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North Germany and cleansing rain
Arrival into Lubeck was nice, the whole place looked and was clean. It seemed everyone on board was milling around at the exit to the ship and had nothing better to do than watch me start up the bike. First kick! A little cheer in German accents greeted the Bullet blat. In total contrast to Russia, the Customs process was simple. I have a Carnet for the bike but the officers didn't really know what to do with it so we went through the instructions which are written on it step by step. The main thing they care about is insurance which you get through them. It took an hour only because most of the time was taken up with the Carnet.European rain is clean. The bike actually got cleaner as I rode along but the rain was still a hassle but it went away mid day and turned into a wonderful bit of weather. It was weird being in more familiar style of living. For a start I had to sit and watch a petrol forecourt for a couple of minutes to ensure that you could actually fill up without first having to pay a predetermined volume first. And then getting used to the fact that I didn't have to fill it to the absolute brim each time. And then the choice of good old junk food snacks. But sitting down was still a bit of an issue but very much reduced in terms of intensity. My destination was Ettlingen, near Karlsruhe, to stay at a friend's house.

Stephan met me in the local supermarket carpark and it was off to his place for a barbeque. And it was a good one too....warm, could sit outside and no insects at all. Although the perfectly shaped charcoal brickettes needed a hairdryer to help them along a bit once the firelighter had run out. I also had the sneaky feeling the brickettes were subject Euro IV emissions regulations; hardly that much smoke out of ém!

...ready in 2 minutes!

The football thing was still happening....oh joy. Anyway, it was Germany vs Spain in the final. A big outdoor screen was set up and beer tents etc. You could track the lack of Germany's progress during the game with the silences. It was a bit of a dull game with the usual prima-donnas-falling-down-in-mortal-agony after being impaled by an extra long blade of grass followed by the lets-get-up-as-if nothing-had-happened because a squirt of cold air from an aerosol has magical properties routine. Did I mention football sends me to sleep?

..GOAL!! ...not a goal

Headache.

The morning came along for me to leave, so I did. About 10km down the road all compression lost! Stuck on the side of the road wasn't fun and it was amazing that not one single biker stopped by. German bikers are so wrapped up in the BMW thing. Bunch of spanners. If I ever see a German biker broken down on the side of the road I'm sure to give him the international welcome sign. I really thought this was the end of the journey.

...end of journey, head gasket gone again, no compressio

Stephan came and got me and arranged a tow truck to his place. The way the bike was placed on the back of the lorry seemed a bit unsafe to me and then of course there was the sudden appearance of extra length of strapping which wasn't there before.

...extra strapping waving in the wind

I thought it was the same problem as before due to the oil weeping out of the cylinder head gasket and whilst Stephan and his girlfriend Carina were making enquiries about shipping the bike back, Simon texted me to ask whether I had even bothered to open up the head for a look. No I hadn't; then yes I did. The barrel was a clean and shiny smooth as you could want so it was the actual head with the problem. I eventually got hold of the Enfield importer for Germany, they were about 320 kms away in Koln so a hire car and a day later had me at their place with my cylinder head. It gave me the opportunity to see how fast the hire car would go, it was also a diesel.

...a bit more time would have got it to 220

Rudi the mechanic had a look and indicated it had had its day. OK, a new head purchased along with front pushrod, new set of rocker blocks, new airfilter (these cone filters are total crap, they really are only for low mileages), new bigger jets for the carb (mine was running way too lean according to Rudi)and off back down south.

...ZMT, near Koln

...friendly and helpful people with matching suits

The new head got put on that night but the final bit of attaching the oil feed pipes was left until the next morning. Around midday after a few other chores I had to do, it was obvious the oil feed pipes holes in the new head were too small. DAMN! The only real option was to take them off to the Enfield dealer and get ones that did fit. A rush to Europcar for the same car but this time the credit card didn't work.....EEK! Try another one but it needed manual confirmation so the bloke followed the instructions coming through the speaker form the credit card centre and when the one for "....followed by the hash key" came out, it had him sniggering in mirth. OK, so he obviously spends time in the likes of Amsterdam.

