June 10-12

On the last evening at the Isle of Man, we caught the electric tram from Laxey into Douglas and wandered the promenade for a bit.

One big difference between June at home and June on the Isle of Man: it’s 55 degrees F here and damp. Diana doesn’t do cold well.

We rode the electric tram from Laxey to Douglas. I wish I had thought to take a photo of the actual one we rode, because it was Car Number 1, built in 1893. It and Car Number 2 are registered in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest trams in the world still in operation on their original lines.

They’ve obviously been restored but are very accurate to their original build.

On the Promenade in Douglas is this life-size bronze statue of the three Gibb brothers, or the Bee Gees. I’ve always thought of them as Australian, but it turns out they were all three born on the Isle of Man.

We caught the last tram back to Laxey and had a few hours sleep before packing our tent and gear at 3:30am Friday morning, as we had to check in for the ferry at 4:30am. At least it wasn’t raining this time, although everything was covered with a heavy dew.

We made it to the ferry and lined up with a couple of hundred other motorcycles. The boarding process was a bit smoother than a week ago, and we were able to grab a couple of seats and settle in before the ferry even left port. Since things were going smoothly, I decided to beat the crowds and get some breakfast.

Then the ferry left port. And things got interesting.

I was still standing in line when we left the harbor for open water. This was my third round trip on the ferry to the Isle of Man, but the first in heavy seas. We were all suddenly grabbing for seatbacks, rails on the walls, other people, anything we could find to remain standing. I made it to the breakfast bar, put the food on the tray, and managed to more or less hold two cups of coffee under the dispenser. Now the real challenge: using both hands to hold the tray, the plate of food, and two cups of coffee while dancing back and forth across the aisle, intermittently running forward between the left- and right-rolls of the ship, trying to end up against a wall rather than in someone’s lap when the ship started rolling the other way. I somehow made it back to our seats intact and without wearing breakfast. By this time Diana was looking a bit green and wasn’t really interested in food any more. I sat down about the time the cabin employees began passing out the barf bags. I noticed a lot of people moving quickly towards the toilets and towards the exit door to the outer rails of the ship.

Oh well…time for breakfast!

The seas settled down after the first hour or so, and we arrived in Heysham around 8:30am. Most riders disembarked and headed straight for the motorways to get home. I had other plans. We headed to the Yorkshire Dales to ride a loop that I had found online…some great twisty roads into high meadows and grassy hills, lots of sheep, over Buttertubs Pass and eventually to the Tan Hill Inn, the highest pub in England at 1732 feet above sea level.

It’s hard to concentrate on the roads with this scenery.

Nothing on top of this mountain besides the Tan Hill Inn, Britain’s highest pub. They serve an excellent burger.

From the Tan Hill Inn we rode back down to Hawes and then past the Ribblehead Viaduct to Cragg Hill Farm, a working sheep farm where we camped for the night.

Ribblehead Viaduct

The next morning we were headed to Wales to meet up with our friends Michal and Patrycza and their daughter Roza, from Poland. They had driven their SUV with a pop-up tent on top to Wales to visit another friend and meet up with us. I can’t remember if I’ve told the story about how we met before, so here’s a quick version:

In 2014, before leaving on my first round-the-world ride, I met an Australian couple, Glen and Leeanne. They were riding North America on a Triumph Tiger, and they had invited me to camp with them in Llano, Texas as a way of showing me their gear and setup to give me some ideas for my own trip. While camped on the bank of the Llano River that night, two other motorcycles pulled in and set up camp next to us. The next morning, I noticed the two late arrivals had odd license plates, and I asked where they were from. It turns out Michal and Lukasz were from Poland, and were touring the United States in one-month sessions; each year they would take their vacation time, fly to the States, and pick up their bikes where they had left them the year before. They had been from Chicago to Alaska to Southern California and were now headed to Florida on the third summer of their travels.

There’s a lot more to this story, and I’ll fill in more details in a later post, but this is basically how I met Lukasz and Michal, and later Patrycza (“Pati”), Lukasz’ brother Marcin, and Marcin’s wife Ela.

So, fast-forward back to today. I had another destination in mind and more twisty road riding to do before heading to Wales, so we left Cragg Hill Farm in Horton-in-Ribbelsdale and headed south. I had fully intended to spend a few hours riding the scenic, narrow, twisty backroads of the area, but before I realized it, our GPS had directed me to the M60 motorway and straight towards Manchester. In the end, we did get to ride about ten miles of good road up to the Cat & Fiddle Inn.

The Cat & Fiddle is another “destination” spot for bikers due to the roads leading to it. There are definitely better roads to get there than the way we went, but we did get to enjoy some of it. The place was fully booked this day, so we got some take-away coffee and muffins and stood behind the building and out of the wind with the others. While the Tan Hill Inn is the highest pub in England, the Cat & Fiddle, which is about 33 feet lower in elevation, is the highest distillery in England.

