InvictaMoto's Family Travels

Today started off badly. I dropped the bike exiting the petrol station in St Goar! Not anybody else's fault but mine. No real damage to us or the bike. Pride suffered the most with the bike getting scuffs to the plastic cylinder guard and to the right pannier. I simply lost balance making a U-turn out of the place onto the road. It was slightly downhill and an acute angle to turn onto the road.. foot down, nothing there and bingo; nought mph keel over. What is the secret to BMW mirrors? The right one is prone to loosening and spins about and as if by magic it fixes itself. But not today, over 200 miles before I managed to get it tight. This time I tugged up on it and turn it at the same time and it locked in place. How the heck do you get them off? Mine simply turn round and bloody round. Aaaagh. After 308 miles we arrived at Dunkerque for the 1600 ferry back to Dover. Holidays for 2006 nearly over. Once I have got all the pix sorted on the camera I'll add to the blogs for each...

A whole day on a cruise boat might sound a nightmare but in fact it was very relaxing to sit on deck before going to one of the saloons for a coffee and a cake. A chance to unwind and read a book. Rüdesheim was a bit touristy and the greatest gathering of our fellow countrymen we had seen since we got off the ferry over a week ago. There are also more Christmas shops than seems really necessary, one lured Claire into buying a small snow storm dome thingy complete with snowman! Back at the hostel we had a read and a second cake! Dinner to look forward to, then back to the hostel and start packing the panniers. Doris reckons it's about 285 miles to Dunkerque and the ferry is at 1600, so we need to be away pretty smartly after breakfast. Should be home in time for Corrie! One of the big successes has been the Lakeland vacuum bags. Apart from one losing the little slider that helps seal the zip end they have been tremendous - I wouldn't hesitate in recommend...

I had to get up in the night to check on the bike as it was parked on dirt...  As it had rained heavily for a few hours. In the end it was pitch dark and I had two disc locks to get off, then I could see f.a. and took in down outside the main entrance. When I came to shift it later in daylight, I found I was only about 2ft from nice firm tarmac!  Bugger! Today is boat trip day, 1020 from St Goar. Let's see how it turns out.

Well. As is now the norm we set off in waterproofs. Waterproof over trousers and Hood Kevlar lined jeans do not make for happy motoring pleasure. Betty Swollocks within minutes.  At least on the positive side Doris has got over last week's problem of losing the sats every ten minutes. And so she led up from Switzerland into Germany. Swiss petrol was reputed to be cheap, but the fill up I did just before the border was 118 cents a litre. So about 55p a litre. No wonder their so many American cars about with Swiss plates. Once in Germany we hit the motorways. Getting to St Goar was more important than scenic touring!  One small detour was forced on us when I chose the wrong Rüdesheim from the two options that Doris had in her city finder. I had a 50-50 chance and chose wrong. In mitigation I have to say that both were about the same miles from where I created the via point AND are the only two in the entire Atlantic base maps and 16 miles apart! As a result we added ...

The entire trip has been like the search for shangri-la; the sunshine is just the other side of the mountain, when you get there it's.... Well you know! Today it was sunny straight off. On the road from Merano it was dire. Traffic and lots of it. Being a weekend it turned out to be the last weekend of the school holidays for Swiss and German kids, and they were making their way home Claire and Baloo in Bormio Once on the road up to the Stelvio through Prato it was better. There were a few twats about who seemed to enjoy cutting up other bikes as well as the cars. Sadly the two that cut across me as I was halfway around a tight turn were on 1200 GS's. So they were faster than me, but at the end of the day they were arseholes no matter what they rode. Stelvio Umbrail After a wurst and a beer and a bit of sheltering from a shower, we set off taking in the Umbrail and into Switzerland. I was enjoying the almost deserted 8 miles to Santa Maria un...

Between breakfast and of setting foot outside to load the panniers onto the bike it had rained. Sheepskins soaked through so it was waterproofs on (and off all day). Passo Falzarego Once on the main 100 road from Lienz to Italy it was hard going with trucks, motorhomes and bloody caravans and the last two along with tourist coaches set the tone for the day. We did manage some passes I hadn't done before like the Valparola and Costalunga before we cut our day short at 1630, and according to Doris there were still two hours (at least!) to go to the Stelvio and our eventual overnight in Switzerland. From the Pordoi pass it poured down making the 20 plus hairpins down to Canazei slippery and hard work given the tailgating and pillocks pulling out giving you hardly any chance or many options. Claire at the Pordoi After 134.4 miles we called it a day and stopped in Nova Levante at the Engel "Wellness Hotel".  We had no idea if we would be let in. Drip...

There was only one goal for today and that was the Grossglockner and the two side attractions, Edelweisspitze and the Glacier. After a very slow procession across country we got to the Grossglockner. The trip took us around the Hallstatter See and on small roads clagged with trucks and motorhomes. As it was a working day we would have better off retracing our steps from the day before and going via Schladming and Radstatt. Unfortunately it was also the last weekday of the local school holidays in Austria and Germany and many people decided to cause a massive road block. Ironically to avoid the weekend's massive roadblock! Once again we had to slip on waterproofs as it began to rain a little. On the way up to the tolls we stopped for a spot of lunch at the side of the road and watched the bikes going up towards the tolls and those that had done it and were coming back. Bikes of every sort, some fast but most taking it steady. For most of the way from the toll booths we followed behi...

