Last Post

Back home, 1 month, 13 countries, 13,269km and 1 tyre later. The washing machine is on overload, the poor bike is well overdue on a service and I finally don't stink. It was a good trip but the highlight for me was definitely Norway and it needs to be visited again, maybe several times. A lottery win would help but even without it, I would go back at the drop of a hat. It would be better if the ferries between the UK and Norway were restarted as the 2 day plod across the low countries to get there is a pain.

The Baltic States were interesting though I think a RyanAir flight to any of the capitals would be the way to do it. Excellent beer and lots to see in the cities and still comparatively cheap. I expect that the way the economy is changing there, it wont be for long. Finland? well, lets say that maybe winter is better....or a different sort of trip maybe a gravel road venture, there are plenty of them. Not enough terrain and scenery for me. Poland deserves another crack of the whip, especially the south. Plenty to see and do and my tyre incident lost me a day so it didn't get a proper view. Watch out for the drivers, they are genuinely loopey. The Czech Republic is a definite candidate for another visit and my route across souther Germany was surprisingly good fun.

As a famous Austrian once said...."I'll be back"

Day 31 - Back to Blighty

403 miles to Calais, the GPS indicated and if I followed it's instructions I would be there at 415pm way ahead of schedule for the 2020 Eurotunnel train. Easy. So I rode as far as the Luxembourg border as good a gold and did what it said. Then boredom with motorways overtook me and I fancied something French for lunch. I turned left and headed south a bit. A nice salad maybe with a little glass of red to wash it down. My experience of riding in France up till now is that every french citizen downs tools at 1pm sharp and heads straight for the cafe for a good lunch. Trouble with the Luxembourg border area is that I think the Luxemburgers have silently invaded and don't do the french lunch thing. Not a scrap of food to be had anywhere. I continued north west on the little lanes and eventually crossed the Belgian border and same story, except for the Friteries every 10 km. They live on chips, it seems. The other thing they are famous for is (apart from Moules Frites and a small statue of a pissing boy) is some seriously ripped cows.



Everything was going grand till I realised I had squandered my 4 hour buffer so I had to make tracks. I was at the head of a queue of traffic with a boy racer behind me when the lights changed to red. I dropped anchor, he floored it and screamed past my left, through the red light and right past the nose of a police car. Ha ha! Cue blue lights, siren and a chase. I passed them a couple of Km down the road showing lots of paperwork. Dangerous plonkers. Then, like clockwork, about 90km from Calais, the inevitable rain came. I think I have seen rain of some sort nearly every day this trip. This must be some sort of record.


I now absolutely stink. Things have not really dried out for a week and I am beginning to rot. Luckily there is a washing machine at the end of this and I may have to climb into it myself. I am visiting my aunt just the other side of the channel this evening and have warned her of the impending odour. In Prague, Pat said there was a bit of a whiff. You know it is bad when a male friend points it out. Made the Eurotunnel with 15 mins to spare, just like the first day.

Day 30 - to Heidelberg

I woke at 6am to see it was chucking it down outside so I rolled over and hoped it would be better in a couple of hours. It wasn't. Nothing to be done except to ride west through it with a wet arse. The nearest place to get leggings that I knew would have some was in Nurnberg 300km away so that was that. After about an hour of rain, it did clear and I made it to Nurnberg relatively dry, bought the leggings and then it really started to piss. I dived into a cafe, parked up and ordered the Leberkase....mmmmm! (literally translated as liver cheese ) a sort of hot meat paste made of hooves and ears and all sorts of nasty things and waited it out.

It passed, and actually got quite nice. I decided to try and cross the rest of Germany with using a Motorway so just pointed the bike west and wherever there was a choice of road, I always took the one that was smallest and bendiest. It was an easy way to navigate as I didn't really have a destination in mind. Just west. I came across a field of sunflowers that had been harvested but some of them obviously had slept in and missed the cull. A strange sight.

Tonight is the last night of the trip so I thought it would be fitting to camp by a river like the first night by the Elbe in Hamburg. Last night, as I was going to meet Pat in Prague, I rode alongside the Elbe again for 20km. Still navigable by pretty big boats even there. Tonight I am by the Necker just a little south-east of Heidelberg. Barges trundling up and down as I write.

Almost gone full circle. By this time tomorrow, exactly one month to the day, 13,000km later, I will have. Time to join the real world again.

