What Goes Around Comes Around........

Tuesday of last week we had a visitor.... Jun Young Jang better known to his friends as Neo.


Neo is from South Korea and his pal, Seoul Joe, asked on the Horizons Unlimited website if any travellers in the UK had any spare biking/camping kit to donate to Neo to help in his quest to ride his motorbike back home from UK.

When we were in Vladivostok last year we were very close to South Korea so me and Mark decided to throw out a lifeline. Neo travelled up to see us and we kitted him out with enough stuff to get him well on his way. We then took the opportunity to show him around our local tourist towns of Stratford-upon-Avon and he ended up next to Ted Simon's "Jupiters Travels" Triumph Bonneville in the Coventry motor museum.

We will be meeting up with Neo next month for a ride out just before he sets his compass towards the east and home.

Neo & Imogen (our 3 yr old grandaughter) at the Curry house

Neo outside Shakespeare's Birthplace

Neo with Ted Simon's Triumph at Coventry museum

From Russia With Love

We have had a busy week !

We went to Stansted airport on Monday morning (early !) to pick up Svetlana from Vladivostok who came to stay with us until her return last night.  Sveta helped us a lot in Vladivostok when she was working for our customs agent, Yuri, and it was our opportunity to repay the kindness.

Svetlana arriving at Stansted airport

Sveta left Vladivostok in October and has been studying at university in Germany but, having now finished her course, is due to fly back to Vlad next week, so what did we do this week ?

We got back from Stansted airport around midday on Monday so we went into our local tourist town of Stratford-upon-Avon where we saw the sights including both Shakespeare's birthplace and his grave. A walk by the river and the world famous RSC theatre and visits to the souvenir shops rounded off the afternoon.

Outside the Pub

Sveta at Shakespeare's Birthplace

Shakespeare's grave at Holy Trinity Church

Tuesday was the big day. We took Sveta to London to see all the main sights and managed to squeeze quite a lot into the day before our legs gave out but not before yet more visits to souvenir shops !

Big Ben, a London Bus and a Phone Box all in one shot !

Tower Bridge

Wednesday was shopping with the girls. (No pictures because surprise, surprise, I didn't go)

Thursday was a visit to Oxford, the city of spires, and a detour on the way home through the pretty cotswold village of Broadway and back home in time to go out in the evening for a meal with all the family at a restaurant in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Sveta in OXFORD

Friday was going home day so we set off mid morning and headed for my cousin's house in Gamlingay where we had a wonderful lunch (thanks Pam & Paul) before heading off to nearby Cambridge to finish off the sightseeing. Stansted is just down the road from Cambridge and we managed to get Sveta into the terminal with plenty of time to spare.

Good time and good fun

2012

Having fattened myself up at Christmas (a lot) it is time to shed some flab in readiness for this year's trip. The original plan was to do Prudhoe Bay to Tierra Del Fuego ie top of North America to bottom of South America but my son Carl is getting married this year so that plan has been put on the back boiler.

So me and Mark have decided to play the dice for 2012.

Bearing in mind we spent a pretty penny or two on our Round the World trip last year we are going to take on this year's trip on the cheap with plenty of rough camping. Our journey will be limited to places where we don't have to get a visa in advance but the route and what we do along the way will be dictated by the roll of a dice - if you don't get the concept then read "The Diceman" by Luke Rhinehart - see details on wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man but it will be more along the lines of the TV programme aired some years ago with Russell Harris & Shaun - see their website http://diceman.co.uk/. This means that we could get as far east as the Iraq and Armenian borders with Turkey or Morrocco in the south Nordkapp in the north or Ireland in the west, who knows ?
 .
We will be using the same trusty bikes as our round world trip - the BMW 1200GS simply because we can't afford to buy different ones if we're being honest. So now it's lettuce and salad for a few months - we intend to leave around 1st June - that time last year we were in Vancouver having just finished our USA section of the trip and our bikes were on the Pacific Ocean headed for Vladivostok.........

Doesn't Time Fly..

Wednesday 23rd November 2011


It only seems like yesterday that we arrived in Spain and here we are homeward bound. We settled last night in the hotel Real Monasterio de San Zoilo in Carrion de Los Condes which sits on the El Camino route to Santiago de Compostela. Our boat does not leave until  tomorrow evening from Santander so we are heading for an old favourite of ours, the parador at Cervera de Pisguera up in the Cantabrian mountains. It is only 50 miles from here so we can leave Carrion de Los Condes at lunchtime and make our way slowly on the back roads into the hills.


Looking forward to getting back home and catching up with the gossip, if any.

Hola !! Que Tal ?

After a manic couple of weeks working to cover for someone's illness I have finally managed to get away with my lovely Gina.  We got Brittany ferry, Cap Finnisterre, from Portsmouth on Sunday night and arrived in Bilbao, Spain this morning. 

We had prebooked a nice hotel, the parador at Lerma, and I am now busy typing this blog overlooking the fields below our fantastic room in the old 16th Century Ducal palce in the old Plaza Major which, we ae told, is to be transformed by 7.30 this evening in to a local market - something that has pleased Gina no end. She is busy now trying to find someone that she hasn't already bought a Chritmas present for in order to give her a valid excuse to go forth and spend.

We should reach Talavera de la Reina (about 100kms south west of Madrid) by tomorrow afternoon and here we will spend a good few days with friends who have invited us to the christening of their newborn baby boy. Last time we came over for their daughter's christening we ended up being Godparents and I had to give a speech in church - all unbeknown to us until we actually got into the church !


