Finally – Europe 2017 The movie
Here is a summary of our trip this summer! And honestly, it’s more for the ones that like to see motorbikes driving and overtaking each others 🙂than beautiful sceneries.
Stockholm
So, final day of our 2017 Europe trip! We started of from two different locations, Halmstad and Väröbacka, and we met up in Smålandsstenar (I will not try to translate that name….)
It was raining quite a lot during the first part of the day, and we had lunch by the lake of Vättern. After that we had some minor rainfalls, but most of the time it was dry and reasonably warm. Since we were getting close to our final destination, we emptied the fuel canister. We parted once we got close to Stockholm and went in different directions. I would say all of us are very pleased with the trip, and with the highlight of the trip being the desert in Spain. We covered some 6530 kilometers and the most impressing thing is that Andreas and Feridun did that on a Triumph Bobber. But now finally we are back in Sweden. There will be a movie coming out later, so stay in touch with the website, or sign up to get an email once there is something new coming up. Some reflection from my day then:
You know you are back in Sweden when:
- There are roadsigns showing the actual speed
- You are only allowed to drive 70 kilometers per hour on good countryside roads
- Everyone is driving at the allowed speed
- When you can do outdoor payments with a credit card at EVERY gas station
- Every restaurant by the highway serves meatballs, mashed potato and lingonberry
- Moose is not an animal, it’s a tourist attraction
- The price for beer is horrendous
But anyway, we are really glad to be back home! Stay tuned…
The west coast of Sweden
Final day before entering into Sweden. It was raining in the morning, but around 9 it got clearer and we got on the move. Pretty good drive to Puttgarden, were we took the ferry to Rödby. Fish & chips for lunch and then the quite boring drive through Denmark. We put on the rain clothes since it got darker and darker, but it seemed like the rain was ahead of us all the time. So we managed to get to Helsingör without being wet. Forecast for Sweden said rain most of the evening and night, and we decided to skip camping. But finding a hotel was not easy. We got hold of Rosie (lives near Varberg) and we could crash in there. But when we took of from Helsingborg it started to rain really heavy and with lights and thunder! Once we got close to Halmstad, some of us was really wet. We managed to get a double room for Andreas and Feridun, but I continued towards Varberg. Tomorrow we will met up and drive the last 500 kilometers of this 2017 summer trip.
Desert driving
Walsrode
Well, as expected, the breakfast at the B&B was by far the best breakfast during the whole trip. We enjoyed the breakfast for more than one hour, before we started looking for ackommodation for the night. We found a hotel in Walsrode, some 50 kilometers north of Hanover. We packed our bikes and left our friends in Schlossborn at 12.00. As expected, mostly autobahn all day. We had some rain for like 5 minutes, but otherwise the weather was okay. At 18.00 we arrived at the hotel and checked in. Quick dinner at the restaurant and now watching Liverpool against Atletico Madrid on the telly.
Tomorrow we have 200 kilometers to Puttgarden, then 200 kilometers in Denmark to Helsingör, and then we will drive towards Halmstad and the famous Nissa stigen and find ourself a place to put up our tents for the last night on our trip.
Schlossborn
Epernay
Alarm at 7.30 this morning, and then off slightly after 9. Today was a transportation day, no question about that! Decision was taken immediately that music and listening to books would the sound in the Scala rider system. We drove towards Paris, and by lunchtime we booked a hotel in Epernay. Heave traffic as we got closer to Paris, but we managed to pull through. We spent a fortune on toll roads, and we are now longing for proper motorways with no toll fee (Germany). The last 30 kilometers however was on really nice roads, a lot of bends and beautiful scenery. The hotel is a Comfort Inn, so it does it’s job. Not fancy but clean! The village is some 10 minutes walk away, so in order to get a dinner we need to do some walking. Let’s hope somebody’s knee will cope with the challenge.
Tomorrow we will set the GPS towards the B&B in Schlossborn (Frankfurt), were the Landlord already has confirmed our booking. They will fill up the bar during the day tomorrow!
Then we plan to have one stop in the northern part of Germany and a final stop somewhere in Sweden (Småland maybe?) and ETA in Stockholm is in the afternoon/evening on the 4th of August.
No pictures today, sorry!
Poitiers
We woke up to a gray and cloudy day! The plan to spend some time at the beach had to be cancelled! We set the GPS to the B&B in Schlossborn and started our ride. We spent all day on motorways, really boring, and expensive as well! At lunch we decided on were to spend the night, and the lucky town was Poitiers, some 500 kilometres from San Sebastián. For the third time when we book a room for three with short notice, the room wasn’t ready with three beds. And for the third time it ended up with us getting another room for free! Now some Bowmore Black Rock before we check out the town!