The wind was blowing fairly steady and it was about 55 degrees Fahrenheit, but seemed colder. We headed back down to the motorway and continued on toward Snowdonia National Park in Wales. This is a beautiful area, with lush green hills, some covered in nothing but grass, while other areas are heavily forested and with clear streams. We met up with Michal, Pati and Roza at Bryn Tyrch Campsite outside Capel Curig in Betws-y-Coed. (Yes, I’m listing all these names because the Welsh language looks and sounds so strange to us. All of the signs here are in Welsh first, and English second, and there is no similarity to any of the words.)

Our campsite the first night in Wales with the Soroko family.

In case you were wondering about the wording on Michal’s slide-out kitchen drawer in the back of his SUV, Michal, Lukasz, and Marcin are part of a well-known AC/DC tribute band in Poland called Jary.

The next morning we rode a couple of miles up the road to a staging point to hike up Mount Snowdon. You know your country has a serious hiking/trekking problem when the parking lots in the middle of nowhere require advance reservations. I dropped Diana off with Pati and Roza and followed Michal back down to a lower point to find a place to park his SUV, then ferried him back up to the staging area where we were able to find enough room to tuck the bike into a parking space that wasn’t really a parking space.

Looking down the valley on our hike up the hill to Snowdon.

The trail is mostly a climb over boulder steps, and 5-year-old Roza handled it with ease. We hiked a little over two hours up, had lunch, and headed back. On the way down, hikers headed up were congratulating Roza on a job well done. She’s pretty amazing for her age. Michal and Pati spend a lot of time with her outdoors, hiking and riding bicycles.

Five year olds tend to have a lot of energy, so a little off-trail extra rock climbing is no big deal.

This was our first time to meet Roza, or Rosie as she’s called in English. Michal spends a lot of time speaking to her in English, and Pati in Polish, and she responds likewise. She learned much of her English by watching Peppa Pig on television, so she speaks English with a British accent, though it wasn’t as noticeable while we were together as it seemed a year ago when we were video-chatting on Skype. Michal says that’s because she’s now watching Paw Patrol. This was Rosie’s first time interacting with native-English speakers, and Michal and Pati weren’t sure how she would do. We were concerned that she might be too shy around us to feel comfortable speaking English. It turns out none of us had anything to worry about; she took right to us and her English was great.

June 13, 2022

Cymru, is how Wales is spelled in Welsh. You figure it out. I can’t.

After our hike, we moved about a half hour north towards Conwy, to one of the nicest campsites — if not the nicest — that we’ve experienced in the past six weeks. While the camping pitch at Cfen Cae Campsite is typical for Europe, in that it’s just a large grass field and you pick a spot to pitch your tent, the barn was anything but typical. The washrooms (another British term for bathroom) were like a nice full bath in your home: nice shower, toilet and sink all in one fairly large room. And there were four of five of these. And they looked like they were built yesterday and cleaned a few minutes ago. Also in the barn (yes, it really was the old stone barn, but converted) was a washer and dryer, a microwave and kettle, sinks for dish washing (including liquid soap and sponges), and a full “honesty shop” with everything from sundries to food and drinks. Many of these niceties were available in the campground on the Isle of Man as well, so perhaps it’s just how nice and clean and new looking everything was that made it special.

Some of the Honesty Shop items for sale in the old barn at Cfen Cae Campsite. On the left is a fridge full of water, soft drinks (“fizzy drinks” here), cheese, butter, yogurt, etc.

Once again, how well do you think this would work in most places around home? Yes, there are definitely areas of the States where you could do this. It’s just refreshing to see it.

The midges (small, incredibly pesky gnat-like insects) were also non-existent here; they were pretty bad at our last camp. It wasn’t cheap, at £20, but then most official European campsites aren’t. Still, it’s a lot cheaper than a hotel room, and with more amenities than many hotels.

The next morning we packed up and rode to Conwy, a small walled city on the northern coast of Wales. It’s known as Britain’s best-preserved medieval town. We walked around the town on top of the wall, then dropped down to the harbor for a walk along the shore.

A view of the Conwy Castle from atop the old city wall. The castle, and the 1300 feet of walls, were built in just four years, from 1283 to 1287.

In Conwy, along the harbor, is the smallest house in Great Britain. It measures six feet across by ten feet deep by ten feet high, and has a bedroom on the second floor and a living area and modest kitchen area downstairs. It was lived in during the 19th century but the city deemed it unfit for habitation in 1900 and it has been a tourist attraction since not long after that.

We left Conwy and headed north towards Chester, England, which was founded as a Roman fortress in the 1st Century AD. It’s known for its’ Roman walls made of local red sandstone. We took our time riding smaller roads from Conwy to Chester, and arrived fairly late in the afternoon, so we didn’t see much of the town. Michal and family had arrived earlier and unloaded their bicycles to ride into town. We arrived at the campground and set up camp beside them. While standing around waiting to pay the owner of the horse farm for camping, a gentleman approached us and asked about the bike. We ended up having a great conversation with Donald and his wife Yvonne. Donald is from Scotland, with that great accent, and Yvonne is originally from Brazil, but has been in Scotland long enough to have also acquired the brogue. They recently bought a home in the Chester area to be closer to their son, and are living in their RV while the home is being remodeled. We could have talked with them for hours. Part of what we enjoy most about traveling the way we do is meeting people like Donald and Yvonne.

