InvictaMoto's Family Travels

The reshuffle means that the shorter route through Switzerland means that the motorway vignette won't be needed. I'll have to see though.  To take in the passes will be a reversed S through the mountains. There are so many passes and too few days to fit them all in. This route (above) takes in the Nufenenpass (2 above). This is the highest paved pass in Switzerland.

Day 9 has changed. It was formerly the day we drove up from Lucca to Como.  I wanted to squeeze in a trip to Bologna. So I did. The journey is only around 85 miles toll-free. The hotel is walking distance to the centre and the station. This means that I had to shuffle the proceeding stops on a day. As I found out previously, the booking assistant at booking.com couldn't do a change of date for Como. So to add a day meant cancelling all the stays and rebooking them a day later! I was able to sort out Como. Although on the booking site there were only two rooms left. Booked. Day 10 will be the drive up from Bologna to Como. I had planned to squeeze in a visit to the Moto Guzzi museum but it is closed all off August from the 3rd onwards!  Instead there is Modena.  The Enzo Ferrari Casa and Museum The Panini car museum The Stanguellini car museum The Maserati Show Room And a little further away, Lamborghini. So many supercars! What had been Da

It's fatal. Planning and then seeing another "must see" or "must visit" place on a website or in this case, a book. Once I turned to trip 1 and 2 in the Andermatt area and saw even more passes I haven't bagged previously. I had to include the Susten Pass in my route. This may mean that the 40CHF vignette becomes an option or more like a necessity.  I know the purists will scoff at the thought of using the motorway for any part of a journey. Even though it's in the car and not the bike I can still hear them. Yep. Ignore the knobheads. So this looks like a four pass session. In MyRouteApp I have changed Part One to two bits. The first part as far as Airolo from Como will tolls turned to on. The second part will go non-toll through the passes: St Gotthard  - 2106m Furka  - 2429m Grimsel  - 2164m Susten  - 2260m On the map and in the book they all look like a lot of hairpin bends .. Fun. With 7 months to go bef

So the options seem to be between: A long day in the "saddle" as it were arriving later than usual at the hotel in Lenzkirch in the Black Forest Cutting Lenzkirch for a shorter day and booking a hotel further south Reverting to Plan A and miss out the Furka and Grimsel passes Cut one day from Como and have a stop in Switzerland nearer the passes! Buy the bloody motorway vignette In the end after checking hotel booking sites options 2 to 4 seemed to fade away.   Switzerland is more expensive than I want to pay for hotels.  After coming this far missing out the passes simply isn't on. Como to the passes is only 81 miles. So it looks like it will be the long day. I haven't ruled out the vignette for the motorways though.   I'll make an alternative Day 10 in MyRouteApp to see how that pans out. It adds expense but with Option 2 looking like £50 a night more for a hotel with the same level of comfort, inclusive breakfast and free parking as Len

Planning continues. Recently there was "discussion" on a biking Facebook page about planning a trip to France.  The original poster was merely asking whether it was wiser to plan ahead for a visit in August 2020.  Once the observer had discounted all the "I wouldn't go to France" posts, then the "just go" posts it seemed from the sensible brigade, planning was a little over 75% of the responses. I tend to over plan. Especially in peak holiday/vacation periods. I have "been there done it" when it comes to parking up and trying hotel or B&B's to get a room for the night. It becomes the driving force to the afternoon. Gotta get to Xxxxx to get a room! The worst was arriving in Seville, it was mid-afternoon. The temperature was over 40°C. We tried several hotels and received the "no room at the inn" signs. It was mid-August.  We were hot and fed up. We ended up in a four star hotel that had air-conditioning an

A change of plan. I have added a second night in the Albergo in Como. It had to be done.  According to the font of all knowledge, Google, there is much to see in and around Como.  It will give us a chance to take in the lakeside town and maybe even a boat trip. The lake seems to have an abundance of  ferries that criss-cross it. And it has a funicular! Oo-er missus! It was a bit of a palaver as through the booking assistant on booking.com it wouldn't let me change dates. Instead I had to book a room for two nights and then cancel the one night stay! Hopefully the hotel will have picked up on my request for a reserved and free parking space... From Como the plan will be to head home. It's about 800 miles! Switzerland lies directly in the way. The Swiss have an extremely expensive vignette scheme for anyone using their highways of 40CHF for the year.  There's no discount for when you buy it. Whether on January 1st or 31st December it's 40

A little more planning under my belt.  From Part One where we ended up in Nice, I thought our long planned and cancelled trip to Tuscany could be revived and included.  So. After two nights in Nice we head along the Med back into Italy and the Ligurian coast to Tuscany. It's only 200 miles with things to see en-route. The next destination is  Lucca . I have booked three nights here. The car can have a rest whilst we use the trains to get to Pisa and Florence.  Then where? I do like the idea of Bologna and shoehorning this in might be hard work as I have an overnight already booked in Como.  The original hotel had a problem with my MasterCard and cancelled the booking. They didn't give me much chance and so I decided to take care of it and book another one. This seemed a stroke of luck as it is better and has free parking. So then where?

