Devall Travels

For most of this years battlefield visitors the date they will be heading to the Somme will be July 1st.  This is the 95th anniversary of the first battle of the Somme back in 1916. William Devall My visit is slightly different. I will be making the trip to visit the grave of my Grandfather's cousin William Devall.  Although born in London, William was sent to the Kings Own Shropshire Light Infantry.  This regiment is better known as the posting of the war poet Sigfried Sassoon. The KSLI missed the opening day of the slaughter and arrived to take up their position as part of the second wave.  We don't know where William was wounded but he died of his wounds on July 16th 1916. He is buried in the Extension for the Corbie Communal Cemetery.

The choices for crossing Germany were the "A4" route or the "A3" route. The former being the run across East Germany and entering Czech from the north, or the latter, the route across Germany from Koln to Nurnberg and across the border in the west. When I saw that you could stay in Colditz Castle, and that part of the infamous PoW site was now a German Youth Hostel I was quickly on the email, booking two nights.   In their paperwork I saw that there are tours of the remainder of the castle as well.  After an exchange of emails I have booked us on the "standard" tour and then we can have the afternoon to maybe have run out locally to Leipzig or Dresden. Info: "Extended Tour:  10.30 am  and  02.00 pm which is showing you all places possible to go to, lasts about 2 hours and costs 15,00€ per person. Standard Tour:  10.30 am  ,  01.00 pm  and  03.00 pm  which is showing you the main places, lasts about ...

Original planning for this trip started back in the autumn of last year.  It's seven years since we last went to Brno and the Czech Republic and I thought it would be a good idea to incorporate a trip to the MotoGP as well as see friends. We had been to the Dutch TT two years running and wanted another MotoGP visit.  I thought about Cataluña but as it clashed with the TT on the Isle of Man I decided to look at Czech. Tickets went on sale in December and the English version of the official website was easy to follow and I booked two general admission tickets for around €45 each for the weekend.  The weekend ticket covers Friday to Sunday practice and race days. The original plan was to go to by bike of course. All the initial planning, route and stops etc, was based on a bike day in the saddle.  Then Claire's hip decided to get involved and it has become far too painful for her to pillion anywhere, so we decided to bite the bullet and go by car.  Luckily, ...

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...