On the Road Again!

With the "Indian Summer" not really going to happen the decision to take the car rather than the "Wild Hogs" bike trip is now a reality. Shame, but safety and comfort have to come first.  It should be comfortable in Neill's Avensis! Plus the car will give us room for a little shopping! Christmas is coming. Beer. We have decided to stay in the hotel right by the Veltins Arena. It's a short walk across the car-park and means we have a quick exit after they let us out! We booked two as soon as we knew the date of the game and as it was booking.com we could cancel right up to the day before. I might suggest that Neill takes the Arsenal stickers out of the car. You never know! The hotel is the Arena Hotel . The car is booked on the Shuttle for 0920 on Tuesday and back on the 1820 on Wednesday. Now which shirt shall I take for this game? The Legend's Number and my nom-de-plume

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 th...