Diana with Donald and Yvonne. This is what traveling is truly about!

Tomorrow we head to London for a couple of days.

June 16, 2022

I’m not a fan of big cities. I managed to avoid nearly all of them in the year I rode around the world. But we were about to skirt London and had a couple of days, so we decided to do a quick sight-seeing tour.

There is nothing cheap in big cities, especially when it comes to tourism. Our budget doesn’t allow for nice hotels. As I’ve said many times, every dollar we save today means we can continue traveling for another day. If we over-spend now, our trip comes to an early end, which neither of us want.

So here’s where we compromise: in order to see the sights of an expensive place like London, we stay in very modest lodging. For example, the Holiday Inn in Regent’s Park, London is £417 a night ($515.00) right now. That’s two weeks worth of camping.

We subscribe to the “we’re only sleeping there” idea, which means as long as the room is clean (and the bike is safe), it will do. That’s how we ended up at the Bridge Park Hotel in London. This place has without a doubt seen better days, and it’s sort of a mix of hotel and hostel. You can get a room with a shared bath down the hall for £66, or you can get a room with a private bath for £75. Even cheaper on certain days. There’s no lift (elevator). The paint isn’t pretty, and the furniture is dated. But the bed and bath are clean, and there’s a relatively safe parking area for the bike.There’s also an attached bar and kitchen with some decent food. The neighborhood might look a bit rough, but a lot of London does.

We said goodbye to the Sorokos in Chester, and headed to London. The hotel ended up being not far from Wembley Stadium, which with its large arch is an easy landmark. We checked in, carried our gear to the room, and walked to lunch before laying out a plan for the following morning.

I didn’t realize how close our hotel was to the Ace Cafe until we started looking on Google Maps for a place to eat lunch. It turned out to be a one mile walk. For those not familiar, the Ace Cafe is a historic place for motorcyclists, as this was basically a truck stop on the outer Ring Road of London in the 1950s and the Rockers would gather here on their motorcycles at night.

The Ace Cafe was closed for a time, then bought and restored and re-opened as a motorcycle gathering spot.

Center left: 2RideTheGlobe joins the legend of the Ace Cafe.

The next day we were up early and walked to the Underground to catch the train to Buckingham Palace to see the Changing of the Guard. Since the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee had just recently taken place, they were still in the process of tearing everything down from that celebration, which made accessing the front of Buckingham Palace a little more tricky. We ended up standing at the fence across the street, as the crowds had already filled the area directly in front of the palace. This limited our view of the actual events, though we did get to see the Old Guard and the New Guard march in.

This was as close as we got to Buckingham Palace. You can see the crowds in front of the main fence. There were actually more crowds behind us as well.

The New Guard marching in.

After the Changing of the Guard, we left Buckingham Palace and headed down the street to Westminster Abbey. This is a fairly pricey tour ticket, but the place is huge and the sights inside the Abbey are worth it, in my opinion. Westminster Abbey was built between 1042 and 1745, with most of the construction taking place in the 1500s. Not only is the architecture impressive, but the list of people entombed there, along with the amazing artwork of the tombs themselves, is impressive. The number of Kings, Queens, and other Royals and VIPS that are resting here is amazing, but I’ll let Diana tell that story on the Facebook or Instagram site.

Approaching Westminster Abbey.

Impressive architecture

Detail of the ceiling.

Poet’s Corner. Not all of these people are buried here. Some just have stones to memorialize them.

This one is actually buried here.

After a couple of hours at the Abbey, we headed across the street for a quick view of the Palace of Westminster, or England’s Parliament building. There was a lot of scaffolding and construction going on, so no photos, but we did snap a quick photo of Big Ben at the end of the building.

How many million times has this photo been taken?

Then it was a bit further up the street to Trafalgar Square for a view of the fountains and sculptures on display there.

Trafalgar Square

This was a bit bizarre. The other columns had famous military people on horseback atop them. This one had a large ice cream with a cherry on top, and on the back of the ice cream was a giant fly, while on the front was a giant drone. The drone actually broadcasts a live video feed.

After Trafalgar, we hopped back on the Underground for a quick ride to Kings Cross, where, as any nerd knows, is where Platform 9 3/4 is located. We arrived at Platform 7, and not far away, was…

The line of children, teenagers, and adults waiting to have this photo taken was probably 50 people long.

And thus ended our Speed Tour of London. We jumped back on the Tube and headed back to our hotel for one last night in a bed. Tomorrow we’ll leave the UK and our Schengen time clock will start up where we left off (at Day 14 in Schengen Time).

June 17-20, 2022

We’re back on Central European Time (one hour later), and back on Schengen Time; that is, our clock is ticking on the 90 days we are allowed to remain in the 26 Schengen countries during a 180 day period.

We crept out of London (traffic is a nightmare), and four hours later had made the 110 mile trek to Folkestone to board the Eurotunnel to Calais, France.

The ride on the train under the English Channel is only about 30 minutes, and we spent the time chatting with several British bikers that were headed to France for a club meeting of older motorcyclists.