...polite, I'm sure ...a German speed camera

Anyway, I got to the dealer with about 30 minutes to spare before they closed for the day. It turns out they gave me the wrong head! Bastids. I only had the oil feed pipes so not only did I have to agree to lay out the credit card again for deposit against the correct new head, I had to send the other one back at my expense. I didn't care, at least they had the right item. The new head went on fine and it was back on the road to France a couple of days later but not before investigating one of the local micro-breweries.

...whatda mean??? It's only my second bottle!!

I crossed the Rhine near Mulhouse and spent half an hour looking around for a Customs officer to stamp the Carnet out of Germany. There are none. I gave up and went on to run out of petrol about an hour later....fool! I forgot the newer bigger jet would mean more fuel used plus I just plain old forgot to look inside the tank. Also, the French have fuel stops less often than in Germany it seems. On the French motorway they do have interesting toilet architecture though...

..strange looking toilet architecture on the Peeage in France

That afternoon I got off the Peage and had the most wonderful ride of my life on the Enfield. No idea which roads so long as they headed west. Beautiful wine growing region south and west of Dijon. The roads perfectly suited the Enfield although some of the hills were a bit of a grind. I loved it. This is why I rode East to West, for that nice bit at the end. And for once, the GPS paid itself off as all I had was my friend's house GPS coordinates a very wooly memory of being driven there once before about 4 years ago. They'd been listening out for me for over three hours but eventually I got there with about half an hour of sun left in the day at 9:30 pm. Again, bbq and beer and loads of chat to catch up.

...a sunset beer in France. Bloody Great!!

The room I was in had a good ol' Heath Robinson look to the water heating system. Plus there were one or two flies here and there but they looked pretty once on the fly paper and back lit.

...lots of pipes ..some pretty flies

Three days later saw me in Amsterdam. The northern part of France is a bit crap to ride around in and Belgium was a run down little country, dreary, rainy, and nothing going for it except it is small and easy to ride through quickly.

My first night in Holland was about 45km South West of Amsterdam where I met a friend who had just moved there but was still living in a hotel. The weather in Holland must be hard on animals.....I looked out of my window after a hard rain shower and saw a paw.

...Hallo, how d'you do?

Amsterdam was nice, a great city to walk around in although I imbibed too much of its offerings and had to prostrate myself in front of the porcelain throne during the night. This was after being asked whether or not I was going to vomit and replying "Definitely not"! Yah, right. So here I am, at the port waiting to board the ferry to England. The continental part of the trip is done and tomorrow I'll be at the Scottish border. Odd..... its taken nine weeks to get to this point. I can't get too gibbered on board as I need to ride the bike when I arrive. Ho hum. Lets see how smooth a ride we get on the good ship Chunderstrom.

...The Magere Bridge ...a canal bridge

The land of Tartan wallahs
The trip to Ijmuiden, ferry port for Newcastle, was...err...flat. Lots of windmills. They were easily accesible so as to get an idea of the perspective of their sizes. They are big!

..an old windmill ...a new windmill

I got to the ferry port location waaaay to early but the nice thing was to find an excellent fish and chip shop about 250 yards away after sorting out the ticket. Actually, to call it a fish and chip shop is a disservice to them. It was also something I thought I wouldn't get until I had got to UK. Even after this I was at the front of the queue to get into the ferry compound so I had a little kip to sleep off lunch. Eventually the gates opened and passports shown to be waved on and to one side.

Loading up the ferry was a pain. Get all the bikers together and keep them to one side and make them wait. Not allowed to go and dump your stuff on board in the cabin and come back down due to some International Security Procedural proctological processes blah blah blah....glazed eyes, okay, I give up and wait with the others. I met a woman by the name of Rachel who had adapted her Fazer for all controls to be on the right hand side. She had lost her left hand at some point in the past. I was extremely impressed and have great admiration for her; she was just finishing a ten day trip around EU with a work colleague, Alan (Honda VFR, black). Again, it was one of those moments when it put my own trip into perspective. My journey was just a case of time and money, whereas Rachel's was much harder and bigger than mine to get to this point. However, by then I'd started to retreat into myself a bit and didn't want the company of other people very much and kept myself separate from everyone else once onboard.

..Fish n Chips ...waiting waiting waiting

...at last! Loading up. I hate front loaders though. Think Zeebrugge disaster.

