The bike didn’t run very well for the whole of that French trip Alyn, it took the edge off what was otherwise a really good holiday. I’d got the repaired BTH back only a few days before setting off and when refitted it immediately felt woolly at low revs and the tick over dropped off a lot. I didn’t have the courage to advance the timing until my return but I wish I had before I set off. I suspect that there’s been a change to the relationship between the position of the cross drilling on the BTH shaft for the timing pin and the trigger point for the cdi modules. I did take the end off the BTH for a look inside but it was such a mess of wires and silicone that I went no further. The current BTH people are nice to deal with and I should really speak to them about the change in behaviour to see if they can explain. They were selling old style coils (push in leads onto a spike) cheaply at Stafford Show a few years ago and said they had only stopped using them because some people had problems with the HT leads pulling out and had superseded them with coils where the HT leads are held more securely. There was no mention of any electrical inferiority.
We had some high winds and heavy rain but we’ve had these nearly every year I can remember - without crisis. Your problems with the bushfires are much more significant, I hope you get the forecast rain to help with these.