Devall Travels

Day 4 is not quite over. We have just boarded the ferry for home after a palavver over changing our ticket. On P&O coming back a day early costs a ticket change cost plus additional fare amounting to £60. I kid you not. In the end we got it down to £29 but even that is a disgrace when the website return is £19! Maybe when I next travel I will remember this rip off? The problem was that Claire's hip wasn't causing the expected problems so we cancelled the night stay in Breda and had the run to Calais. We left the hotel around 9.45am and wasted a bit of time getting to the Motorway. We had Steve in tow until the motorway when he shot off. We stopped for petrol pretty quickly as I wanted to make sure that when we arrived at the badlands of the N49 between Antwerp and Brugge that we has loads. We made good time until I followed the overhead signs for Brugge. We had a tour of the Antwerp ring including three tunnels. The middle one carried a toll... So once you ...

Race day. A short ride after breakfast to the circuit. Within 45 minutes we were parked and looking for our seats. The Winterdijk stand was full to busting. We sat for over six hours in the burning sun to watch the main races. Hopefully when we download the pix from the camera we will have a few decent ones. On the way back we got separated but arrived in Diever for an ice cream about the same time. Tomorrow James and Steve ride home and we head for an overnight near Breda.  Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

We were up early enough to nosh through a large breakfast and it was about 930am when we finally left Zonnemaire. The plan was to go back to the N57 and continue island hopping towards Rotterdam and then head north. Once we were in Maasland we seemed to be heading east before a 180deg turn brought us to a ferry. It made a change and €5.05 later we were aboard and soon whizzing across the Maas. My Garmin interprets routes created in Mapsource and Tyre with Google Maps as it sees fit. So after the ferry we had a tour of some housing estate before we emerged on a road roughly north and roughly towards Amsterdam. Eventually we joined the A4 to the east of Den Haag and headed north at a greater speed, under the runway at Schiphol and onto the A10 ring. Eventually onto the A6 running along the eastern side of the Ijselmeer. We made one stop for petrol and a snack, otherwise it was non stop to Wapse and the hotel. Once checked in we had a walk into the village to see if d...

We were up early and away by 0715 for the short run to Dover. The checking in was pretty simple and quick and we were loaded straight on the ferry. We were at the back of a large group and the rings in the deck were rusted tight so we were moved to the other side. The sailing was relatively painless and we were soon on the way out of the port. The other group were all over the place in the road out and we slid past. The idea of island hopping seemed a good one. I topped the tank up on the outskirts of Bruges and then we seemed to get in a tizzy as the GPS mapping is out of date. The roundabout trip to the tunnel underneath the West Schelde eventually came up in sight. Just not from the direction I had expected. The day has been warm and sunny and we are both glad we are wearing our vented jackets. I've ridden all day with just a T-shirt and mesh Joe Rocket Phantom jacket. Only cold in the 6.6 kms long tunnel. We had a Coke break in a small place called Boek...

Posts that would have gone on here but sadly this blog didn't exist back then. So here's a link -  http://invictamoto.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Campania However, what I do have are the photos taken whilst we were there and stored on Flickr .

Bank Holiday Monday and it's time to pay the hotel and set off.   The trip I planned was to avoid the motorway and take the coast road as far as Honfleur. Due to a problem with the Garmin not charging on the bike it decided to die before we had really got to where we wanted  which included a crossing of the Greenwich Meridian. As  we approached  Houlgate I saw that 64000 miles was about to pop up on the odometer, and so I  stopped for Claire to take a pic of me! From here it was on into Honfleur.  Parking up in the centre of the town where I saw a couple of other bikes. It was okay until we had to get away and I had to ride along the pavement and squeeze through the barrier at the end. We had a walk around the harbour and took a break in one of the cafes, sitting in the burning heat of the day. The harbour area is a mass of cafes, restaurants and gift shops.  With the Garmin not working and the deadline of the Shuttle a...

The plan had been to include Pegasus Bridge into the main beaches day but as it turned out it's a good job we didn't as Day 2 was pretty full. We had a late breakfast and we set off for the Bridge a little later that anticipated.  The new bridge was open and we had to wait in a long column of traffic waiting for it to close.  I have to admit to being a little underwhelmed by the place. We parked alongside the Gondree cafe with a few other bikes The cafe was full of British tourists having lunch and we had a drink across the road before we decided to move on to Ouisterham. Pegasus Bridge , originally uploaded by  Invicta Moto . Pegasus Bridge , originally uploaded by  Invicta Moto . Read more  here . The weather was a bit chilly and we had a walk through the village near the casino and had lunch! We always have lunch. We had a gentle ride back down to Caen and parked the bike up round the corner from the hotel and went in to chang...