Once off the train we headed north to Bruges, Belgium for a couple of days of sight-seeing.

First, the beauty of Bruges:

Bruges, “The Venice of Belgium”…it’s also famous for its beer and chocolate, and the water here kind of looked like chocolate too.

The Church of Our Lady in Bruges. The Madonna and Child sculpture by Michelangelo is here. I would insert a photo of it, but they charge so much to see it that I couldn’t bring my cheap self to buy two tickets. I’m pretty sure it looks just like it does on the internet though.

Market Square. The medieval Belfry of Bruges is on the right.

We also went to the Lace Center, where they have exhibits of lace craft work, as well as demonstrations by women making lace. The minute detail is pretty astounding.

A couple of old windmills. I don’t know the exact dates of these, but this style goes back to the late 1300s in Belgium, and were commonly used to grind oil.

Are the pennants the new Belgian high-tech method of saving the birds from death by windmill? Just kidding, of course. I’m sure lots of birds have met their fate in Belgium and Netherlands over the past 600 years.

Then, the not-so-beautiful part of Bruges, at least to an anti-social hermit like myself:

The sheer number of tourists is a bit stifling, even this early in the season. The tour boats were packed, and there were so many of them that it became a bit of a traffic jam at times.

This is the entrance to the De Halve Maan brewery. We stopped in here to have a beer and a snack on our walk around Bruges. The local Bruges Zot beer is brewed here, and sent 3km by underground pipeline to their bottling plant in the suburbs. The beer from the taps here comes straight from the tanks, and was very good. But the local tour guides line the tourists up in the entrance alcove to tell their story, thus blocking the entrance for paying customers. Too many people for this hermit.

Back at our campground, it was filled to capacity, and there were some pretty interesting campers there.

This Citroen Type H van has been converted to a motorhome. Citroen built these between 1947 and 1981. This is a 1970s model, though you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. The current owner has had it for 26 years.

We were walking through Bruges when we saw one of these “Side-Bikes” pass by, pulling a trailer. When we got back to the campground, there were two of them there, each with their own pop-up tent camper.

I had never seen one of these before. They’re made in France, and have a 16-valve, 2000cc Peugeot car engine placed at the rear of the sidecar, which drives both the rear wheel of the bike and the sidecar wheel. The driver sits scooter-style, low with feet forward, and the accelerator and clutch are operated with the feet, like a car. The enclosed sidecar is wide enough for two people, and is well appointed.

When we arrived in Bruges, western Europe was experiencing a record-breaking heat wave. But by our second night, a storm front had blown through, and the temperature had dropped dramatically. It rained most of the night and into the morning, but a break in the weather mid-morning allowed us to pack up our wet tent and head north again, this time to Amsterdam.

June 19-20, 2022

We keep hitting big cities…London, Bruges, Amsterdam. These places can put a big dent in our travel budget. I’m not completely against seeing these places. I just want to be careful about how we do it. And to be honest, we weren’t even sure what it was that we wanted to see in Amsterdam. We had originally scheduled a three-day house sit in Amstelveen, just south of Amsterdam, which would allow us to spend a couple of half-days seeing the city. But the homeowner canceled a couple of weeks before, and we were left without “free” lodging. We decided to go anyway, and we ended up at a place I had found a couple of years ago when looking for my usual “off-the-wall” style of accommodation.

Hotel Not Hotel is a hotel with a bit of a hostel vibe to it. Or maybe it’s a hostel with individual rooms. It’s really hard to say. No two rooms here are the same. There are rooms hidden behind a library bookcase wall, rooms hidden behind mirrored walls, rooms that look like a giant dollhouse, a “room” in the upstairs lobby area in an old VW microbus. We ended up with a more conventional room that looked from the outside like it could have been the entrance to an old row-house somewhere. The shower was in the bedroom, rather than behind a bathroom door. Aside from that it was fairly normal.

Hotel Not Hotel. Is it? Is it Not?

That’s our room at the lower right. Just across from Kevin Bacon.

One of the “rooms”. The wall of books behind the bus contains several hidden doors to rooms.

Parked in the row of bikes outside the hotel. Definitely the largest, but it drew little attention.

Not your typical “Do Not Disturb” door hang tag.

We did our now-typical one-day walking tour of Amsterdam, visiting the “Nine Streets”, and walking the Red Light District south to the flower market.

One of the canals along the “9 Streets”.

There are a lot of houseboats lining the canals in Amsterdam. This hundred year old converted cargo ship featured a grass roof and lots of plants.

Yes, this is a brick houseboat on a concrete foundation. Floating in a canal.

I thought England had a serious “Frite” (French Fry) problem. There, everything comes with fries, or chips as they like to call them. Fish & Chips is just the start. Just about every meal, including a salad, came with fries. In fact, Lukasz mentioned that he once ordered a baked potato in England and it came with a side of fries. Here in Amsterdam, they aren’t shy about it either. Hence, a restaurant that serves Fries & Fries.

“OMG! Look! It’s him! It’s Dr. Falafel, in the flesh!” Amazing likeness.