Day 29 - Czech

I have never been to any of the big multi day concerts like Glastonbury or the Isle of Wight but I am pretty sure I know what the camping experience would be like. The music and bawling went on all night. This is the only campsite I have ever seen that has its own resident police force. They drove round most of the night to try and keep a lid on things. I got a few hours beer assisted sleep and got under way headed west but to the Czech republic over some very good roads and some being reconstructed. Give it a couple of years and it will be bike heaven....and then I spotted this so I had to give it my business. I stuffed my face and had a couple of shandies and then struggled to stay awake for the afternoon in the heat.


Not much to photograph during the day, I guess I just wasn't in the mood. I followed a route east to west along the mountains that separate Czech from Poland and Germany and then stopped for another shandy. When I paid the bill, I got a shock. Not only is beer cheaper than petrol here, it is cheaper than lemonade! We have something wrong the UK and the Norwegians would have a fit if they saw this.


I thought I would drop in on someone so I considered my friend Kevin in Paris ( just about within reach ) but he was in the UK. Next, considered my old college mate Pat who was supposed to be near Stuttgart so I texted and he was just down the road in Prague. Beer on:) I popped the address in the GPS and the fought with it and the roadworks for the next hour and a half.(Note to self, update the GPS map before going on the next trip) The old GPS map and the crappy diversion signs had me going in circles for 30 minutes. Pat was in town for a couple of days with some colleagues on business and had a spare bed in his room and the hotel were obliging. Result! The waiter seemed to understand english fine but when grub arrived, only one person out of 5 got what they ordered. Still tasty though in a central european brown food way...

Day 28 - Krakow & Auschwitz

I woke up in this strange 'medieval theme' hotel that I liked so much on arrival. The whole thing is painted to look old but is breeze block and plaster through and through. Despite its cheesy look, I really enjoyed my stay. This morning I met an english guy Joe (strayjoe.blog.com) who is rambling on his ancient GSX400 on his way to be a student in Sweden for a year. We swapped tips on roads and routes and parted, me southwest and him to the north. I think his best roads are behind him and with a 120 mile tank range, he will have to be a bit careful further north.


I passed through Krakow today. It survived WWII more or less unscathed so still has its 'old town' intact. It is a major tourist draw and seems worthy of a 'proper visit'. I didn't have a lot of time today but stopped for a few minutes near this fountain to take some snaps. Lots of happy smiling faces.





Auschwitz is about 80km west of Krakow and I wanted to visit it for many years. I cannot easily explain why so I wont try here. It is a difficult place to be but somehow rewarding to visit. Somewhere between 1.1 and 1.5 million people were murdered here. There are two images people associate with Auschwitz, this one with its slogan 'Arbeit Macht Frei' and the rail way arch (below). Apparently somebody stole the original 'Arbeit...'......can you believe it! It has been recovered and is being restored. In it's place is a replica at the moment.


The scale of the place is staggering. At its peak the main camp held 90,000 people and had something like 42 other sub-camps where those who were selected as slave labourers were held. Auschwitz had a dual role as both a Concentration Camp and also a Death Camp. In Auschwitz 1, which was built as an Army barracks by the Polish army in the 30s, the main part of the exhibition is housed. As brick structures, they survived the war and were converted in to a museum in 1947.

It is hard to convey the mechanical savagery of the place. It is an giant killing machine. The things that made it really personal was the possessions of those murdered.


Glasses








Shoes








Prosthetics








Tooth & Shaving Brushes








Suitcases








The hardest bit to handle was 2 tonnes of human hair and the huge mound of children's shoes. Women had their hair shaved when they arrived. It is truly shocking. Out of respect, they ask you not to photograph that part of the exhibit.


Auschwitz 2 is at Birkenau about 3km away and 25 times larger that camp 1. Relatively few of the buildings were brick but were made of timber and many were burned by the SS at the end of the war to try destroy evidence. Most have not survived the last 65 years as the place is built on a marsh. Some buildings have been reconstructed from timbers salvaged from other huts. What you can see are a forest of chimney stacks and the concrete posts from the electric fence. There were 300 huts each housing up to 700 people.


A railway siding was constructed inside the camp later to reduce the chance of escape and to speed the process up. On this platform, the selections for work or gas chambers was made. This is where many people saw their family members for the last time.

