The Big Day - onto Venezia!

Apologies about the three maps - silly phone app stopped recording on the breaks.

Firstly, a Big Thank You to Kirsty and Liz for putting us up, and allowing me to use Liz's laptop for about five hours while I replanned and rebooked the trip, whilst plying us with an excellent dinner and what was, while carrying such a delicate operation, a dangerously distracting beer!  Thanks too to Ollybobs and Joshiman, who are wonderful and a marvellously joyous distraction - an hour spent falling off scooters on the grass works wonders!

Well, we attempted an early start, Jim even had a cuppa in bed, but the pressure to watch the record-breaking TGV train run video, so beloved of Josh, was too great - I think I got to three times before I had to drag myself away.

The Swiss motorways are lovely, and it was clear, cool and sunny - perfect biking weather. A great start to our 360 mile trip down and right a bit...

A couple of shots from sitting on the kerb at the first stop. Mountains are BIG. Really BIG. I never remember how BIg they actually are. And they make a lot of wind, but maybe not as much as the twins... Feeling good though, properly on holiday!!

Lunch just north on the St Gothard tunnel was tasty, pesto pasta for Jim and a panini for me. The sun was really hot by now and it was good to be moving again.

The St Gothard tunnel is an amazing 10 miles long, according to Jim's on-bike thermometer an amazing 38 deg in the middle, and you go from German Swiss to Italian Swiss. It is very Italian, road signs etc. in Italian. 

 

Once into Italy the driving instantly goes mental, with everyone up your chuff and swerving all over the place. We popped through customs and onto the Italian toll roads - not as smoothly operating as French methinks, refused my best card, causing delays and annoyed Italian drivers! We went past Milan, and headed east - this has to be a dire section of road, cars and trucks, straight, hot and mad. And we were in it for hours!!

At the last stop I'm surprised we look so happy - maybe it's because at that moment we're not doing 80mph in the fast lane with someone 10ft behind and a 44 tonne artic on the inside!!

Hotel Antico Moro looks good, will update with pictures, but they don't serve beer :-o. We have to go to the bar next door...

So we walked up the main street - lovely! Great cake, bread, greengrocery, butchers - even a funeral parlour across the road from the church. Whose bell was banging away as we came back - surely can't be a good idea to try to wake the dead?!

And so to dinner. The hotel-attached pizzeria and resto, really nice food and great craft beer, a big thing in Italy, thinking back to last year's trip.

Gratuitous monster pizza picture.

A couple of shots of the hotel in the morning, after a good sleep - I didn't hear Jim snoring, so either I was asleep or the "no wine" policy is paying off...

Into Switzerland, and a Change of Plan

An early start today, so a quick shot of sunrise over the industrial estate - the red Sky last night obviously augured well, it was beautiful all day.

As Jim pointed out, not the kind of quality marketing stylee view of the bikes - dew wetted saddles and soggy instruments!

But some smart person has planted a beautiful tree in the car park, wonderful blossom against the aluminium siding...

And because we're rubbish, we didn't take any pictures of the

- various petrol stations 

- multiple tab stops

- pretty reasonable lunch

- Swiss border patrol selling us our annual vignettes

But we do have a picture of the lads in their jammies, having just cleaned their teeth after a hard afternoon scooting and falling over on the grass in the sun. Hurray!!

The Plan Change

Call me a wimp, but I decided that I was too concerned about Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia as destinations. So we've decided to get a ferry back from Greece to Bari, then up the Italian coast, through the Alps and pick up the route home already planned. There's a lightning tour of northern Greece thrown in.

That should keep us busy for a while...

On the Way - Into The Green!

3.30 am - ouch. The shuttle time was

8.50 - why so early? Easy - Team Clownaround discovered that various additional documents are required by the non-EU countries en route (Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro), including the IDP 1949, a mutiple translation of your driving licence. AA Folkestone opens at 6, so we got there about 6.30 to avoid delays and all that. Very successful, no queue, terminal practically empty, helpful lady, docs newly stamped in a deliciously 3rd world style, and off we go to breakfast.  Result.

And the rest of the day was pretty much like that, we just tooled along on the A26 to Reims, stopping for lunch at the Saint-Quentin services, and paying our paltry €13.40 at the peage - money well spent for an uncrowded and straight road!

One more drawback - whilst updating Jim's GPS, I've somehow deleted a bunch of maps, including (duh) France. Bummer. So we'll try to fix it at Liz's, our next stop. Meanwhile, his gizmo is just showing green, hence today's slogan "Into The Green"!!

Tonight's resting place - Cottage Hotel, Reims. With fetching industrial estate attached, including various discount retail places, like Point Mariage - marvellous! There is low value housing up the road, some flats with spalled concrete fascists, but the bus stop was tidy and well-presented. All from research conducted post-beer and pre-dinner - see below.

I think dinner here - should be ok, the French don't really do shit. We slept for an hour after we arrived, just fell on the beds and passed out! Well deserved!

Update: Dinner was great, not fine dining but enthusiastically cooked and served, and really tasty. The demi carafe of Chardonnay helped... Hurray!! 

The Plan

Inspired by a flyer from the BMW Motorrad travel people, which proposed a trip on a ferry from Venice to Patra in Greece, we thought it would be kind of interesting to do something similar, but a bit less well-organised! A quick spot of browsing, and the ferry provider was located, and yes, they still do ferries and they do take motorcycles - and they also take 30 hours to get from Venice to Greece! That's still a lot faster than us, so game on!

We take three days to get to Venice, which will be quite a tough haul on motorways all the time, but at least they are relatively stress-free, other than the tolls... An overnight stop in Basel to see Liz, Kirsty and The Twins, where Ollybobs will hopefully be primed to ask Jim to read to him all night, and then we're onto Venice. An overnight there (sadly not on the island!) and an easy morning start for the ferry for 10 am.

After that, it's making a more leisurely way up the Adriatic coast, through Albania, Croatia, Herzegovina, Slovenia to Italy and Trieste, where we stay for two nights as a rest and explore opportunity. Then it's more motorway blatting all the way home...

The route outwards

The route back