Look closely at this building. The right end of it…the last two windows. That is not an optical illusion. It’s leaning badly.

A photo of Diana taking a photo of the Anne Frank House.

On the main Dam Square, there was a large spinning class taking place. We watched for a while, and learned that they were raising money to build sports clubs for refugees. For every kilometer you pedaled, they contributed £10. So I jumped in. I didn’t last long, but I did earn them twenty or thirty pounds.

In the back corner of the spin class were these two women eating pizza. It just seemed wrong. But they were probably volunteers taking a lunch break. Still, it made for an amusing juxtaposition.

These tiny cars were everywhere. When you can park one in a line of scooters, why not?

These bicycles were also everywhere. Most of them had children sitting in the large box in the front, some with seat belts. This seems to make more sense than putting your child behind you where you can’t see what they are doing. It also makes a great grocery getter. And in this woman’s case, it’s a way to carry another bicycle.

By early afternoon we headed to Leidseplein, an area with lots of restaurants and pubs, to meet an old friend.

Huub and I met in Japan in the early 1990s when he worked for Yamaha Europe and I worked for Yamaha US. We would see each other once a year or so through the early 2000s, usually in the US, then lost touch until just before our trip, when he popped up in my LinkedIn contacts. It was great to see him again and catch up.

After a few hours of catching up, Huub caught the train home, and we walked back to the hotel for dinner at Kevin Bacon Bar, a Thai restaurant in the hotel. Odd name, and we were told no actual relation, but they had a really convoluted story about why they named it after the actor, even though he isn’t involved.

June 21-22, 2022

When I was born, my parents lived on a farm in north Texas. My father being the thoughtful romantic that he was, bought my mother a tractor for her birthday one year. In keeping with this heritage, I bought my first wife a cordless DeWalt drill/driver one year when we were planning to build a large patio cover. And to prove I’m a slow learner, two years ago I bought my now-wife tickets to the Hella Mega Tour in Groningen, Netherlands, featuring Green Day, Fall Out Boy, and Weezer, three bands she’s hardly heard of because it’s not her kind of music. But the concert was on her birthday in 2020, and we were planning to be in Netherlands anyway, and I like those bands, so…

Yeah, I know, thoughtful romantic.

Then of course came Covid and we weren’t going anywhere outside the US on a motorcycle or any other method, and the concert date moved to 2021. Then to 2022. Which is how we ended up in the Campinglaan Stadspark, camped out under absolutely perfect skies and within a short walk of the concert, which is on the other end of this beautiful city park.

While sitting at our campsite this morning, a woman from the local television station walked up and asked if we were here for the concert, first in Dutch before switching effortlessly to English due to our all-too-common deer-in-the-headlights stares.

“Yes.”

“And where did you come from?”

“Texas.”

Stunned silence.

“How the hell did you end up in Groningen?”, she asked, before quickly regaining her reporter’s professionalism.

We gave her a bit of the story, and pointed to the bike.

And ended up on the local news.

Local TV reporter getting shots of the bike.

The Stadspark turns into a concert venue this time of year, due to the weather and the perfect location. The stage is constructed and bands come several times a week to perform. Last weekend, Metallica played. Tonight it’s Green Day. This weekend is Iron Maiden. Heavy metal (and punk) are very popular here.

“Covid? What Covid?” Social distancing has definitely become a thing of the past here. We ended up about one foot away from being forced into a large mosh pit during Fall Out Boy.

Concert parking.

When the reporter visited us at the campsite, there were only a few tents on the field. By the time of the concert, they were packed in tight enough that I couldn’t get in our tent on my side because somebody else was sitting in a chair there. By 10am the next morning, the field was empty, and we were on our way back to Germany one more time.

McCarCharger

June 23, 2022

Back in December of last year, I posted a story on here about our friend Heike from Germany. She has a bike stored at our place in Texas (two now, actually), and comes once or twice a year to tour. At Christmas time we rode to Mexico together, giving her an introduction to the border crossing procedures with the bike, and a tour of some of our favorite places in Mexico.

Now it was our turn to visit her. We left Groningen and headed south again, taking the smaller roads along canals and crossing back into Germany, arriving at her house in Rees, on the Rhein river just before dinner.

Heike had read about our introduction to Aperol Spritz cocktails, and had them prepared for us when we arrived. While Diana unpacked the bike, Heike and I jumped on bicycles and rode to the grocery store to gather some dinner goods. It was great to catch up, and to see her world finally.

Sitting in Heike’s garden sipping Spritzes.

The next morning I changed the tires on the bike while Heike was at work. Although the original tires still had some life, I knew it would be difficult (and expensive) to find them in Norway, so Heike bought them online in Germany and had them waiting for our arrival.

Yes, even at my age, I can still change tires by hand on the ground, using tire levers. Which comes in handy. And will come in handy again, soon, unfortunately. Breaking the bead on these suckers is the toughest part, and I carry a MotionPro bead breaker, which hasn’t let me down yet. I’ve also found that going for a ten mile ride immediately before changing the tires gets them warm enough to help.

