Having spent a week seeing, and trying to avoid getting run over by, all those mopeds, scooters and motorcycles in Istanbul I was getting a bit of an itch to get on my own bike for a bit of a spin and today I had a good excuse. I needed to pay some cash into the bank and our local branch is closed while it moves location, meaning a trip to Horsham, Redhill or East Grinstead.

I decided to pop over to Horsham today, because the BBC weather app on my phone said that it would be rainy the rest of the week but dry today. Of course, as soon as I arrived in Horsham it started pissing down, making the return trip a lot less pleasant.

I have to say that I was very impressed with how the Piries Place car park accommodates motorbikes. For a start it is free to park bikes there, which is always a good thing. The next good thing is that there are about a dozen or so bike spots which are all of a decent size, with metal brackets suitable for using a bike lock, and right next to the entrance. It makes a change from what you see all too often – room for only a few bikes as an afterthought with spaces that, if they are marked at all, are so small there would be no room to get off the bike. In addition, there are separate narrow bike entrances between the barriers, which lead straight to the dedicated spaces.

All very civilised. Other car parks could learn a lot from Piries Place.

About those bikes in Istanbul, by the way. There were very few I would have wanted to ride. The vast majority were scooters and a lot of the bikes were types we do not see in the UK: 100cc and 150cc bikes were fairly common and a bit under-powered for anywhere apart from crowded city streets. I saw a few Africa Twins and similar, which are really too tall for my liking, and a couple of cruisers which I am not a fan of. We had a chat with the owner of a Harley parked by our hotel. Nice bloke, but I still would rather walk than ride a Harley.

I did see a couple of Honda NC750s, which is more my sort of thing, but I don’t think I would want to ride or drive anything on those completely chaotic roads. So it was not that I wanted to be on any of those bikes on those roads, it was just a general urge to be riding – preferably on my bike and on my roads.