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4 days, 1400 miles, 5 countries. My first go at touring!

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c_dug
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PostPosted: 12:52 - 09 Sep 2013    Post subject: 4 days, 1400 miles, 5 countries. My first go at touring! Reply with quote

I thought I would share with you the pictures I have of my first ever trip abroad on a motorbike, I should say to start with that I spent far more time enjoying the experience than taking snaps so there aren't a million different pictures, but there should be enough to get an idea of where I went. My dad has a bunch too so I will add more in when I get them.

My dad and I have wanted to do something like this for a while, after years of running bikes into the ground I eventually have a bike capable of a trip to the continent so a couple of months back we started planning. My dad has always wanted to ride the B500 so we made sure we got that into the route and then plotted everything else around it. Dad bought a Garmin satnav to plot our route into, we booked a hotel in Luxembourg and one near the bottom of the B500 and left the last night as we didn't know where we would get to, Verdun was the plan.

At the beginning of last week I prepared the bike, a new back tyre to match the pretty fresh front and a spruce up of the brakes was all that was really needed. Then on Wednesday night I packed up my bags and headed over to my dads house on the other side of London, I stayed the night there and at 6 the next morning we were ready to leave. We made our way down to Folkstone to jump on the train across to Calais, we were straight onto the train and moving in no time!

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000684_zpsc50a1a4c.jpg

I've never been on the train to France before and had no idea it was so fast! We had barely settled down before we were kitting up again and ready to get out of the other end! We were heading for a small place called Etch-sur-sure in Luxembourg and had plotted a route avoiding motorways as much as possible. Our route took us from Calais through Saint-Omer through Hazebrouk and towards Lille. We stopped along the way for Lunch in a small French town (I'm not actually sure where it was!):

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000685_zps6eacd2cf.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000686_zpsa27ea810.jpg

You can see it is quite sunny, lots of the pharmacies through France display the temperature, it was 31-33°C! Scorching!

As we got towards Lille we noticed the satnav wasn't planning the route we had plotted and was trying to take us down motorways! This was very frustrating as we had spent a long time getting it right before leaving. Luckily we had a map on us so with lots of stopping along the way we gradually made our way towards our final destination, through France into Belgium, then back into France, then back into Belgium, then into Luxembourg! This is one of our frustrating stops to re-correct the satnav:

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000687_zpsc8764492.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000688_zps49f36dcd.jpg

These photos were taken in Luxembourg and we knew we were getting close, all the faffing around had added a lot of time to our day though so we had been riding for around 7-8 hours in the 30° heat by this time, we were unprepared for that and were both hungry and tired!

Eventually we made it to Etch-sur-sure, just after the last photos the roads became really, really good! We went up and down a lot, loads of sweeping bends to keep us entertained. We were getting close on the satnav and came around a bend to find we were riding over a dam!

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000714_zps07560c9a.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000715_zps803bb64e.jpg

The view from the top was incredible, the photo doesn't do it justice! We were staying in a tiny town just after the damn, we made our way down a very steep winding road and got to the bottom. Next are some photos just as you come into the town, we stopped again to work out where the hotel was.

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000690_zps089e2e49.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000692_zps77beb897.jpg

And some from the window of our hotel, it was in the middle of an old church or something!

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000708_zps038bf4f8.jpg

Etch-sur-sure was an amazing little town and it would have been very easy to spend a whole week there! The hotel had a bike lock up and there were about 15 bikes including our own in there that night! I had my first taste of Germanic food and a proper "continental" breakfast, something tells me that when British hotels describe breakfasts as continental, they've never actually been onto the continent! Cold meats and yoghurt on cereal it was!

Here is Etch-sur-sure on google if you want a look: clicky

So that was day one. I will get day two photo's in order and post them in a bit.
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c_dug
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PostPosted: 13:26 - 09 Sep 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

Day 2 was always the one we had worried about mileage wise, and after all of the antics with the satnav on day 1 we were eager to get up and out nice and early to give ourselves the best chance. We spent a few hours on Thursday evening reprogramming the satnav, our route plan for the day was cross country to Baden-Baden then down the B500 to a small place called Grafenhausen, we had a room reserved until 7.30 so that was our target time.

I have very few photos from day two, mostly because the roads were so bloody fantastic and who wants to stop on roads like that! The road out of Etch-sur-sure was decent, we were plagued with road closures and diversions, but I suppose that is the price you pay for having completely impeccable road surfaces! To be honest you could throw a dart anywhere near Etch-sur-sure and find a good road so the diversions were never an issue Laughing

Anyway, we headed down towards Luxembourg city, looped around the ring road at the bottom and across into Germany then towards Saarbruken, back in to France at Sarreguemines, through a national park type area to a place on the French side of the Rhein called Haguenau and headed north slightly to pick up the start of the B500 at the French/German border. I got my first photo of the day just slightly down the B500 where we stopped for petrol, a guy on a Panigale pulled in:
https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000716_zpse77d0a55.jpg
I didn't get a picture but his back tyre was shredded to buggery, he was riding it exactly how it was designed to be ridden. It made a refreshing change to the Panigale's I have seen around London!

