Today was successful. Breakfast was a rather pretentious version of hotel breakfasts, personal service offering guests a platter of meat or cheeses and everything is presented in highly designed glass bowls, with a fake candle light and pissing boy statue. But I was so hot, it must be the male menopause. I had the feeling that the hotel ‘team’ were a little suspicious of me on arrival, dripping wet and not one of the well dressed elderly people that seemed to make up all the other guests. In fact last night on my return from parking the bike, they had put up a hotel full notice, maybe because they definitely didn’t want another one of me turning up. So I made a point of behaving in the most gracious way I could to show them I wasn’t a wet criminal biker. On reflection I should have done the opposite. In the night I have just remembered I was awoken as was half the street by the sound of what I think was an extremely drunk elderly man shouting unintelligible noises down on the street, echoing off the tall buildings. He seemed far gone. Nearly all his utterances had one syllable while only a few had two. It had only very little resemblance to human speech. Eventually someone that I couldn’t see came and took him in to a van and drove him off. This seemed to take them an hour and in the meantime it had started pouring with rain and I remember not for the first time loving being in a soft bed in a building rather than lying on the ground with a thin piece of nylon between me and total exposure to the elements. At no point did I hear him communicating in other than this simple fashion.

I ought to say that there is a better account of this trip, along with more photographs at http://www.obliquepanic.co.uk/life/germany-2014/germany-1.html

I managed to clutch slip my way out of the car park and pack up efficiently and be on the road shortly after nine. I had debated whether to gear up for wet weather and decided not to, the right decision as the sun was even shining as I headed north towards Bitburg, where the beer comes from. I relaxed once I was riding as I usually do and asked myself what all the fuss was about. After an hour I stopped and it started to rain though not heavily. A little later I stopped somewhere just off the motorway to Antwerp for petrol and had a tasty salad roll made by the hand of a heavily tattooed young woman who spoke English. I had no idea what language would be spoken in this corner of Belgium with its French road signs. I bought two packs of Camel for 5€ each and the yellow variety you can’t seem to get in the UK so all in all a successful stop. But as I went to stash my fags on the bike the heavens opened along with thunder and under the grateful shelter of the forecourt I struggled into my wet weather thing and had to get half out of it again twice, once because I had left the keys in a pocket that was inaccessible and then again to fish out the GPS in another pocket. I watched it pour for about half an hour and with slightly clearing skies I set off for the remaining 120 miles. There is so much traffic and much of it big trucks around the city ring roads, first Antwerp then Rotterdam. It needs real concentration to ride and after not too long the rain gratefully stopped and things got warm again, up to 22 degrees and wrapped up in my many layers I began to get incredibly uncomfortable with nowhere to stop until about ten miles out of HvH. Road works just outside Hoek van Holland completely defeated my GPS which even took us along a bicycle path for a mile or so. I tried to pretend to everyone that Bertha was a little moped which seem to be allowed to use those cycle paths.
Trier to HvH at EveryTrail

There is always a huge sense of relief and achievement of one kind arriving at a ferry port, so now I am sitting in the huge always empty Stenna terminal building. As ever I am looking forward to a shower on the boat and some cooked food with a glass of wine.

Although I find bikers in groups a bit of a turn off, individual people on bikes are usually interesting to talk to. For instance in the queue for the ferry I chatted to a German guy on his way to Swansea (I did warn him not to have high expectations) for a Suzuki Katana meeting (it’s a 1980s bike I think). He said he lived in the Ruhr and had worked down a coal mine for ten years before the mine had closed. Did the mines run out of coal I asked, no he said the health and safety requirements have priced European coal out of the market. The barges of coal I saw going down the Rhein were imported from China, he told me where the life of coal miners is cheap.

A second conversation was briefer, with a Polish guy riding a Buel. He told me he had got up at midnight that day to ride 1500 kilometres to catch the ferry and then from Harwich he was riding over to Holyhead to catch the boat to Ireland where he was living. He said he had to stop for petrol every 100 miles. Weren’t you tempted just to fly, I asked. No, he replied, I have been preparing for this journey for three years and always something has got in the way until now.

My journey today was 246 miles in 3 hours 42 minutes.

I slept well on the boat with no sensation at all that we were at sea or moving. Perhaps towards 4am I did feel some juddering and wondered if we were changing direction mid North Sea but in fact when I got up ( we ere awoken at 5.30) I could see we had already docked. Some ferries you spend contemplative time on deck watching the ship leave or arrive, but the timing of this one means you can be asleep the whole time the ship is at sea and never see it moving.
Harwich to Home at EveryTrail

Reflections: the new tent was a mixed blessing. It was great to have the room to bring everything inside without having to crouch around it and a few times I did stand up in it, but I never contemplated bringing Bertha inside it. At one site I would have had to drive her up a flight of stairs. The tent also has doors everywhere which helps privacy. It did not take much longer to put up than my other smaller tent. On the negative side, it is big and heavy. It needs an extra bag on the bike, so any slow speed manoeuvres are extra tricky. Park on a slight slope and it’s sometimes really hard to haul the bike upright. And most of the time I seemed to carry it around completely wet which must’ve add to its weight. So all in all I am not sure it was such a clever buy. But I have had enough of sleeping under canvass for a while. At it’s very best, you camp in a beautiful site, with lots of space around your tent, with warm sunny weather with few people using the facilities and with a sense of camaraderie with other travellers in tents. You cook food that you’ve bought locally in the outside air with suitable wine (chilled if you are lucky) and life doesn’t get much better. My trip to Spain last year scored pretty well in that regard. But it’s the lack of privacy that gets me down at its worst and throw in some iffy weather then it can rapidly turn into a bit of a nightmare and the bubble bursts. The two stays I had in hotels on this trip I really appreciated the privacy and the comfort. So I am not sure what next. I think I need to move on from this model.