The scenic railway is called the "Train des Merveilles" and it runs from Nice Ville to Tende. Train of Marvels So how do we get there? My plan is to leave early on Sunday and head south on the motorways as far as Nuits-St-Georges. This will be the longest day to kill off miles in Northern France. Next stop Annecy. It's not a long day and I have set the routes from here to be "no tolls". I don't see the point in spending all day on the road and arriving with no time to see anything. The no tolls route takes us along Lac Annecy and then down to Albertville, then alongside the A43 to Modane.  From there you can take the  Fréjus Tunnel  or take the D1006 over the first pass of the trip over the  Col du Mont Cenis  at 2083m. This route joins the same route at Susa that would have come through the Fréjus Tunnel. From there it is into Italy. The route loops down and around Turin ending in Cuneo. I have booked an overnight here. This is the f

The ideas are still bubbling away.  With an Old SOCs weekend planned in the English Lake District for the middle of August this trip needs to be done from late July. I had the idea of fulfilling one of my bucket list points and heading for Poland.  Auschwitz has been a pilgrimage for me for many years and I have never made it. Once in the 90's when I worked in Zastávka u Brna I did get as far as the Czech/Polish border at  Český Těšín  and got no further. The bridge over the river was closed to traffic although I did walk across to the halfway point to say I had stepped foot in Poland. I have no idea whether this was just that day or (semi) permanent. I watched Richard Ayoade's " Travel Man - 48 hours in Krakow " recently and the lure of a salt mine was almost too great.  But the lure of a scenic railway tops that! The railway in question is Train des Merveilles and runs between Nice and Tende.  It winds its way through the mountains a

I had hoped that Claire would have felt able to go on the bike.   I looked in October at the long ferry to Spain when Brittany Ferries released the prices and the booking system opened for the summer.  In the end that didn't go any further. We toyed with a cruise but none met with where we wanted to go or the dates didn't quite fit when I can go. So. No cruise. No bike trip.  Some while back when I was hoping for a bike trip I had a look at visiting the eastern part of France - the Vercors. I scrapped that and deleted all the routes I had worked out.  Until I started going on trips with my brother where he plans to the Nth degree, including prospective fuel stops.   I haven't been that exact.  My level of planning was to choose a place, what to do/see and where to stay to achieve that. A chance email from Claire and a French contact from work about Evian les Bains has given me food for thought. I do have some restrictions

After reading some very low opinion reviews of Drivefly Gatwick on Google Reviews I decided that maybe I was lucky in early 2019. The car came back undamaged and clean. Or at least as clean as it was when I dropped it off! Instead I have booked with the airport's own long term parking solution. We have used this many times before. Except this time, I have signed up for their meet and greet.... So that's another thing checked off the list.  We've only flown into Alicante once before although I had a few times in the 90's when I went quite often to visit ex partner in Murcia. Then I used the bus to Murcia and didn't hire a car.

With all the scare stories surrounding where to park at the airports, especially Gatwick, I might revert back to the long term parking on the airport where I park the car on concrete and take the key with me. The bus from there to the departures takes only a few minutes.  The problems surrounding "meet and greet" seems to stem from unscrupulous people with a website and a field taking people's cars and leaving them in an unattended and unguarded field. This is one of the cases that was brought to national attention -  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2nY7zwtVKkhl134HBvWhcPy/park-direct-gatwick-ltd When we went to Florida earlier in the year we booked a "meet and greet" service at Gatwick with DriveFly . The car came back to us as it was when we left it and wasn't damaged any more than it already is.  No mud. So we will possibly go with them again in the future. Reviews on Google not good though. They score 2.8 out of

That is the question.   After a wander around the new Saga cruise ship "Spirit of Discovery" all other summer vacation options are pretty much nullified. The "Cruising!" blog is linked on the right -----> I had hoped to have a bike holiday but we'll have to see.  Maybe I'll have to look at a short break somewhere. I had looked at Czech for the MotoGP and France for maybe a tour.