It was around 4-4.30 when we filled up, we stopped for a rest and a bit to eat at the station before heading off onto the road that we had travelled so far to ride.

Wow.

Honestly just wow.

So we got to our hotel at the other end of the B500, we were running a bit later than planned and due to a cock up when booking we didn't actually have a room booked! Still we were in luck and they had a room spare so we snapped it up. The hotel was really nice, there was a pool which was perfect to stretch out cramped up limbs from another hard days ride. We headed for dinner at around 8.30. The Germans can cook! I had a very succulent shoulder of something (pork or maybe boar) and my dad had a chunky veal steak stuffed with cheese. We drank a local larger which was very nice and came in proper tankards which is always a perk!

We didn't have an exact plan for the next day but knew we wanted to head towards Verdun in France, we plotted a rough route on the satnav before getting to bed.

Here are some pictures of the bikes I took the next day:

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000717_zps3b45aa7a.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000718_zps29e89abd.jpg

And my back tyre after 750 miles of hard riding:

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000719_zps312a4302.jpg

I'm really not afraid of pushing it and the tyre wasn't even starting to show signs of wear!

Ill add day three in a bit.
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c_dug
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PostPosted: 15:57 - 09 Sep 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

So, on to day three.

We woke up fairly early but were in no real rush, we didn't have an exact place to make it to, we decided somewhere around Verdun but that was about it.

I had seen some really good looking roads around the border back into France on our paper map and the route we had plotted would take us towards those. Alas we still hadn't really gotten the hang of the satnav! We plotted the route by sticking a load of towns in as way points along our journey, with Verdun as the final destination. We thought if we clicked Verdun it would go via all of the way points however it was actually taking us the fastest route to Verdun, skipping all of our carefully picked roads!Evil or Very Mad

We realised something was up when we ended within 10km of Basel, only just still in Germany or I could have added Switzerland to my list! Oh well, we stopped for petrol and picked a route to our first waypoint in France. Within no time we were back on some good roads, and on our way up into the Vosges mountains. I loved the B500 but I think this was my favourite bit of the trip. We were up and down through the various mountains we rode along the bottom of a valley following a river, we reached 1000 meters at the top, we were above the lowest clouds for a lot of it! Here are my pictures from the Vosges:

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000720_zpsda2d0181.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000721_zpse2b0c566.jpg

Sorry for the wonky angle on this one, I was rushing to try and snap a herron I spotted fishing but I missed it.
[URL=https://s235.photobucket.com/user/paddy2007dug/media/WP_000724_zps6ecacb67.jpg.html
https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000724_zps6ecacb67.jpg[/URL]

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000726_zpsb7bcd8d3.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000728_zps8ec97eca.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000729_zpsccc99320.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000731_zps73426bc2.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000732_zps51c81905.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000734_zps3f360bdf.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000735_zps4061acaf.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000738_zps2a80fefb.jpg

So, the last of those pictures were at the peak of the mountains, or at least as high as we would ride. In this next one you can see the clouds that continued to piss down on us for the rest of the day:

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000739_zps517cd84f.jpg

As often happens in mountains I am told, the weather on one side was completely different to the other. It didn't really take away from the day, but my gear is not the most waterproof so I was soaked through in no time at all! We continued the ride across France and headed for Verdun. We stopped in a handy McDonalds just outside Verdun so that we could use their wifi to find somewhere for the night. Two very soggy Englishmen in a crowded French McDonalds does raise a few eyebrows! Anyway over a shared box of 20 nuggets (I think I had about 15 of them) we scoured the internet for a decent looking place. My dad for a laugh googled "bikers hotel Verdun" and came up with a place called "Two Wheel Moorings" which was run by a very nice English couple called Ian and Carol.

I gave them a call and Carol answered and said they could fit us in and she would sort a room out for us right away, they were based in a place called Dun-sur-Meuse which was about half an hours ride North of Verdun. What a fantastic find it turned out to be! We turned up at the same time as a Scottish couple on a K1600GT, they had a tall single garage with a hydraulic second level installed, they managed to fit a Vmax, a Pan Euro a Triumph Tiger the K1600, my dads R1100S and my divvy all into the garage. I'm sure with some wiggling they could get one or two more too!

We got inside, all soggy and wet, we were shown to our room for the night and told that everybody was downstairs whenever we were ready, and that there was beers in the fridge! An unusual start but it sounded good. We got dried and changed and headed downstairs. Carol popped our soggy bike gear in their drying room and we were shown to the living room where we were introduced to the rest of the guests for the night, we were given beer and nuts and sat around having a chat with everybody. Carol came and told us about the local places to eat, being a small French town there were only 3. There were 4 sets of guests that night, myself and my dad, a couple on the Tiger, the couple on the K1600 and a guy on his own on the Pan Euro. It turned out that everybody other than ourselves had stayed there before several times!

