Euroland

Day 131 Tuesday 9^th August 2011 

Cloudy, overcast and windy was the start of this day but we were earlier than usual and had managed to get to the Hungarian border by around 9am and there were no long queues and no delays. A stop at the kiosk in the border area got us fixed up with the compulsory vignettes that allow us to ride on Hungarian roads and we managed to pay the charge by debit card so avoiding the need to find a hole in the wall to get some Hungarian Forints.

We belted off down the Hungarian motorway – we were now allowed to travel at 130kph (around 80 mph) and the extra speed soon drained our fuel. We filled up at an expensive £1.10 a litre and within around three hours we had transversed the country to the Austrian border and all this without ever having a single piece of Hungarian currency and that is way outside my normal comfort zones. There is no Hungarian/Austrian border as such, just old buildings where once stood passport control but now, being part of the Schwengen treaty, all the borders have been removed and the motorway continues. However, we had to make stop at the Shell garage just over the border to purchase Austrian vignettes for the bikes. Austria has a more sensible system and we paid 9 euros for two bikes for a 4 day window.

We nearly made it across Austria into Germany but near Linz the heavens blackened and the skies opened. We stopped at a fuel station and programmed in a nearby IBIS hotel and the faithful sat navs brought us to the door of a modern glass building which had rooms available. Everything western costs lots more money and we noticed a huge difference in the cost of hotels, the cost of fuel and the restaurant bills.

Dark Austrian Skies

So the plan for tomorrow is to get up early and try and make 600 miles which would leave us just 100 miles from Calais and an easy day’s ride home – so it’s a possible home by Thursday !!