Everywhere Virtually

I woke up at 8am and due to the heat and stuffiness of the room felt a bit groggy and puffy eyed. Not a pretty picture. Due to some good fortune the room happened to be on the ground floor and the bikes were right outside which mean’t we could pass the bags out of the window.

most of my luggage comprised of my girlfriends things that I was taking from England back to Austria

oh how I miss the presence of a GS

All packed and ready for the off I said goodbye to Gary and wished him well on his trip

It was moments after this that the first of the days niggles would present themselves. I had no maps of Europe on my sat nav. How this happened I’m not sure but the how didn’t matter now. It was not a big deal all things considered. It was early morning. The sun was in the East, I was heading East. The roads are signposted and I knew I could reach my friend Bernard in Gistoux but would have trouble finding my friend in Dusseldorf as he had recently moved.

Dunkerque is pretty featureless outside the port and town itself

My original map was not up to much other than main routes so I upgraded it at the first opportunity

By 1pm I had reached Bernards.

I had a plan to get the laptop out and load the rest of Europe onto the Garmin for the rest of the trip.

And so it was that whilst the maps loaded slowly onto the Zumo we had a very nice lunch of salad, hams, cheeses and pate. Because of the slow nature of the loading of the maps I decided to only add the segments of Europe that I was passing through. Later on this would prove interesting as I skirted very close to the area of zero map coverage.

I told Bernard about the wind blasting I was getting on this journey. He had a plan. He had an old Schuberth visor that could not be used due to age and minor damage but it could potentially make a great windshield. So with a drill an cable ties we fashioned a new “Poorer tech” fly screen.

It was a bit Heath Robinson but it certainly reduced the blast on my chest but alas, not on my face. Still It gave me relief when on my way to Dusseldorf. Before bidding farewell to Bernard I spotted an everywherevirtually sticker!

no idea how that got there

I was soon back on the road and by now it was 6pm. My plans were really out of whack bearing in mind the original plan was to be in Belgium the night before and Dusseldorf by 9am. Not very realistic I suppose.

I hit the momentous 30,000 miles. Not all mine I must say. I’ve done about 2000 on this bike so far

I thought this was an interesting vehicle worthy of a photo

When on the road I always take time to read plaques and memorials because these are fellow travellers that were not so lucky

Without referring to a dictionary this roughly translates as “The road was your home”

by 9pm I had reached my destination in Dusseldorf

It wasn’t hard to find because despite England losing so badly in the world cup he wasn’t afraid to fly the flag so to speak, even if that was the Union Jack and not the flag of St George. Ironically these are made by a German company

We sat out and had BBQ food which I nearly missed due to my tardiness. The Quality of life on the continent and the work / life balance really is so much better.