Bassets Pole pub, a famous biker destination.

On our way back we went through the Roundabout of Doom again, and managed to get the entire group of bikes and support vans through in one go – quite the achievement! Of course, Bassets Pole pub is itself located on another huge roundabout – the Bassets Pole Roundabout (!) but as we rode around it we were delighted to see our friends from Warwickshire Police – 6 motorcycle police, riding around to catch us!

I’m sure when the crowd at the pub and the McDonalds next door saw us ride in with 6 police on our tails, they thought we had been up to no good! The police had come out to join us for afternoon tea and coffee, which was donated by the Bassets Pole pub, and to give us an escort into our final destination for the day – Stratford-Upon-Avon.

After some light refreshment, we set off on the 20 or so miles for Stratford. The police gave us the most amazing escort – stopping traffic at ever set of lights and roundabout in our way – 20 miles through suburbs and city outskirts and we didn’t set a foot down once!

The display of riding skills as the police stopped to block an intersection and then came flying up the centerline to overtake us before the next stop was awesome – we all want to learn to ride like that!

As we entered the busy tourist heart of Stratford-Upon-Avon the police cleared our way, and hundreds of tourists stopped to take photos and watch the display. The police led us all the way into the pedestrianised mall in front of Shakespeare’s Birthplace and had organized for us to park right in front of the house – best parking spot in town!

After thank-yous to the police, and photos for local media and other onlookers, we sang Happy Birthday to Liz – our third birthday girl for the ride! Stratford is her favourite place in the UK, and it was fantastic to celebrate her birthday there.

Dee used her usual charm to get the visitor centre to allow us to enter their exhibition for free and to walk through the house that Shakespeare was born in. Those of us outside were approached by supporters who wanted to make donations, but also by others – both men and women – who had been diagnosed with breast cancer and were moved by our challenge.