We ended up going out for dinner as a group of 7 (the Scottish couple ate elsewhere) and had a very good evening, we came back to the b&b and headed off to bed.

That was the end of my favourite day of the trip.

Day 4 to follow.
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c_dug
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PostPosted: 16:14 - 09 Sep 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

In the morning of Day 4 we were given a very good breakfast and all of the guests shared (and mostly agreed upon) the best route up to Calais we didn't have to catch our train until 6 so we were in no rush. We took as scenic a route as possible and found some unexpectedly nice roads. We stopped to stretch our legs in a place I don't remember the name of!

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000741_zps385d267d.jpg

We checked our maps and decided our next stop would probably be a place called Saint Quentin which was unanimously agreed to be the last place worth getting to on the small roads before hopping onto the Peage.

We were following the N44 and in the distance spotted some towers on a hill. We got closer and closer but couldn't work out what they were, only that they looked old and interesting. As we were in no rush we headed towards them and found a very old cathedral in Laon on a 100 meter tall hill!

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000742_zps40ec15fb.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000743_zps9310e461.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000744_zps0ec3c448.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000746_zps211090d1.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000748_zps03ea6604.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000749_zps3161edf1.jpg

Somehow I took a selfie:
https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000754_zps91e56bc8.jpg

https://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee81/paddy2007dug/WP_000755_zps72bfaff9.jpg

edit: To give a sense of the scale of the cathedral, at the very top of the towers poking their heads out are life size carvings of oxen. The cathedral is very nearly 1000 years old!

I know my camera isn't good enough to pick up the details on the cathedral but if you are ever nearby I really recommend checking it out, the masonry was by far the most impressive I have ever seen (and the road up to the top of the hill was pretty good too). We grabbed lunch in the old town at the top and headed on to Calais.

That was the end of our trip!
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garth
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PostPosted: 16:22 - 09 Sep 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

I got a bollocking in Lille for riding my rented bicycle into a big Cathedral.

Fucking french, no sense of humour.
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image riot
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PostPosted: 17:59 - 09 Sep 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cracking report and pics fella. Your description of the Vosges is so good that I'm kicking myself that I didn't go there on my trip. It's a definite for the future.
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Enduro Numpty
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PostPosted: 18:57 - 09 Sep 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great report and pictures, thanks for taking the time. Sounds like you'll be going back for more.

Glad I'm not the only one that has grief with sat nav. Laughing
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c_dug
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PostPosted: 18:57 - 09 Sep 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

100% worth it, it was the unexpected high point of the trip.

To be honest Luxembourg and Germany were also fantastic and if anybody is looking for somewhere closer to home I wouldn't hesitate in suggesting the north of Luxembourg, but if you are looking to head south then the Vosges are a must.
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Deaks
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PostPosted: 19:21 - 09 Sep 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nice one Thumbs Up

Looks like a really good trip, especially for your first time abroad.

It looks like you stayed in the same hotel in Luxembourg that I did (loved the little town!)

I agree about the German food as well, they really know how to cook over there, never had a bad meal.
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richiec
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PostPosted: 09:42 - 10 Sep 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great write up !

Totally agree some fantastic riding to be had. We stopped over in Nancy but have definitely pencilled in Dun Ser Meuse for our next trip down that way.

Seeing all those photos and also the other fantastic write ups on this forum certainly get the old brain ticking Very Happy
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FrankGill
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PostPosted: 19:55 - 12 Sep 2013    Post subject: first trip Reply with quote

Wow great write up and pics. How did find the divvy ? Fancy one my self,not into having the latest number plate just as long as it's reliable and comfy.
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ocatoro
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PostPosted: 11:17 - 24 Nov 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

awesome Smile

hope you don't take this the wrong way, but your enthusiasm on the report is like a kid on his way to disneyland... haha makes me want to bugger off to germany though for sure!
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c_dug
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PostPosted: 12:10 - 24 Nov 2013    Post subject: Re: first trip Reply with quote

FrankGill wrote:
Wow great write up and pics. How did find the divvy ? Fancy one my self,not into having the latest number plate just as long as it's reliable and comfy.


Sorry, I didn't see this! The divvy was amazing, it didn't skip a beat for the entire trip. I think the only thing I'd recommend is a comfier seat of some sort, I was considerably less comfortable than my dad.
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c_dug
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PostPosted: 12:11 - 24 Nov 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

ocatoro wrote:
awesome Smile

hope you don't take this the wrong way, but your enthusiasm on the report is like a kid on his way to disneyland... haha makes me want to bugger off to germany though for sure!


I felt like a kid on my way to Disneyland! Can't wait to go back.
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pepperami
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PostPosted: 18:26 - 24 Nov 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quality Thumbs Up , put the other pictures up when you get the chance.
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SofaBear
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PostPosted: 19:21 - 24 Nov 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

Looks like you guys had a great time. I can't wait to do a tour myself, even if its just within the UK.
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Sabs
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PostPosted: 22:08 - 25 Nov 2013    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great report, I enjoyed reading that. Thanks for sharing it.
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