When Heike returned from work, we jumped on the bikes and rode the “back way” (a nice way of saying we went a way that might not have been perfectly legal for motorized vehicles) to a nearby town that had an outdoors store, as I needed a new can of camping gas for our stove.

With Heike just before leaving her place for a local tour on the bikes.

That evening, Heike took us to a buffet dinner at a place that is only open one weekend a month. The food was great, and we took the time to discuss her upcoming trip to Texas.

The next morning we packed up the bike, and Heike loaded her Africa Twin, and we again rode north into Netherlands.

June 25-26, 2022

Each year the MotoGP roadracing world championship holds a round in the United States just 45 minutes from our home. I’ve always wanted to see a European round of the championship. In Europe, MotoGP is the motorsports equivalent of World Cup Soccer; it’s huge.

Assen, Netherlands is only about a half hour south of Groningen, and it just happened that the concert we had bought tickets for two years ago, that finally happened this year, was only three days before the Assen round of the MotoGP championship. So even though it meant more money, we bought tickets months ago to attend, and Heike bought a ticket and joined us.

On the way to the campground, we stopped for lunch in a small town. Nearby was a hair salon, with this ad on the side. Diana and I were trying to decide which look I should try: Moe from the 3 Stooges, or Flock of Seagulls. Seriously though, are there really that many people in this small town that want one of these?

We camped about 20 miles south of the Assen TT Circuit at Camping Goed Vertoef (“Good stay” in Dutch) to avoid the craziness of the MotoGP camping crowd. It seemed to work: we were the only motorcycles there, with the exception of a gaggle of Moto Guzzis that belonged to Frank, the owner of the campground. The rest of the guests seemed to be an older RV crowd, and probably regulars. All very friendly. In fact, while cooking dinner one night, another camper walked up and handed me four potatoes. So, hey, want fries with that?

Pitched up and relaxing at Camping Goed Vertoef.

Frank joined us for a drink and some riding tales during the evening. A great guy with a nice campsite, AND a rider. He offered to store our bikes inside, shared local beer with us, and gave us some tips on places to see in Netherlands. Couldn’t ask for more from a campground.

The ride to the race track was uneventful, at least until we got there. Then we joined the queue of other motorcycles (and bicycles) to get into the track. It was fairly orderly, considering the numbers. We parked under huge solar panel awnings over the motorcycle parking area, along with several thousand other motorcycles, and walked in and around the track. We had General Admission tickets (not reserved Grandstand seating), so we could pick anywhere on the grass hills surrounding the track. We watched each of three races from different spots.

The Moto3 race was as close as ever, with the top four or five riders gaining and losing three positions in one corner on a regular basis.

The MotoGP race was a bit less exciting, at least after Quartararo crashed out…twice.

The races were good, but as with just about every motorcycle race I’ve been to, you see much more of the race on television. At the track, you watch your one section, then watch the giant TVs for another minute and a half until the bikes come by again. The crowd experience and people watching are more of a reason to attend these races than to see the whole race.

One thing we noticed both at the concert a few days earlier and here at Assen: beer and other drinks are sold in clear plastic cups, by the thousands if not tens of thousands. There are no trash bins or places to dispose of the empty cups. At the end of the day, the ground is literally covered in plastic cups. It looks extremely trashy, in fact it looks horrible, but I suppose it’s easier to sort the recycling. However, since there are no trash bins, plastic cups aren’t the only thing that ends up on the ground; food and all sorts of other trash is everywhere also.

When the races were over and we began the long walk back around the track to our bikes, we noticed another “experience”: people lighting fires. They were piling up the plastic cups and other trash on the grass hillsides where we had just sat watching the races, and lighting it, causing plumes of black toxic smoke. I was reminded of my friend John’s comment about “I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out”. This looked like “I went to a riot and a race broke out”. I don’t know if this is normal activity at other European races, but it kind of stained our experience. Okay, more accurately, it further stained our experience. I never really got over all the trash.

Still, I’d like to attend an Italian round of MotoGP at some point. Mugello, perhaps. It was clear at Assen that even a year after Valentino Rossi’s retirement, his merchandise was still out-selling all the other riders. Even without being present, there was a huge section of yellow-clad spectators waving yellow “46” flags, and a VR46 MegaStore in the vendor area that was several times larger than any other merchandise booth. His legend lives on.

This is the bicycle parking area at the Assen TT Circuit. It’s tiny compared to the motorcycle parking area, both in size and quantity.

June 27-28, 2022

The plan was to leave Camping Goed Vertoef and head to the very top of Germany, just short of the border with Denmark, and camp there for the night. But the weather had other plans. And other problems conspired to slow us down as well.

We packed up at the campground, but were moving slow. Heike was packed before us, so we hugged and said goodbye, and she hit the starter button on her Africa Twin.

Zip. Zilch. Nada. Okay, maybe just a slight buzzing sound.

At which point Frank and Sandra (the owners of the campground) came to the rescue. Sandra grabbed a battery booster and we wheeled Heike’s bike over to an electrical outlet. After about ten minutes on the quick charger, it fired up, and she was gone.

“Bye!” Click. Click. “WTF?” A little more conversation with Diana, Heike and Sandra while standing around waiting for her battery to charge.