Why isn't there more mass murder on cruise style ships? Fifteen hours on board this thing and I was pacing the poop deck wanting off. The attempt at creating an onboard unreal world of duty free (which didn't seem too cheap to me), the casino corner, slot machines, the 'entertainment', the onboard bard (ever heard of what happened to Cacofonix a la Asterix & Obelix?), games machines, cinema etc. In fact the best way to describe it would be a cross between Butlins and Little Chef but with much nicer staff (except for the somewhat condescending reception staff). Another thing which unsettled me even more was hearing an announcement during the final approaches to Newcastle for '…those people on the mini-cruise tickets to get their passports ready and to remember the boat would be returning to Holland that evening'. This meant it gave them about 8 hours to wander around Newcastle/Tyneside and then back to Holland. You have to hand it to the Dutch, they take the ordinary and turn it into something I'd never have envisaged as a desirable past-time. I bet they just spent their time sitting on the side of the road staring at the tiny little bit of hillside around the ferry port area which for them would be like sitting at the foot of Mount Everest. Every summer in NW Scotland you can always tell which ones the Dutch tourists are. The ones sitting at the side of the road mesmerised by the close proximity of hillside. The poor souls.

The getting off bit was quicker than the getting on bit but as ever, no Customs officers. I even went looking for them only to throw the people I did talk to into confusion...after all, who actually willingly seeks out a Customs officer! I still only have the Carnet stamped into EU at Lubeck in North Germany. Have to phone them up once I get to Edinburgh to see about the stamp out of the EU.Once off the 'A' road up north from Tyneside and onto the 'B' roads and smaller 'A' roads it was great. This bike is made for this kind of road although again, a bit more power and less weight would make it more pleasant in terms of keeping with traffic flow speed and not being hounded for overtaking by cars etc. Also, most of the bikers around give a wave.....it is just soooo NOT Germany in that way. Two hours later and it was Shap's Corner. It was definitely the place for the grand entrance to Scotland because the inevitable tartan clad piper was in the carpark clearing everyone's earwax with his baggy pipes. Luckily it started to rain which meant he left for an early lunch. It was fitting it should be raining, its the only way to enter Scotland. If you ever do it on a sunny day then its a lie!

No visa or carnets needed here!

It was nice being in Edinburgh. It was also a bit strange being back there on my own bike which I normally ride around on in Hong Kong. Plus of course I just loved the noise. And the cobblestones weren't as bad as I thought they would be, however, it wasn't raining.

One of my first ports of call in the city was Heine Gericke as this is where my jacket and overtrousers and gloves had come from. They seemed mildly interested in the crap cold weather gloves, pointed out I needed the original receipt (but can take it to any HG shop in UK) to see to the front upper left hand side zipper surround, and that was about it. I got the matching trousers for the jacket even though I knew they'd get very rarely used. The summer gloves from HG were good though.

The photos along the way were taken with a Panasonic Lumix. Not bad and the thing was new to me just before I went on the trip. A better knowledge of photography wouldn't have gone amiss. In practical terms the pictures seem to come out not as I would have liked them....even after a bit of jiggery pokery with the exposures and wotnot.

This is the Crags just next to Arthur's Seat with Edinburgh castle just at my right elbow. There must be a way of getting the castle to look closer but keeping our handsome selves (Mr Thomson and I) in more or less full view. The Edinburgh Military Tattoo was on. This meant the approach roads to the castle were closed off and the carpark area in front of the main gate turned into the venue for it.

The Scott Monument on Princes Street and Waverly Gardens behind that.

It took two days to get down to Bristol. Along the way I met up with Warren who used to live in HK but left a couple of years ago. It was nice to meet up with him and of course he has his priorities set right....all bikes in garage, car can sit outside where it belongs.

Warren's garage

When in Bristol I visited a cousin who has an RS250 and BMW 1150GS. Here's a photo of me having just had a go on the Aprillia. What a little machine it is but I have to say, my wrists hurt after only half an hour on it. From 3 months on the Enfield to the RS250 was quite a big difference. I was impressed that the thing went as fast as it did with my bulk on it although to be fair there weren't any panniers on it. The GS was ok in a commuting kind of way which is what it really is designed for.

...it's quite a tart little thing!

And naturally he keeps lamas.....

...that's ol' Banana Ears in the background there.