Bardenas Reales & San Sebastian
Today we got up early! Breakfast at 07.00 and then we were off at 8ish. We got close to the town of Tudela, and took off to some gravel roads in the Bardenas Reales. Bardena Reales is the largest desert in Europe. We had some fun driving on the dirt roads but soon we realized that there must be more to it. We then took off to the town of Tudela, were we had an excellent lunch. But after that we went to the north side of the desert and found some even more interesting places to visit. It was partly tarmac and partly dirt roads, and the guys were doing a great job on their Bobbers. Some photo shooting took place before we told the GPS to go to San Sebastian. It was a really warm and tiresome trip to San Sebastian, but we made it. One remark worth mentioning is that we give Spanish roads this highest grade of all the countries we visited on our trip. Anyway, once we got to San Sebastian, it turned out that there was a bicycle race in town, and the road to our hotel was blocked. Took us close to one hour to get there, but it was worth waiting for. An excellent room, but most of all, an excellent terass. So before we went out to town, we had some beer and played some card. We went to the old town of San Sebastian, and had pinxos at different bars. Excellent! But we were all quite tired and we went home pretty early. Tomorrow, we don’t know. Nothing planned so far:-)
Perpignan to Barbastro
Perpignan
Gorges Verdon
We left Antibes at around 9ish in the morning, heading towards Gorges Verdon. We started off on motorways, but then we got to some really nice roads with a lot of bends. Andreas knew about a camping nearby and luckily they got room for us, so we checked in and put up our tents. We also unloaded a lot of luggage before we drove away for a lunch. As always when you are in southern Europe or in Germany, cash is king still, and the lunch place was no exception. But we sent of Andreas to withdraw some cash from an ATM so we could get our lunch.
Then we took off to drive around the Gorges Verdon. It’s a very scenic trip, on a very narrow road with a lot of bends. It took us some three hours to complete (pictures below) and it was really beautiful. We got back to the camping and went for dinner at the local (very local) pizza & burger place just by the entrance of the camping. Burger were good, and we ended up the evening playing cards.
Gorges Verdon is definitely something to recommend, but I suggest that you avoid July and August. A lot of tourists!
No internet!
Leaving Gorge Verdon, aiming for Perpignan!
Como to Antibes
We took a quick walk before we left the hotel. We started of towards Genoa and from there we would aim for Antibes. We booked a hotel in Antibes in the morning, so we were certain that we had a place to stay at when we arrived. It was really warm, and the GPS took us on small and really nice roads towards Genoa. We passed through many small Italian villages, with a church, a town square and some houses! At one of those small villages we stopped for lunch at 13ish. We realized that we still probably were like 2 hours before anyone else in that village would have lunch. But we got our pizzas! We were a bit concerned though that the GPS seemed to avoid any toll roads, and after some deep configuration in the GPS we found the place were it said Avoid toll roads. After that we got directed back to motorways, and since we would like to get to Antibes in good time we appreciated the new route. But the motorway down towards Genoa and the to Antibes is still very scenic and we all thought we had a good ride. However, it was really hot 30-33 degrees and we had to make several stops to drink water. Unfortunately there was a lot of traffic from Nice and all the way to Antibes, so we lost almost an hour on that. But finally we got to Antibes and found our hotel. We had booked a room for three persons, but it turned out that they didn’t have any extra beds. So we got another room for free instead, and both rooms with balcony and a sea view. After taking a shower, we went down to downtown Antibes. Both Adde and myself found our way pretty good in Antibes (we went there a couple of times with the family). However, it was crowded with tourists and most restaurants were fully booked, so we decided to have a beer and wait. At 21 we found a small “hole in the wall” called Moonshining and we had a very good dinner. Now we are back at the hotel, and our plan is to go to Gorge de Verdon tomorrow morning, and then camp nearby before we set our GPS to guide us to Spain.
From Munich to Como (the pictures)
A room with a view in Antibes
Lake Como
After an excellent breakfast we started to prepare for the trip over the Alps. It was raining when we started our journey. After a while it started pouring down and at the same time we realized that it’s not many gasstations in Germany. So we had to make a detour to find a gasstation. It didn’t take long before we had to stop to pour out the water from Andreas shoes. We found some plastic bags in our bags, and with bags on his feet we could continue our trip. Late in the afternoon we finally started to climb up towards the San Bernardino pass. It was still raining and the temperature at 1.600 meters above sea levels was down to 10 degrees and the youngster got cold hands and feets. Once we passed San Bernardino the temperature started to raise, and it didn’t take long it was 28 degrees. The feeling was just lovely, and we stopped and removed all our rain clothes. When we got closer to Italy the traffic got heavier but finally we reached Como. We found a hotel through hotels.com and it turned out to be a very nice hotel just by the lake, a bit up north from downtown Como. We had a chance to take a stroll by the lake before we ended the evening in a lovely Italian restaurant. Plan tomorrow is to drive down to Antibes. There are pictures from the trip today, but the internet connection here is not the best, so it might take a day or two before I can post the pictures.
