InvictaMoto's Family Travels

After a disjointed trip across Europe to get to the Czech SOC “Invader Rally”, finally everything is coming together, or is it? Saturday 29th May Our day is going to be very different. Our ride alongside Brno Lake reveals a few changes to landmarks I have been to and wanted to share with Claire. The castle at Veveri is now open to the public, and the nearby bridge destroyed by the Germans to halt the Russian advance in 1944 has been replaced with a new pedestrian suspension bridge. But the lake hasn’t changed and in the sunshine it looks very inviting. This weekend there is a huge festival on in Brno to celebrate the CR joining the EU and also Brno’s place at the centre of Europe, and the city end of the lake has roads closed and we have to divert all over the place to get into the city centre itself. Amazingly it all comes back to me and I can remember where I am. I have arranged to meet an old teaching colleague at her flat about 2pm and that gives us the morning to do a

There’s a saying about the best-laid plans of mice and men… I have no idea from the mouse’s perspective, but planning this trip seems to have taken longer than my usual time, and from the human angle! It turned out to be more than poring over maps, both paper and electronic (MS Autoroute and www.viamichelin.co.uk ). Firstly, it was to be a weekend dash to join the 20th Anniversary of the founding of the Czech Suzuki Owners Club, with friends and fellow club members. Then it became a long weekend to accommodate my wife, Claire, on the trip and then a full blown week and the trip grew and grew. A week before the off, she found she had a business meeting with her company’s partners in Paris. The meeting date? The same day we were to begin our holiday! Plans changed again. Another days holiday booked for me and a change to the Shuttle booking. Luckily the fare was flexible and I was able to change without charge. And so… Tuesday 25th May My plan was to be away early and to meander down to

The original plan for Easter was to spend the day in Belgium with the GS Club UK at the GS weekend at Kasterlee. As it was only a week after coming back from the US, I had to cancel those plans. But the bike needed a 20000km service before the Czech Trip... and so I decided to see about a service in France and use the ferry ticket for that instead. I searched on the BMW France site for a dealership in the north of France. Purely to see if it was cheaper than in the UK. In the end I booked in to Europ' Touring in Arras. In France both 6000 miles and 12000 miles services are about 40% cheaper than the UK. Even with the cost of a cheap crossing over or under the channel it would be cheaper. And as I was less than happy at the standard of the service done at SPC at 6000 miles, plus the place was in the middle of nowhere and had no loan bike on offer (to me at least!) despite buying the GS from them! SO, a dealership in a town had to be better. Patric

Claire and I first went to the US together in March 2004 for her 50th birthday and stayed only for a week.  We packed a few trips in. We stayed with her cousin George in Speonk, Long Island.  The pictures in the album are out of order for some reason as they were taken (mostly) on a Nikon Coolpix camera that I bought after we had arrived. Doh.  We had booked a rental car and had a Toyota Camry for a few days and then George lent us his Crown Vic for the rest of the trip. It was blue and with the small 4.7L engine. The Manhattan pix were taken on a bus trip we did from Long Island with another of Claire's cousins, this one from Ireland but domiciled in the US. It was freezing and the view from the top of the Empire State Building was too cloudy to see much!  Perhaps we need to go back another time for a better look? UPDATE: Sadly, this was before Blogger or at least before I knew about Blogger and all my posts went on my Geocities website. Then as "progre