She’ll be in Texas a few days later, picking up her Royal Enfield Himalayan to head further south.

We continued packing, got another late start, and headed north, directly into a black cloud. The skies opened up, and it rained steady — not particularly hard, but heavy and steady for quite a while. Eventually I could feel water running down my back; I wear a Buff bandana under my helmet, and it hangs out the back, just enough to act as a wick and direct water up and down my collar. We continued on until I realized I had a good water siphon going at my collar, and decided I’d had enough. We pulled off at a roadside service area that had a small motel, and got a room for the night. Of course, not long after we unloaded everything in the rain, it stopped.

Home Not-So-Sweet-But-Alarmingly-Loud Home.

The room looked like 1940s, and smelled like 1960s; that is, it smelled like it was smoked in continuously for the past 50 or 60 years. I opened the windows and it either got better, or I got used to it. The bed was comfortable enough and I was tired enought that I fell asleep fairly quickly. Until 1am. That’s when the smoke detectors in the entire building started sounding off. I could hear the other guests walking the halls so I walked to the parking lot to find everyone standing there. And realized that we were at least twice the age of all the other guests. This place wasn’t cheap, but it was inexpensive by European standards, so I guess it gets used a bit like a hostel.

I walked around to the front of the building where the restaurant and convenience store are located. Everything was locked up tight and lights out. Apparently there are no employees that stay overnight. When the store and restaurant shut down, everyone goes home, and the motel guests are on their own.

After thirty minutes or so of the alarms going off, we all got tired of it. It was clear that there was no fire or smoke. So we started taking the batteries out of all the smoke detectors. Somebody hit the jackpot and all the remaining alarms ceased when they pulled that battery. We all returned to our rooms and got a few hours of sleep.

In the morning we decided to re-route. Heike had mentioned a ferry to Denmark, and Google Maps confirmed that it was a shorter route, so we decided to pay for the ferry and head that way.

Just south of Lübeck, in the fast lane at around 130kph (80mph), I felt a vibration from the rear tire. I immediately started moving right, and by the time I got slowed and into the right lane, it was clear that we had a flat rear tire. I moved onto the shoulder, and luckily there was an exit a couple of hundred meters ahead. I turned the flashers on and we limped slowly up the ramp and around the corner into a parking lot. Within a half hour or so I had replaced the tube and we were ready to go again.

In 2015-16 I went 34,000 miles, changed seven sets of tires, and came home with the original factory inner tubes with not a single patch. Never had a flat. Hopefully this isn’t setting a new standard.

However, we were now without a spare tube, and being a bit superstitious, I figure if I have a spare tube, I won’t have another flat, but if I don’t have a spare tube, well…

Technically, we had a spare tube for the front tire, which might work in a pinch, but it’s not the right size, so I would prefer to have a correct rear inner tube for a spare.

I check the GPS, and found a Triumph and Indian motorcycle dealer about a half mile away. We drove there, and I asked for a tube. The salesman went in the back and searched for a while, but came up empty handed. He said he could order one and have it in a couple of days. Then he gave me an address for an auto parts store that he thought might have one. We went there. Nothing. I looked again and found a Kawasaki and Ducati dealer nearby. We drove there. They didn’t have any inner tubes and also offered to order one and have it in a few days. It seemed odd that not only did no one my size inner tube (a fairly common size), but no one had ANY inner tubes. Granted, many if not most street bikes today come with tubeless tires and no inner tubes. But it’s still a fairly common service item. The Kawasaki dealer suggested a motorcycle repair shop in town, so we drove there. The woman there was very helpful, and called four or five other shops for us, but no one had an inner tube.

I thought for a moment that perhaps Germany was like Central and South America: you didn’t get inner tubes at the motorcycle store, you got them at the place that fixes flats on cars and motorcycles. But it seemed like one of the dealers or repair shops would have told me that.

I resigned myself to the idea that we would be traveling without a spare tube, and figured maybe I could order one on Amazon and have it shipped ahead. We headed back onto the highway and towards the ferry.

About fifteen minutes later I decided to check the GPS to see if there were any more motorcycle shops north of Lübeck, and a place called “Schwerin” came up; that’s all it said. But it was just off the highway, so I decided to try it. It turned out to be a Honda dealer, and there were two new-style Africa Twins in the parking lot, which use the same size rear tire as my 700 Tenere. I walked into the store and the salesman, who spoke good English, immediately said, “Sure, I have one of those.”

“Do you have two?”, I asked.

“Probably.”

So I bought two. And we talked Africa Twins, both old and new, and the Isle of Man TT. It was a great experience. And we were back on the road with backup inner tubes.

We made it to the ferry, and lined up behind two BMWs with Swing side cars. The side cars sat some distance away from the bikes, because the bikes lean side-to-side like a regular motorcycle, while the side car sits rigidly upright. It’s a bit odd looking at first, but probably a lot more enjoyable than a fixed sidecar.

Swing sidecar. Although it’s actually the bike that swings, not the sidecar.

