London, UK - > Metz, France -> Brussels, Belgium -> London July 09

Discussion in 'Trips & Events' started by hbb, Sep 11, 2009.

  1. hbb

    hbb New Member

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    A couple of years ago I did what I had sworn I was not going to do: I put aside my NTV600, used solely for getting about London & environs to see clients, and bought something a lot quicker: the VFR 800. My grown son has since been on to me to do a road trip on it (him riding pillion) since I carelessly mentioned the possibility one day.We would make it more fun and keep the cost down by camping & doing as much camp cooking as possible.

    We had intended to do all sorts of practice runs to work up to a long trip but, for various reasons, they never happened. We did one run of around 120 miles to visit a friend and returned home the same day. That was his second trip riding pillion - the first had been a few weeks before of a couple of miles. A total of about 4 1/2 hours in the saddle in one day & I seemed to survive OK. I wasn't sure I would - turned 60 in July :)

    So Wednesday July 18th, 6 AM, saw us repeating the packing of the bike that we had rehearsed the day before. Only the rehearsal hadn't included a few details and those took hous to resolve. We got a ferry across the channel at 1:45 PM instead of 9:30 AM.

    To cut a very long story short, we covered just under 1200 miles in 8 days, saw some amazing sights, ate some really good food & generally had a good time. It was a bit of an adventure - some things did go wrong, although never with the VFR which never missed a beat.

    Hopefully, we'll do something similar next year :)


    The picture is where we camped for a couple of days in Belgium.
     

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  2. douglasthecook

    douglasthecook New Member

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    If you come through Germany, gimme a call, there are some first class roads where I'm at!!!
     
  3. drewl

    drewl Insider

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    Too cool. Sounds like a great trip. Europe is odd to us Americans because you can cross from country to country in less time than it takes us to go to another state. Where America has its subtle culture changes, Europe has different languages, laws, style, etc.
    I have dreams of touring Europe myself one day. Hope to see you there.
     
  4. douglasthecook

    douglasthecook New Member

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    We'll be here until July 2012, so if you're in the neighborhood, hit me up, I'm always up for a ride through the Eifel!!!
     
  5. hbb

    hbb New Member

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    @Douglas - We're not really into "biking roads",although running away from a sports car which was trying to join my son on the pillion, on a twisty mountain freeway, was fun! Really, we prefer to take in the countryside we're riding through. Next year we we're planning Italy 'cos we used to live there & speak the language etc. Mind you, we could maybe return via Switzerland & Germany...

    @Drewl - France is bigger thna you think :) I didn't want to use the use the autoroutes so it took us a whole day, effectively (actually 2 1/2 days) to do the 500-odd miles fro Calais to Metz. But we saw a hell of a lot we'd otherwise have missed.

    I know about the subtle US culture changes - about 25 years ago, we did a road trip in an RV, NY to Florida (via Skyline Drive) & back, mostly I95 going S & smaller roads going N. Met a lot of folks, gave the kids quite a bit of education. All in all, had a really good time.

    Th eodd thing about Europe is that, OK, you cross a national border and the laws & mebbe road signs change - but the language/culture not so much; that's a gradual transition.
    ~~~~~
    Anyway, I'd be happy to see you guys on the continent one day :)
    Or, if I can get my VFR to the US...
     
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