I made it!
1200 miles over 3 days of riding (2 days rest in between) , and the aches went after the second day.. it's very easy to drive in Europe .. the surfaces are perfect everywhere, I didn't realise just how bad even new stretches of Uk motorways are!
120Mph was the speed I held for periods, I didn't try any faster as there was luggage on board and I couldn't get down as much as I wanted..
the charging seems to be fixed.. the whole journey was with the headlight, and the battery is fine

a real last-minute fix.
the only issue, somewhere crossing into Germany, the bike seemed to swtich onto 3 cylinders/ then 4 then 3 etc.... I never found out why, despite checking all I could and changing what i thought was the problem cylinder's plug (it was noticably blacker than the adjacent cylinder) the bike fluctuated between 3 and 4 for the rest of the trip.. seemingly running on 4 above 90mph.. so I think it has done no real harm.. very hard to know quite how to cadjoule it onto 4, but I would say 80% of yesterday it was running fine..
a good trip, nice to hit the road despite the weather
