Eurothrash 2024: Day 1 – Portsmouth to Santander

As I mentioned in an earlier post,  following the shakedown trip to Berlin, we were heading off on a tour of Spain, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium in July.

We had ummed and ahhed about buying mesh jackets to wear instead of the Klim kit we have but thought that we would struggle for luggage space because we would need to stack the Latitude and Altitude gear somewhere if we were wearing mesh jackets and we were packing a lot of clothing already, given the quality of the hotels and restaurants we had booked, so decent shoes, trousers, shirts and dresses were already taking up a fair bit of space.

How much space? Well there was all the standard luggage space (including the optional top case) and on top of the top case we were again using the Kriega US-40 Rackpack but this time we had added one of my venerable old Kriega US-20 Drypacks on top using the wonderful strapping system engineered into these bags.

I also thought about buying a new drone to use on the journey but with only a week to go decided against buying it for now as the trip was going to be pretty mileage-intensive so stopping, setting up, filming, returning, repacking, etc. was probably off the table.  Maybe next year?

A couple of days beforehand, I thought I’d just print out our travel documents. You may know we’d originally booked it for a week or two before before but Angelina’s graduation date was announced and clashed, so we had had to rebook… without the CClub Lounge access on our original booking.  Luckily there must have been a last minute cancellation, so I managed to book the last two spots, meaning we could relax in a bit more peaceful surroundings and enjoy complimentary food and wine.

We headed off to Portsmouth after work on the Thursday, boarded and found our cabin. Two nights and one full day aboard awaited us.  Sadly, Brittany Ferries’ “Salamanca” ship doesn’t have an actual gym or fitness suite and the spa was just a couple of chairs and a table near to the kids’ zone. Hardly relaxing. But the cabin was fine, the porthole looking out to sea was nice to have and the quality of the food and drink in the Lounge was good enough for us not to need to eat in the restaurants.

Overall? Pricey at £747 all-in one way, but comfortable if a bit boring and it got us to Santander on the Saturday morning ready to go. Would we do it again? Well, it gets you right into Northern Spain but £750 pays for a nice hotel or two and the petrol to ride down the West coast and through the Pyrenees.

 

Back to the RT’s Birthplace – BMW Motorradwerk Berlin

The first major overseas trip planned for the RT was to its birthplace: the BMW Motorradwerk in Berlin.

I knew this was going to be a pretty boring trip as my past experience of Northern France has always been that it’s the area you have to ride or drive through to get to the interesting bits, which is why this July’s trip starts with a ferry down to Spain…

Anyway, I checked the Michelin maps I’ve got for that trip and saw that I could actually have some ‘scenic’ stuff in Belgium on the way (given that I’d planned a two stop strategy on the way to Berlin, two nights in Berlin itself, and then one stop on the way back in the Netherlands.

So at around 6am on Sunday 9th June it was off to LeShuttle at Folkestone for our fixed time trip out.  On the way there, the truly irritating BMW Connected app had frozen on the A3 but fortunately I knew I was using the M25 and turned off in time, rather than continuing as the app was pretending to tell me.  As we arrived to check in, I realised that I’d left my wallet at home so I’d have to try to pay for everything with Apple Pay on my Apple Watch or iPhone 15 Pro…

It froze a couple of times in France and Belgium which meant we had to go a slightly different route towards Liege than I’d planned, and threw my trust in the app off even more.  I can see why some other owners have given up and ditched it altogether in favour of a mounted Garmin one (which also has the added bonus of showing “safety” cameras).  Why BMW don’t let us use Apple CarPlay is beyond me.

Still, at least I got a bit of footage in Dinant in Belgium, which was indeed scenic:

We stopped along the way in a lovely little town called Florennes for a salad for lunch.

RT parked up in Florennes

We got to the Mercure at Liege and checked in, asking if we could book a table in the restaurant. “No,” they said, “it’s not open on Sundays”. Well that’s not what it says on their website! We decided to get a drink in the bar anyway, but again, we were told that’s also closed on Sundays. We weren’t best pleased…  We did, however, find a little Italian restaurant nearby where we could eat.

The next day was a bit of a wet one as we headed towards Hameln (or “Hamelin” where the Pied Piper hung out. I’d booked us into the Hotel Stadt Hameln and frankly didn’t expect much, but the room was large and comfortable and the restaurant was absolutely outstanding. We also wandered into the old town to see if we could get some cash out on Alison’s Supplemental American Express Platinum Card, but sadly that service isn’t offered any longer.  This meant we had no cash for tipping.

The Klim Latitude and Altitude clothing, our Alpinestars short boots and our gloves had all  performed brilliantly keeping us dry as a bone, and with the heated seats, grips and waistcoats we’d been warm as well.

We then headed on to Berlin and two nights at the outstanding Hotel Adlon Kempinski at the Brandenburg Gate. I could definitely get used to champagne and caviar for breakfast every day!  At least we could use their temporary gym – the normal one is being renovated – to burn some of the calories off.

We also visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; very poignant.

On the Wednesday after brunch we went off to BMW Motorradwerk for an extended factory tour in English … except the English-speaking guide couldn’t do it, so the German one press-ganged a Polish(?) tourist into translating for him, which sort of worked but was a tad unsatisfactory.

Thursday morning after a workout and brunch we headed off to Eindhoven, seeing 207km/h or 129mph on the autobahns. Well that was irritating! One minute, you’re on an unrestricted stretch of dual carriageway in Germany and the next moment it’s the same road in the Netherlands with a 100km/h speed limit! The next morning was the same when we left the Netherlands and hit Belgium: the same road but now with a 120km/h speed limit.

The Park Plaza in Eindhoven was again comfortable after a really long ride but it featured the slowest lift in the world ever!

After breakfast we packed and headed back to Calais and then on to home. We’d booked flexiplus on LeShuttle so after ordeal by UK Border Agency as usual – including the jobsworth insisting we took off our crash helmets for no reason at all – we had lunch in the lounge before getting on the next train back to the UK and home by mid-afternoon on Friday: four countries in one day!

So yes: 1,418 miles with a maximum speed of 129mph and still averaging 47.8mpg for the trip.

At the last minute I’d added a Kriega US-40 Rackpack for our shoes and heated vests to go in, fixed to the frame and rack and sitting on the top of the top case (plus we had the top case and pannier liner bags to use).