Looking forward to the break

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

The site owner very kindly let us stay camped until Monday (17th October). Maura busied herself loading her bike then she set off bound for her home in Northern Italy - it was good to catch up with her again.  Almost all others had left by Sunday morning leaving just a handful of folks to help take down the marquee and generally tidy up. By Sunday night there was only me and Mark and one other, Al from Australia, and we had a few drinks in the bar and then hit the sack.


By the time we got up next morning Al had packed up his stuff and was ready to leave. We said our goodbyes to him and, not before I had taken advantage of the site's COLD shower facility, we set about the always unpleasant task of taking down tents and packing the bike ready fro the next part of the journey. Jens, the meeting organiser, had suggested that we head for Rothenburg ob der Tauber citing it as one of the prettiest towns in Germany so we simply had to pay a visit.


We set out around 10am and made our way on the back roads (dry thankfully) and arrived in Rothenburg, a walled medieval town, at around 3pm.  We rode through the town gates on cobbled roads and found ourselves a hotel not too far from the Rathaus (Town Hall) and checked in for a couple of nights. It was so nice to have a hot shower and a good meal in the hotel restaurant. The town itself is indeed a pretty place and home of several Christmas shops which will please my wife, Gina, no end.


Suitably rested we left Rothenburg on Tuesday morning and, as it was raining, we gave up any notion of riding the back roads and just hit the nearby motorway which took us all the way to Essen and to our pre-booked hotel in the Bredeney area of the city suburbs. We sent a message to Svetlana saying we had arrived and in no time at all she met us at the tram station opposite her dormitory.


The last time we had seen Sveta was when we left Vladivostok in early July and it was so nice to meet up again and we just had a meal and chatted for a few hours before it was time to say goodbye again. We made sure that she got a taxi back to her dormitory and then had a nightcap and retired for the day.


Thursday morning (20th October) was dry and we set out on our 550 km ride to Berlin which we achieved in good time until we hit a huge traffic jam some 20kms long near Magdeburg which added a good hour or so to our journey. We arrived at John's apartment in Steglitts at around 5pm and a welcome hot coffee soon had us back on track !

Town Square

More Pictures from Odenwald

Finally mananged to get some wi-fi to download some more pictures from our camping at the Horizons Unlimited meeting in Ober-Liebersbach.

Riding alongside the Rhine from Koblenz

Fully chromed BMW cruiser we spotted

Mark gets his bike serviced at the BMW dealer in Heppenheim

Maura in full dress to avoid the cold

Mark & Maura much warmer in the restaurant

Campsite with our (snoring) tents away from the crowd

Resturant on site

Just a 5 minute walk from our tents

Mark & Maura - on a walk to get some exercise

Jens, the meeting organiser, shows how to fix a puncture

Odenwald

We had a fantastic weekend in Ober-Liebersbach in the Odenwald area of Germany (just north of Heidelberg). No rain - just blue sky and sunshine (good for the daytime but bloody cold at night, there was even frost on the bike one night !). Met lots of old friends and also made some new ones too. Maura made it all the way from Italy and, despite my snoring, she camped next to our tents and captured us sat around the camp stove.

We left on Monday morning (17th October) and on the advice of Jens (the bike meeting organiser) we are now staying in the walled city of Rothenberg ob der Tauber which is an old medieval city looking like a setting from a Hammer House of Horrors film.

Went to the famous Kathe Wohlfahrt Christmas shop and bought Gina some more bits for her tree - I know that I will have to bring her back here, she will absolutely love it.

Inside the Christmas Shop

Tomorrow will have to be an earlyish start so that we can make the 420km ride to Essen and be ready in time to take Svetlana out for a meal in the evening. The only cloud on the horizon IS a cloud on the horizon that looks like bringing heavy rain for our trip to Berlin - never mind...

On My Way

Tuesday 11th October 2011

I set off from the Midlands at around 1 o'clock and went on the back roads to Banbury taking in EdgeHill, home of a famous battlefield in the English Civil War, and then onto the motorway network which delivered me not only safely but (surpisingly !) dry to my hotel in Folkestone. The chunnel booking is for tomorrow morning and Matk was to have met me here for the onward journey but circumstances have dictated that we shall not meet now until we get to our hotel tomorrow night in Koblenz. 

We are hoping to get to the Horizons meet in Ober-Leibersbach in the Odenwald area some time Thursday afternoon which will give us a chance to get the tents up in the light before we settle down with a good bottle of Irish Whiskey.

Good news also from Jens, the meeting organiser as it seems that, as  with last year, we shall have a repeat of the good weather that made last year's experience so enjoyable.

Lrt's hope that the trip to Koblenz tomorrow remains dry ! 

Off on a Short Trip

Me and Mark are heading off into the sun again but only for a couple of weeks. The annual autumn German Horizons Unlimited meeting for people with wanderlust is taking place in the Odenwald area which, for those with limited Germanic geography knowledge, is somewhere between Frankfurt and Heidelberg.

The really good news is that we are meeting up with our dear Italian friend Maura who we met last year at the Italian Horizons meeting near Lago Di Idro and she has been away for several months in Australia and New Zealand. We also expect to meet up with a few other travellers that we have met over the years and all that (plus a good bottle of Scotch) will make up for having to camp in a field.

Another great bit of news is that Svetlana is now studying at Essen university and we will be stopping by to spend a few hours with her as well. Svetlana first came into the picture in Vladivostok when she was introduced to us by Yuri Melnikov and the two of them proved to be great friends and an asset in helping us get through the vagaries of the Russian custom processes.

After Essen we hope to take a hike up to Berlin to spend a bit of time with Mark's father-in-law who works for Rolls Royce in their Berlin plant - a busy fortnight ahead !