Firstly. Let's get this out of the way.  The lunch was absolutely bloody marvellous.  From appetiser to the cheese and then a light sorbet for dessert.  The Angus steak perfectly cooked for me.  Cut like velvet.....  There were veggie options too. The service from the crew was as expected top class.  It sounds snobbish (for a working class bloke!) to say that although I enjoyed last year's Norway cruise with P&O, Saga tops them for service and that idea that cruising is still a rich person's holiday. It's not of course. Before that we had a coffee in the cruise terminal.  We went with friends, Ulli and John, but didn't get on the tour with them. The ship is really nice and we had a trip around all the decks and a view of the cabins. This will be an all-inclusive ship and for us oldies, it's free of children!   As it is almost new the show cabins were actually just cleaned as the ship was just back from a cruise, in fact there were many getting off as we got

As I am going to use the timeshare week that needs to be used by December 2020, I have been searching on the website for ages.   Our home laptop seems to run a WIN10 upgrade every time we turn it on and so it is a long process! The east coast is usually awash with places but as it is Easter there are fewer to choose from. Even La Manga looks like there are no vacancies. I managed to get online at lunchtime at work and check a few places out.  In the end booked the week at Ona Ogisaka Garden in Dénia. It has some decent reviews both on the RCI edited version or Tripadvisor and on the main site too. The week banked was worth 24 points and this cost 17 of them. So I have a rollover of 7 still to use!! Easier said than done in summer, but there often places in Autumn to use that on.  It's about 60 miles to the site from the Ibis Budget, where we stay the night before.  We have almost all day to get there though. Check out from the Ibis will be about noon.  Benidorm?

We have a timeshare week to use by the end of 2020! When we went to Florida at Easter we used up the 2018/2019 "banked weeks" with RCI. Every year we have another week to use. Until I retire there is no chance of us being able to go to there to the resort where  I "own" a week in Tenerife. I know it's not as exotic as Florida or the Caribbean but for an Easter break it will do us fine. I am still looking on the RCI website for a resort to book but as flights were relatively cheap I have booked British Airways return to Alicante. I used TravelUp as we have used them before and they have always been efficient and cheaper than most oters, si I guess they trim their commission. I had looked at Malaga but for a two and a half hour flight it was around half the price of a nine hour flight to Miami! A fare of £350 each to Malaga is simply a joke. I chose to go on the Friday and so we'll need a hotel.  As we don't arrive until about 8pm

We have a taster visit booked on this ship in October. It's the new "boutique" ship for Saga. The visit includes lunch on board and a trip around to see the cabins and what they have to offer.. 

We were up early again as Reggie was on his early pee and poop regime again. In the end we left at around 9.30am. TomTom reckoned it would be just short of 5 hours to get home.  If only.  First stop at the start of the A303. Three hours for 86 miles. Heavy traffic. Very heavy everywhere. Holidaymakers in both directions. Wankers having accidents causing more holdups. We got in the house just before 7pm. Sadly I had to reset the TomTom earlier in the week and so I have lost the complete trip stats.   So that's it... Another superb holiday top and tailed with terrible driving conditions. For the holiday I created a Fuelly profile for the Corsa. Only three fill-ups on the entire trip after starting with a full tank at the start of the holiday.  I had expected it to be higher, but an overall 45mpg isn't bad considering the traffic jams we were stuck in for about four hours in each direction, where we crawled along in first or second gear!

Today we decided to stay local as we set off for home tomorrow. It will be a long day in the car for us and Reggie especially. So our first stop was as ASDA in Bideford to get some cash and fill the car ready for tomorrow.  A disappointing 43.7mpg. I guess all the low gear ups and downs of the Devon countryside. The next was at Tapeley Park just the other side of Bideford. Another estate with a garden open to the public. Again it was on the Gardener's World 2-1 offer and seniors we got in for a fiver. The house looks at first a bit run down but the gardens are very nice. An Italian garden and the kitchen garden are the highlights. We met Hector who "runs the place" and is actually one of the owners of the site. He was accompanied by his English Bull Terrier called Wayne. Reggie barked at first but they got on after mutual sniffing. On the way out I saw the field alongside the carpark had a herd of Highland Cattle. Reggie barked as a calf came close.  To soun

Today our day was already planned. A lunch date with Claire's friends from the "old days" in Kent, Robin and Mark, at their house (mansion!!)  near Exeter. They have two golden retrievers and Reggie was okay until they mobbed him and he growled at them a few times. Lunch was great. Company great. Tomorrow last day in Devon.

As a reward for a walk along the nearby Tarka Trail... Someone has to do it. Later we'll have dinner in and think about tomorrow. We have a lunch appointment near Exeter with a friend and former boyfriend of Claire's. 

