Gelsenkirchen and back?

On the map it looks like a pretty straight line. Get off the train in France and then point the front wheel east and 260 miles later arrive at the hotel. Simples?

And that is about it.  Had the Arsenal drawn Anderlecht from Brussels or Lille from er.. Lille, then maybe the journey would have been shorter, but Gelsenkirchen is defintely doable in maybe 4 hours?

Some years ago, maybe even as long ago as the mid-eighties, we did a trip to the bike show at the Messe in Cologne.  There was me on my new 1000 Katana, Tony on a BMW R100RT and his mate Jim on another BMW.  "Three figure touring" Jim said.  Once up to three figures on the A3 it was the last I saw of either of them for an hour.  In the end I stopped at the side of the autobahn and they eventually caught me up!  It took as just over three hours from the Port at Calais to Cologne outskirts and another hour to get to the place we were staying in Leverkeusen.

If we make the trip to Gelsenkirchen for the Champions's League game on November 6th, it won't be at "three figures" at all. I am older and wiser and my GS is older than the space rocket that was the Katana. It got a bit boring, but singing "Silver Machine" every time I got on it was essential.

According to Google Maps, the trip should take 4 hours and 1 minute. Although it reckons an extra 41 minutes in current traffic. 

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My brother, Neill, was off the mark pretty quickly, he's an old hand at the quick booking for CL game in Europe, and booked us a couple of hotels near the Veltins Arena that have parking. I was almost as quick and booked one of the same hotels.

If we go on the bikes we need decent off road parking.  As usual we used booking.com to secure the rooms and with the free cancellation up until the day before travel our options are open.

Both hotels are within walking distance of the Arena so we have a chance to get out of biker gear and into football hooligan (joking!) gear.

It's quite a while since I last went to an away CL game.  In Lens we had a particularly eventful night after the match had finished; being caged in the stand for an hour after the game had ended, no loos, no food or water, then bombarded with missiles including fence posts as we dashed over (yes over!?) the CRS Police to the car parks. I was on the bike that night and rode across country, sometimes down paths and across open space (usually grassed) to get to the A21 autoroute and the Shuttle at Calais some 60 miles away.

All good fun.

The problem is whether we will have enough credits to get two match tickets.  Otherwise all is easily planned and we are ready.....

Another question is the weather in early November. We do have the fall back of the car!!