These ferries run every thirty minutes. Three of them passed us going the opposite direction in the 45 minutes that it took to go from Germany to Denmark. These are Hybrid-powered ferries; they run on a combination of diesel and electric power.

Onboard the ferry.

We arrived in Denmark, our 14th country in the past two months, and rode northeast to Rødvig to camp for the night.

June 29, 2022

Around 8am this morning I heard somebody pull into the camping space across from us and start setting up. It seemed a bit odd: who arrives at a campsite at 8am? I looked out of the tent and saw a silver Fiat camper van. Later that morning, after eating our great pastries (order them the night before at the campground office; pick them up in the morning), as we were packing up, a woman approached us. “Where are you coming from?” she asked, with an accent that sounded a bit like Italian.

I pointed at the license plate on the bike, as usual. “Texas. And you?”

“Southern Switzerland, near Lugano”.

“Ah, that explains the Italian accent”, I replied. She laughed, and we started talking about bikes. It turns out Silvia is also a motorcyclist, and by preference, a solo female traveler. She has a Triumph Speed Triple at home, which has seen many trips, although she now has the camper van also, which she admits is luxury compared to our sleeping on the ground. It turns out she arrived at 8am from another campground because she needed good wi-fi, as she is working while traveling.

We talked for so long that we missed the noon check-out time, though nobody seemed to care. We definitely shared similar outlooks on travel and our reasons for it. In the end, we invited her to stay with us if and when she tours the US (her dream, like many Europeans we’ve met, is to ride Route 66 on a Harley); and she invited us to stay with her in Switzerland, which we may well do later in this trip.

This is Silvia. She’s quite a find. She rides a Triumph Speed Triple, loves motorcycles and traveling. Finds it hard to decide whether to travel by motorcycle or camper van. Lives in a beautiful part of Switzerland near Italy (as if there is a part of Switzerland that isn’t beautiful). Has a great outlook and attitude towards life. If I weren’t married, I might consider moving to Switzerland. 😉

We had such a good time talking with Silvia that we forgot how late it was getting, and ended up not leaving the campground until just after noon.

We left Rødvig and headed towards the Oresund Bridge, just outside of Copenhagen. This bridge connects Denmark and Sweden, and is nearly 8 kilometers long. The west end is a long tunnel under the Oresund Strait, which eventually emerges onto a man-made island in the middle of the strait, and then onto the bridge. A railroad line runs along the bridge as well, making it the longest combined auto and rail bridge in Europe. It’s also a toll bridge: it cost $35.00 one way for a motorcycle to cross; nearly double that in a car.

Before we got to Copenhagen, we passed a small hotel on a side road. There were several brightly painted trucks in the parking lot, and lots of people working around them. I immediately recognized it, and turned around to go back and take photos.

I wasn’t aware that the Tour de France was starting in Copenhagen this year, until Sylvia mentioned it this morning. Then we saw these trucks in a parking lot as we rode past. If we had known earlier, we would have stretched things out and stayed in the area a bit longer to watch the Prologue.

We came off the Oresund Bridge into Malmo, Sweden and headed north. We stopped for fuel, and rang up a total of 283.64. Of course that’s in Swedish Krona, so about $27.75. As we were about to leave, our second friendly encounter of the day happened. Another motorcyclist approached us and asked if we would help push-start his motorcycle. His MV Agusta starter had died a few days earlier, and it was going to take two weeks to get a replacement. Being on holiday from Rome, Italy, he didn’t have two weeks to wait, so decided to just keep going, bump-starting it along the way.

As he and I walked towards his bike, he asked the usual: “Where are you coming from?”
“Texas.”
“Wow. On a boat?”
“Yes, the bike came on a boat, and we flew to Germany to meet it. We’ve been across Europe for the past two months. And you? Where are you coming from?”
“I am from Rome, but I’ve been to Nordkapp. Now I’m heading home.”
“We’re headed to Nordkapp now! How is it?”, I asked, excited for some very recent updates.

Have you ever watched a television show, or a cartoon, where someone asks the main character a question, and the character has a flashback? One of those where the camera zooms in very close to the person’s eyes, and you get that blank stare, then the picture slowly fades to a memory of something horribly painful?

That’s what I saw. I asked about Nordkapp, and there was a second or two of a thousand-mile-stare from a set of dead eyes. Then words seemed to uncontrollably start falling out of his mouth.

“The wind was terrible. It was so strong. The temperature was very cold, about 2 degrees (36F). And it rained very hard the whole time.”

I tried to switch to something more positive. “But it’s paved the whole way?”

He pointed at the parking lot where we stood. “Don’t expect this. There are many potholes, and many areas under construction. And the road is very slick with the rain and wind.”

Clearly he didn’t have a good time. Then he said, “I hope to do it again some day. Perhaps on a bicycle.”

Now THAT is a glutton for punishment. Or a true enthusiast. He did admit that he seemed to arrive at a very bad time as far as the weather; he was there one week ago, and today it’s 76 degrees there, with a low tonight in the upper 50s.

I stood behind him and pushed his motorcycle until he dropped the clutch and his bike fired up. We wished each other a safe journey, and he rode south, while we headed north to Varberg, and our campsite for the evening.