The SS disassembled the gas chambers and cremetoria and then blew up the buildings. Some blueprints of the buildings were found after the war and together with eyewitness testimony and some illicitly taken pictures of the place when it was in operation, show what this place was like in operation.

Yet there are still some people who claim the Holocaust did not happen. maybe they should take a visit.

Day 27 - Going home, sort of...

It is 3pm and after a long wait, a new tire has been located and I am off to get it fitted. Just in time too. I am 1900km from home and cannot really afford to hang around till Monday. The journey (at least the aimless wandering part of it) is done and now it is time to make tracks. Now I have an excuse to come back :-) Adam (pictured) is a good bloke to meet when the chips are down. He and his dad picked me up last night, got me sorted in a hotel, found a tire, even organised some mates of their to come out and take a look to see if they could get me fixed at the roadside or if they could get me a second hand tire through the grapevine. In short, all round excellent blokes. Small wonder they all ride bikes too.


I booked a Eurotunnel crossing on Wednesday night in hope.....and then we went to put the new rubber on. Everything went went well until at long last, it was time to roll the bike out and would you believe it, it started spitting rain. I couldn't flipping believe it! I decided to go west, shortest route home but after about 30 minutes, the clouds in front of me convinced me to go south. I couldn't stand another soaking. Everything stinks the way it does when it has not dried properly for days. I need a new helmet cos this one is fetid inside. It doesnt owe me any money as I bought it to do the south american trip a few years back and a lot of sweat has seeped into it since then. I threw away the remnants of the waterproof leggings I bought in Trondheim. They were totally shagged. I feel a shopping trip coming on....


I decided on Krakow about 300km south and from there I will bumble along home in 4 days. Not much to note about the journey. I skirted Warsaw which is a little 'american' in that it has lots of strip development extending for miles out into the countryside. I was driving through urban sprawl for ages. I guess this a result of having been completely rebuild from scratch after the war. Dusk was pretty with a mist forming strange cloud shapes. I stopped about 30k short of Krakow in a small town in an exceptional little hotel.A a real find and all for 110 Zlotys a night, about 25 quid. Mad wedding band in the background as I write.

Day 26 - To Poland

I left Vilnius in glorious sunshine after a McDonalds breakfast....purely for the free wifi you understand. Actually, McDs are quite rare so far on this trip. I have only seen a couple so far and they are usually in capital cites. I backtracked to see Trakai Castle about 20km west of the city. Very picturesque and it hauls in the tourists by the busload.


Next on the agenda was Grutus Park near the Belarus border. After independence in 1991, most town squares in Lithuania had one or more soviet era statues. What was to become of them? Some of them were destroyed there and then by the crowds but the government removed and stored them. Along came the local mushroom magnate Viliumas Malinauskas who bought the lot and created a sculpture park, complete with fake guard towers, soviet era piped music and a genuine cattle truck used to ship people east. Strangely compelling, it has caused a but of a controversy here but still 200,000 people a year come in and pay 20Lt (about 4 quid) for the pleasure.


Not much time left I thought, so I decided on a short cut to get to Poland and take the wee roads rather than follow the signposted route. The road surface disappeared with the signs and then it got a but squirmy and sandy (a pet hate of mine). I began to wonder if I might be straying towards Belarus on the farm tracks, but a quick zoom out on the GPS indicated that the border was a good few klicks away. One more farm track and I started seeing polish number plates. Nothing to mark the border at all.

My GPS data for Poland is not that good so I headed for the nearest campsite about 65k away. As usual in the evening, the flipping rain started and this time it was a real bugger. The heavens opened and I couldn't see a thing. Proper biblical stuff with an inch of water on the road. I should have pulled over and sheltered but my boots were filling up....and then it happened. A kerbstone right in my path and I hit it doing about 30mph. Front tyre went down in a couple of seconds and I was wrestling the bike to the side. A close one.


Checked the tyre but there is a 2cm gash right near the rim so it is finished. It was just about shot anyway so no real loss. Called the recovery people and stood in the rain for an hour and a half getting hosed by every truck that passed. They have a lot of trucks here. Guys come and haul my baby onto an ordinary flatbed recovery truck and I wince with every manoeuvre. Not sure when or where I will be able to get a tyre tomorrow, possibly have to go to Warsaw. If nothing available, then I have a problem......