By this Author: RickAdderley

We left home on 28th June returning on 2nd August 2023 riding our Harley Davidson CVO trike for 2700.5 miles, costing £0.15p per mile (0.95p per kilometer) and stayed in 20 hotels.

We rode through France, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland and Holland, saw some spectacular sights and generally had a great time.

Some high points - in no particular order:

• Riding the trike

• Miniture Wunderland, Hamburg - a railway modeller's paradise

• Some great German & Czech food

• Spectacular scenery especially as we rode south

• Prague, the best overall place that we visited. The people all spoke perfect English, the service was excellent, credit cards could be used everywhere, the food was lovely and there were great places to see/visit in the city.

• Riding in the hot weather

• The suspension railway in Wuppertal

• The cog-wheel train in Stuttgart

• Our impromptue lunch stop in Bergenz where there was a firefighters' festival celebrating 150 years of fire fighting in the area. Great atmosphere and really good, freshly cooked traditional food, we could have stayed longer.

• The BMW museum in Munich

• The Mercedes museum in Stuttgart

• The soft rock bar in Stuttgart

• The ride from Stuttgart to Bonn along the B42, river views along the edge of the Rhine - this is a must if you get the chance. We saw over 20 castles and chocolate box towns

Some low points - in no particular order:

• Graffiti in all of the major cities in Germany

• Germany is a smoker's nation, more people smoked than vaped and,at times, it seemed that more people were smoking/vaping than not

• Not being able to share food in Germany, and when we did share, poor service from the waiting staff

• No air conditioning in the independant hotels

• Many of the smaller independant cafes, bars and restaurants in Germany, do not take credit cards, only cash, even in the big cities like Hamburg and Berlin etc.

• Riding through horrendous rain storms

The trike performed exceptionally well. It was sparkingly clean when we left and it wasn't too dirty when we arrived home, considering all of the bad weather we rode through. Here are a few photos of the trike before I washed off the road grime from our travels:

We are going for a short breal to the Isle of Man on the trike on 16th August 2023, you can follow our journey here: https://IsleOfMan.travellerspoint.com.

You may like to read about our other travels:

Route 66 - probably the best bike tour we have ever done
https://rickadderley.travellerspoint.com

We have also ridden East Coast USA (Washingto DC) to West Coast (San Diego) on an Indian Road master.
https://rickadderleyec2wc.travellerspoint.com

These have been riden on our Harley Davidson CVO trike:

Visiting the Isle of Man
https://IsleOfMan.travellerspoint.com

Touring around Spain
https://TouringSpain.travellerspoint.com

We were both quite excited to be travelling home today. We had a long journey of 196 miles and was looking forward to it. After breakfast, we packup, togged up and began our ride home. As usual, we rode through sun, rain and wind 😁. We had a stop on the Beaconsfield services for a light lunch reaching home at 1515h. We unpacked the trike, packed everything away and walked up to our local pub for and evening meal, the last meal of our holiday.

The last posting in this blog will be a bit "nerdy" with facts, figures, high points and low points as a roundup of our trip. This may take a few days to prepare though........so, watch this space 😃.

We were looking forward to a dry ride today as per the weather forecast, mmmmmmm 😏. We packed up in the underground car park:

...and left Antwerp at 0950h. The cobbled streets made slow going and we had to refuel before we really started but, at least it was dry, we were on our way to the tunnel in Calais.

We were pleased that we put all of our gear on as we rode through 2 heavy belts of rain but, otherwise, it was a good journey. We had a short stop for a cuppa, we didn't want to eat as we had "Flexi" tickets for the lounge and there should be food and refreshments there. It was a longish journey, about 130 miles, and we were booked on the 1520 train but we could actually catch any train with our tickets.

We checked in at the terminal and went into the lounge, we had a light lunch and caught an earlier train at 1445h:

...and checked into the Holiday Inn Express, Folkestone for our overnight stop remembering to adjust our watches, the trike does it automatically.

We had a nice evening meal in Folkestone, I had a chicken soup and we shared a pizza and chips. We have had a great time but are looking forward to going home, home is where the heart is. Looking forward to our next one though 😅.

The Hotel Bonn City didn't look very good from the outside but our room was bright, airy and clean, with our own air conditioning unit, makes a change... The breakfast room was very nice as was the breakfast. There was nowhere to sit, relax and have a drink but on the whole a great place to stay.

As we are staying in the Hilton hotel, Antwerp tonight, for our last night on the continent, today's journey was all about getting from A to B. We left Bonn in heavy rain which eased quite quickly, rode through various levels of rain throughout the journey. We travelled 150 miles arriving in the dry after having a lunch stop and spending over 3 hours in the saddle due to poor traffic conditions. Never mind, we are here now 😊. We had a couple of cold beers before unpacking.

We decided to visit Hard Rock for a drink and eveing meal which was only 80 yds from out hotel (how convenient was that 😋). We were here in early 2019 working on an EU project, this is our 1st visit since COVID. Nothing much has changed. It was raining when we left the hotel to go to Hard Rock and, while we were there the weather turned bad and it poured down with rain and remained like that all evening.

Thankfully we only had a short walk back to the hotel. We had a lovely evening meal sharing a trio BBQ, pulled pork, 1/2 chicken and 1/2 rack of ribs with coleslaw and beans:

This is our last stop befor going home to England:

...off to Eurotunnel tomorrow and statying in Folkestone before returning home, hopefully in the dry !!!

After a tempestious night of heat, traffic and sirens, we woke to church bells ringing at 0800h, not just one church but "all" of them !!! So we were up bright and early even though our breakfast was booked for 0930, which was most enjoyable. We had been allocated a car park space at the hotel this morning and moved our trike from the underground car park to the hotel at 1030h:

...as you can see the hotel only have 2 car parking spaces 🙄😝😜.

Our intention was to take the tour bus as we have done in previous cities. Unfortunately it was Sunday service, we arrived at the bus stop at 1130h and found that it didn't go until 1300h !!! So, we walked down to the Rhine and hoped to have a Rhine tour - as we have done in previous cities, but they don't do them from here. The shortest one was 4 hours without a turn around - not for us, it's more like a commuter service.

Oh well, we walked back to the bus stop (just over 1/2 mile), the bus was there at 1230h ready for the start at 1300h. We bought 2 tickets, went for a cold beer and returned to the bus ready for the tour.

Here are some photos of Bonn:

This tour was different from the others in that it was more about the modern history post 1945 rather than the real old history. All of the music on the bus was from Bethoven as he was born in Bonn.

After the tour, bearing in mind it was Sunday and Germany closed on a Sunday except for eateries. We went for a Sunday lunch in a traditional old style German pub/restaurant not too far from the bus (where we had our cold beer). "Traditional" is German traditional not UK traditional.

I had a speciality beef mince, boiled potatoes, and veg, Sand had a traditional chicken, mushroom, rice and butter peas. It was delicious, especially being washed down with beer and wine.

We had a dry day today, for a change, horrrraaaayyyy 😄😆.

We then walked back to our hotel to watch NCIS on the laptop with a bottle of wine. Easily pleased. Early start tomorrow morning, breakfast is 0800h and we have a long ride to Antwerp in Belgium.