On the Road Again!

I have been mapping out the possible routes to take on the outward journey from the Shuttle arrival point in Coquelles near Calais. The Shuttle is already booked and so is the first night of the trip. That first night is at a campsite in the Ardennes in Belgium.   I am still looking beyond that and have looked at Bühl in the Black Forest for the second night. The idea for that is that it avoids French pay motorways and it takes us to an area we have never been to before.  Bühl looks like a good overnight spot and thee is a Camping-Car Park (CCP) aire on the outskirts of the town. As the first night is on a site we will have fill power etc in the batteries and the power bank.  The CCP aires all have power and clean water and waste facilities anyway. Awaycation 2025 - Map 1 The route that TomTom Camper Max through the online mapping tool has planned is for a campervan with the dimensions of Malibu Molly in programmed in.  It's also set to avoid toll roads. The nex...

It's that time again when I have started to look at where to go for the early Summer holiday.  Whereas I do like Spain I do prefer to go in the autumn away from school holidays and when the weather is less extreme, i.e. hot. We have toured France in the van a few times and we have been across many times on the motorcycle and in the car. After going to the Picos in Spain last May, I do like the idea of a mountain or two.  I was looking for ideas on the internet and came across a site that is essentially about tours in the Alps in France, and one of them is "Alsace".  Places and ideas for stops in a short distance between Strasbourg and Mulhouse. Essentially south along the lands bordering the Rhine, and the border with Germany. This site also has a tour called "Furka Pass".  Looking on the map currently Google Maps can't plot a route as many of the passes are snowed in. Changing the date to June works for some of the alpine passes! But oddly not all. More go...

From the same Truprint folder but a day or two later.  From the Grossglockner, the plan was to do the Pordoi loop in the Dolomites and then finish at a youth hostel just across the border in Switzerland in  Santa Maria Val Müstair, after completing the Stelvio and Umbrail passes. In the end we ended up way short. After the Pordoi loop of passes in sunshine it began to rain. Heavily. Torrential! We stopped at a wellness hotel . Expensive but I couldn't ride any further that day. In fact Claire went in whilst I was sitting at the top of the drive in the pouring rain.  She had a beer whilst they booked us in.  They didn't bat an eyelid that there were two sodden bikers outside.  Looking on booking.com now and this hotel is £290 a night! So it was the next day that we arrived on the Stelvio. Dry and warm when the sun bothered to show up. Claire taking in the brief weak sunshine! Me front and centre.... bratwursts for lunch! ...

After a day in Lake Como taking in the sights and eating and drinking we are back on the road Today would have been the Passes day. A whole day of taking in the high passes around southern Switzerland. http://devalltravel.blogspot.com/2019/12/rt20-day-12.html Except of course ...

With our 2020 Roadtrip for the summer in the planning stage I set about checking whether or not we would be passing through or near some of the low emission zones (LEZ) in the countries we are planning to visit.  Currently the route will go through France, Italy, Switzerland, France again, Belgium and France to channel port. I already have the Crit'Air sticker for France to go in the car later in the year, and once I have found a way of keeping the windscreen clean so that it sticks properly! But what of the other countries?  Switzerland seems the most obvious as we will be there for some miles and days.  They have a system called StickAir, it looks very much like the French system. At the moment it only covers the area in and around Geneva.  We aren't going there.  So no need for another sticker!  They ought to combine it with the motorway vignette which at 40CHF is a lot of money for a tourist visit. StickAir Switzerland

Once we had "bagged" the passes and arrived in Fribourg we have one and a half days to get home to collect Reggie from his holiday. The non-toll exit from Switzerland is a bit convoluted getting into France around a few lakes. Once across the border. The route runs up through Belfort towards Belgium.  The last night is near Namur. It's a long day on the road but it will enable us a shorter journey to the coast and the Shuttle or ferry home. Namur to the coast is around 150 miles so if we are away early enough we should get a lunchtime shuttle and be in good time to collect the dog. The kennel closes at 5pm so we need to be hurry  to get Reggie home.

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.

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 before we set off there could be many changes to co...

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 Lenskirch, it makes the 40...

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 and a cold shower.  A...

  On the train... Rhätische Bahn , originally uploaded by pauldevall . It was whilst on the leg of the journey homewards from the Stelvio, across the top of Switzerland, to Stein am Rhein on the western end of Lake Konstanz, we let the train take the strain. It began raining hard from the moment we crossed into Switzerland, just after the Umbrail Pass, so I decided to avoid the ascent of the Flüelapass (2383m) and the 39kms of road over the pass via Davos. But how? The map showed a rail tunnel from Susch to Klösters through the Vereina Tunnel. Decision made and we set off for it. Luckily it was clearly signposted and we found it despite major misting of my glasses and visor! The GPS also managed to find the eastern end of the tunnel before conking out with brain overload! The tunnel is slightly over 19kms long. So for 18 Swiss Francs we went on the roller coaster ride that is also known as the Rhätische Bahn . In an open carriage amongst the cars we set off hell for leather in...

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. 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. After a wurst and a beer and a bit of sheltering from a shower (!!) we set off taking in the Umbrail (2503m) and into Switzerland.  I was enjoying the almost deserted 8 miles to Santa Maria until after 2 miles of smooth tarm...