Sun, sun and 28 degrees
Below the alps!
Rain rain and rain
Munich
After a good night sleep, Andreas and Feridun took a quick tour in Prague (none of them had been in Prague before). Around 11.30 we took off from the hotel with Munich as goal on the GPS! As mentioned, weather is not the best and we didn’t want to make any decision on hotel before we knew how the weather would evolve. So today’s trip was a close to 500 km trip with a majority on motorways. However, we spent the time playing “20 questions”. Some 100 km from Munich we took the decision to find a hotel close to Munich. We ended up in a Best Western hotel in a suburb to Munich. During a very good dinner (food is always good in Germany), we decided to aim to go to Como in Italy tomorrow. The weather on the north side of the Alps will be really bad for the next five days, so we will skip to have a scenic trip and just go for the transport southbound.
Leaving Prague, destination ?
Due to bad weather we haven’t decided on where to go! GPS set on Munich, and then we will take it from there!
Prague: check!
Finally we got a good night sleep! Some of us got up a bit earlier, others got up around 8ish. Nice weather in Poznan, and we started packing our bikes for our next trip. First part of the day was so and so, but we got to some small roads that were nice to drive on. Some problems with the packing on the Bobbers, but after we moved some stuff to the truck (my bike) we could continue. However, the temperature got higher and higher and by lunchtime we had 33 degrees. We had a quick lunch at McDonalds in Lubin. Once we were approaching the Carpathian mountains, the roads became more fun to drive. After leaving the town of Jelenia Gora we went uphill and both the roads and the temperature became a lot more pleasant. From there all the way to the Czech border, we had the best drive so far on this trip. Good tarmac, wide roads and a lot of bends, some of the felt like the went 360 degrees.
Just after entering into the Czech republic, the sky got dark and we put on our rain clothes. It turned out to be a wise move. We had some really heavy rain until we had like 30 minutes left before our destination. We found the hotel in Prague, and could park our bikes just outside the hotel. After a quick shower, we went out and had a really good dinner at a “typical” Czech restaurant. Then we took a walk in the city before ending up at the hotel again. Now we are uncertain about our destination for tomorrow. It looks like really bad weather of the Alps for the next couple of days. But we decided to take that decision tomorrow morning, based on the latest weather forecast.
Arrived safely to Poznan
Time to report on the first 1,5 day on this trip. We came to Nynäshamn and checked at 16.30. We got ourselves some pretty good places for our bikes and started to carry our luggage up. We didn’t have a cabin, but we had booked three seats. But we got worried about the safety for the luggage if we left it, so we got two luggage lockers. Only problem was that the room where the lockers were, would be closed during the whole trip. So we had to take out whatever we needed. Dinner and sleep is already mentioned, and we got off the ferry at around 12.30. First we had to stop to get our communication equipment working before we could head off towards Poznan. Our plan was to avoid motorways, and we managed that pretty good. Of course we had to make some stops for refueling for the bikes with only 8 liters tank. We got some rain half way, but it was only for a short while. At around 20ish we reached Poznan and the hotel (4 star) and we could park our bikes at their private parking. Quick shower and then out for a dinner at a Polish restaurant. Very good food and at very affordable prices. Now back at the hotel to try and get a good night sleep before we drive towards Prague. Plan is to take a scenic tour, not the shortest. Below are some pictures so far, and for a change there are people in the pictures, not only nature.
On the ferry!
We are on the waiting list for a cabin, but we don’t have any expectations to get one. So now a 19 hours trip with the ferry, hopefully we will get some sleep. Tomorrow we are driving to Poznan.
Nope, we didn’t get a cabin. But still we had a good evening. The dinner in the a la carte restaurang was really good and we were all fortunate at the Black Jack table.
Equipped with sleeping bags we managed to get some hours of sleep and now we look forward to drive off into Poland.
Europe 2017
Things are working out!
- Knee surgery on Tuesday, check
- Motorcycle license for Feridun on Wednesday, check
- Ferry booked to Gdansk on Thursday, check
This time it will be a trio going to Europe, and we will start on the 20th of July from Nynäshamn, taking the ferry to Gdansk in Poland. My son Andreas and his friend Feridun will be riding their brand new Triumph Bobbers. Excellent bikes for cruising in a town, but now we will check them out for a 6.000 km drive in Europe. Plan is go to through Poland, down to Prague and then continue down towards Gorge de Verdon in southern France. Then continue towards San Sebastian in Basque before heading home through France. Might find a way to pass by the B&B in Schlossborn Germany. GPS tracking will be available as always, and since roaming charges are history in Europe, it will be in real time
Travel diary 