Didn't we have a lovely time on Dartmoor?  No we didn't. I set up a route to take in some bronze age and medieval settlements on the rugged moors.  We set off and ahead the weather looked increasingly black overhead and then it simply pee'd down. Roads began to run with water. None of this deterred the locals who continued to drive way too fast for winding country roads.  We aborted and set a course for Okehampton, somewhere to the west of our position. In the end we passed through and decided to head back to the cottage. By chance we saw a sign right to a small town called Hatherleigh. A chance for a cup of something and Reggie to "stretch his legs" etc. There is a Co-Op shop and a nice thatched cottage lined high street. Plus, find of the day, One Market Street Cafe, where we had lunch. Hatherleigh, Devon Pasties and chips for us and a bowl of water and a gravy bone for Reggie. I also had a bonio in his accessory bag. Claire popped into the Co-Op for essen

As is his current trend Reggie had us awake at 5am for his first pee trip. Then at 6am and finally at 7.15am for breakfast. We had sorted the bins as well as the instructions said to have them out for Monday. Different recycling regime to gone but at 4.45pm they are still by the kerb untouched. But back to the morning. Today we decided in a trip more locally (!) to a garden at Castle Hill Gardens. It is in Claire's Gardeners World 2for1 offer booklet.  We spent a few hours there traipsing around the estate and park looking at the follies and plants/trees. Again a lot of uphill and downhill walking! Three days running. Castle Hill Estate Then back via Lidl in Torrington to get lunch etc. And of course cider. We took it in turns to shop and mind the dog in the car. This evening eat in again and plan where to go tomorrow. About time we headed for Dartmoor. 

We decided on a National Trust site at Arlington Court near Barnstaple. TomTom said it was about 40 minutes away and for once it was almost accurate. The site is also the home of the National Trust Carriage Museum.  After a coffee we set off on the 2 mile circular walk around the estate. Although the weather was iffy when we set off, but it looked up.  The walk is pretty up and down. The first part goes through an avenue of monkey puzzle trees. Amazing. Some are nassive. Monkey Puzzle Trees This was just the beginning! The lake itself wasn't all that exciting.  Along the route were photo suggestions. A photo in a frame and above it an empty frame to show where to shoot. The bridge over the stream from the lake was full of dragonflies. Very colourful. At the top of a steep slope we had a sit down. The house to our rear and the pond ahead. Claire wanted to go to the gardens and headed to the dog poo bin and the carriage museum. The collection is quite extensive. Carriage Museum Resto

Miserable start to the day. Well, not at 5.30am when Reggie decided he needed to go out into the garden. At least he had a pee! At 6.30am it was Claire's turn to get up. Parenting a 🐕 seems like having a baby! He did nothing but run off the night asleep. By the time we got up at 8.30am - it is Sunday - it was raining. Grey and very chilly. I thought about getting the woodburner alight but have no idea where to start although it looks to have wood in it. It's a long time since I was a boy scout lighting fires. I did have a badge for it... I also had hand axe and knife... https://members.scouts.org.uk/supportresources/3655/scout-skills-fire-lighting I'd love to share images of the badges but it seems the Scouts have purged the internet. Using a knife and and axe probably not PC nowadays. So once it warms up. Warns up. Where to? posted from Bloggeroid

Up late. Well I was. The lack of sleep at the Days Inn with Reggie wanting to go out every two hours and the long hours at the wheel and I was knackered. We chose to visit Clovelly. TomTom reckoned 10 miles until we set off. We had been going a while and it was 9! It looks like TomTom's initial guess is that it's as the crow flies until the route gets planned. Clovelly is pretty famous. We have been before but not with a dog. The descent to see sea and harbour and the Red Lion pub is in three phases. The first downhill to the pottery is slight. Part two from there to the top of the main Street steeper and made of stones not proper cobbles.  Wear Skechers at your peril. The third section is the main street. Same underfoot stones and steps in places. We had a break at the New Inn for a sandwich and a drink. It rained a bit but the prawn and crab baguettes were very nice. I had a half of the local Golden Pig beer. Nice and hippy. Not quite the after taste of IPA. An ice-cream

Forced to use the Corsa instead of the Insignia due to an "engine fault" light. Too late to get it fixed before the trip. Even with several hours in traffic jams, sometimes not moving, today's fuel stop came out at 47.6mpg.  I have created a Fuelly account for it. A total of 338.6 miles since I filled it up on Thursday morning.  Without all the holdups it could have been so much better. Sadly I don't see the return in Friday being any better.