Today was supposed to be a run about so I could show Claire Schloß Moosham where the Waßerbüffel Club have their Austrian rally, usually at the end of May. In the end it was a 175 mile round trip that included the Radstatter Tauern and Twenger passes before Moosham, and the Sölk afterwards. We had lunch at Moosham, dining on exploding bratwurst. They must have been the most fat filled I have ever seen, almost lethal as the stream of hot fat sprayed about 6 inches. A defence mechanism? Like the infamous Scottish "Haggis" these beasts are known to fight back. Finding the Sölk Pass proved quite complicated as Doris refused to route that way. She did manage to lead us along a 10 mile gravel road and then lost interest. In the end Mr Michelin's map 730 sorted it out before we rejoined the roundabout route that Doris thought we should be on. After a late siesta we togged up and rode to the Grundlsee for dinner - more schwein! Early to bed as we have to...

"Up and at 'em" could have become our motto. Not! We seemed to be last in to breakfast; a trick we have learned helps us make a few extra rolls to eat for lunch. First stop the tourist office at Grundlsee to find out about the boat trip. At 1145 we set sail for Grossl and were tucking in to soup with liver dumplings 38 minutes later in the Gasthof Hofmann and back on the boat back at 1250! The second lake of the day was the Hallstatter See. The run took us over a pass of a mere 690m above sea level, hardly worth mentioning! Hallstat is very touristy but still very nice and pleasant, but hardly anywhere to park a bike. In the end we left the GS in a supermarket car park after buying a few things to eat with the rolls. We ate by the lakeside and shared our lunch with some swans. Plans to go down a salt mine were put on hold as it was by now good 1700. Home and a beer beckoned. What will tomorrow bring? We have another full day. At least the weather was okay today. Only a s...

On our walk into Aussee earlier, we saw a poster for a grand firework party in nearby Altaussee, so after read of our books in the sun we had a ride out there. Firstly dinner, ate too much and felt too pogged to walk, but set off anyway 'zum see'. After a long walk we decided to get the bike for when it was all over. Parking was easy, the coppers waved us by all their posts and we parked up by the lake. Some people were buying tickets but didn't seem to worry we hadn't got one. We joined a load of others on a pontoon on the lake. The display took ages to start but when it did it had a microlight flying in darkness trailing three trails of fireworks. After a long lull we went and sat on a picnic table to wait for what appeared to be people to climb to the top of the surrounding mountains. By then we went back to the bike for a quick getaway. As we set off the fireworks crashed into life. Blimey, they were loud and we seemed to be at Ground 0.1! In th...

After three days of almost total damp if not actual rain, it was no surprise to wake up at 0730 to the usual sound of car tyres on wet tarmac. I had toyed with saying "bugger it" to another day in the wet and heading off to Italy, perhaps even Venice. Mondsee without Julie Andrews In the end the weather was shit everywhere in Europe, or so it appeared on the net. As we had only 50 miles to go today I planned a more circuitous route via the Wolfgangsee, Mondsee (where Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer married in the Sound of Music!) and the Attersee to Bad Ischl (where Doris threw a wobbler and took us through the same tunnel three times) where we saw the same group of bikes inc 2 1200 and 1 1100 GS's; not one of the miserable b*****s bothered to return our greeting wave. So much for the GS Brotherhood. The weather looked up after Attersee so for the first time since Sunday morning we could ride without waterproofs! Big HURRAH! We arrived at the hos...

GS and fountain Was it really only ten hours ago that we awoke to the familiar sound of pissing rain? Of course it was. What's new? Anyone stupid enough to holiday in western Europe in August gets what they deserve; summer was in July for three weeks only. So what was supposed to be a no-bike day became a yes-bike day! It meant for around four hours we did the tourist bit in Salzburg in full waterproofs. How glad I am that we chose Hein Gericke jackets over the vented ones we both bought this summer. One success was finding a locksmith shop and finally getting a 2nd key for the top box. Not cheap at €14.50, but cheaper than a BMW lock set. :-). We had goulash for lunch at a beer garden that had a big awning and then a miracle, it stopped raining. Yes really. Salzburg In years to come people will sing and rejoice about the almost three hours they had on August 14th 2006 when it actually stopped raining. Hallelujah! I'm sure if Mozart was still ali...

The weather seemed to have improved, so we left the over trousers off. We got a whole 70 miles before we had to stop under a bridge and put them on. Have stopped a few times for petrol, the latest about 70 kms from Austria. Our triumphant entrance into Salzburg was in dry weather and after a petrol stop we had a frig about for the YH. Doris has it firmly fixed in her mind what road we have to go down, but it's been blocked recently by a barrier, luckily my incredible sense of balance, cat-like even, allowed me to ride up the kerb and go through on the pavement! Yeah. Off-Road. Gripped.

The Mercure hotel in Friedrichsdorf is classed 4* and it is very comfortable. Learned that Erdinger weiss beer only comes in half litres. Ate at a Hungarian restaurant. Another thing is the Lakeland vacuum bags are very good but a fiddle to pack. Today's mileage about 350. With "Doris" losing the satellites every few minutes it's hard to tell if we came the right way all the time; the detour through a seedy part of Brussels certainly was "off route"! NB. All the "Day nn" posts will be sent using the GPRS email service on my 02 phone and so I will edit them when I get home and add any pix. ta.