Month: April 2019

Adriatic Coast

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23 April — Slovenia – Croatia, 310 miles

Sleeping slightly better, finally realising I’m in this, whatever concerns I may have.
First day of adverse weather – rain in the morning, scary winds in the evening.

~85 miles of boring Slovenian motorways, in the rain… took me a while to gather up some speed.
~25 miles of boring Croatian motorways
~112 miles of awesome coastal roads
~44 miles of Croatian motorway in terrifying winds
Before the decision to leave the motorway, and do the final ~44 miles on some more coast, but mostly stuck behind traffic, and too tired to enjoy

Arrived in Trogir fairly late, which was a shame – as it seems an awesome inner city to walk around (lost… perpetually lost, in one of those old, old cities within the old walls with alleyways and semi-alleyways that just baffle one’s directional sense). Another UNESCO site off the list, but, albeit without full appreciation.

Finally plastered some stickers on the bike

Out of Western Europe

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22 April — Germany, straight across Austria – Slovenia, 328 miles

A little more sleep last night – 4 hours before I woke up thinking over-and-over about stuff, mostly just useless stuff.

~175 miles of boring German motorway (Autobahn, but never really going over a standard 80mph)
~124 miles of Austrian motorway – some boring, but some spectacular views leading up into the Alps (when not in the tunnels)
– it’s illegal to record video while riding in Austria, so couldn’t get a video… luckily one of my memory cards had some preloaded stock footage of a Triumph Tiger riding up towards the Alps… so will get that cleaned up and made available sometime
~22 miles of Slovenian motorway – about half of that underground
And a final 7 or 8 miles of Slovenian country roads, including some off-road/farm-tracks
– Did get some video of that, will need to check it, clean it up, etc

Getting Ready for Day 3
Slovenia

Trying to leave Europe

Kruse 3 Comments

21 April — France – Germany, 347 miles

Second day – after almost zero sleep. Despite (/because of?) how exhausted I was yesterday – simply couldn’t sleep. [Edited to remove (a bit of) the self-pity]… but, plenty of self-doubt clouding the mind over the night, but mostly nonsense… and I’ve since figured out a few other guys have had the same.
One day at a time from here on in… and hopefully some decent nights’ sleeps.

Today’s riding – very long
~220 miles on boring French motorways
~40 miles of very, very nice twisty roads through the Black Forest
And then ~87 miles of reasonable German roads to get to the hotel

Still not really any photos or the such… I did take some video of riding through the Black Forest… but will need to have a look at how that turned out.

Journey’s Beginning

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20 April — London – Reims, 293 miles

So – first day done.
Breakfast at the Ace Cafe,
Photos, speeches, some dignitaries along to get their own photo ops’,
Then finally started riding.

~108 miles on boring English motorways,
The EuroTunnel/Chunnel,
~82 miles of boring French motorways,
And finally ~103 miles on some quite nice French non-motorway roads.

Group dinner in Reims,
I am bloody exhausted… and rather looking forward to trying to get some decent sleep.
As such – not much more info for now, I’ll try to upload some photos/videos when I manage to collate them from other people… didn’t really take any photos myself.

Plans for 2019

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So… getting very close to doing a wee spot of travel.

General Plan

  • Ride a Triumph Tiger 800 XCa from the Ace Cafe in London, to the Ace Cafe in Beijing
  • Probably head into Mongolia, ride a rather smaller Chinese Shineray 150 around the Steppe, with a tent strapped to the bike
  • 17 days in North Korea, maybe more if they find any “objectionable material” in any laptops/phones/hard-drives I take in
  • Japan, to watch some rugby
  • Then – a choice of
    • returning to the UK in winter, and looking for a job at a time of year when people are unlikely to be hiring;
    • Or – heading to NZ for summer, and chilling out while I figure out how much money I have left, and how desperately/soon I’ll be looking for a job in 2020

Some PDFs of the estimated London-Beijing route

london_beijing-1 london_beijing-2 london_beijing-3 london_beijing-4 london_beijing-5 london_beijing-6