Devall Travels

I blame Henry Cole, who's programme on the Travel Channel called "World''s Greatest Motorcycle Rides", for this amendment. The last programme we had on Sky+ was about the German Romantische Strasse . Places like Donauworth, Dinkelsbühl and Rothenburg ob der Tauber. So we will be in the car but the roads looked pretty open and traffic free when he did the ride. Claire is most interested in a visit to http://www.wohlfahrt.com/index.php?article_id=1&clang=1  in Rothenburg.  Depending on time and miles we may "do" one or maybe of the places. On the run back from Prague the plan was Heilbronn and the Sinsheim Museum. This has now changed to a tour of some ancient and umbombed Bavarian towns. Due to the vagaries of the Tom Tom mapping where Czech doesn't exist I can't actually map all the way from Prague!! So to check the distances I have to map from Waidhaus on the German side of the border!! As a result, I have changed the booking from DJH at Hei...

For one reason or another we have changed to the car from the bike; then for a while it may have become "all change" as I looked at flying to Brno instead of driving. A fly-drive trip may have come out a little cheaper, even via Vienna instead of Brno. In the end I have simply shaved a day off the schedule and Poland has been dropped. The route now takes us from Colditz across the nearest border and to Prague and the dalnice to Brno. The TomTom mapping is pretty daft. They sold the XL with IQ mapping but when the first (and free) upgrade ran, the maps are too big to fit. Instead you have to choose a sub section. The only one that includes UK doesn't include the ČR! So. We have to hope that the free wifi at the hotel in Bochum will let me download the right maps or we simply shift to ancient Garmin power; which does have all the maps. Three weeks to go!!

To mark the 95th Anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, and more especially the Battle of Bazentin Ridge that kicked off the second phase of the battle, on July 14th 1916, Claire and I are off the France to visit the grave of my Great-Cousin William Devall. We went on the 90th anniversary and left a British Legion poppy cross to show that someone in our small family had remembered. Trying to find out more about how William came to be in the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry for a bloke that was born and bred in Vauxhall in South London has proved to be a little more complicated.  An email to the regimental museum didn't really help as they don't have many records any more, and what is available are on Ancestry.com. A visit there seems to have got nowhere really. It is a shame that national records that should be owned by the country and managed by the UK Government have been let go to a commercial site. From the regimental history book, I can see how the 7th Battalion made ther...

Not all of this trip will be about eating and drinking and watching bike racing.  There will be local sights, folklore and culture!!! On the way home from Brno we have a stop in Prague . As it is really about 160 miles that day we have a stop in Prague . I have two cultural stops on the way back. The first at Žďár nad Sázavou to pay a visit to the Pilgrimage Church of St John of Nepomuk on Zelena hora Hill. This was built in the shape of a star in 1719. More info on the Church  - http://www.santini.cz/zdar-nad-sazavou-en.html The other place on the Brno-Prague route is the Church of Bones at Kutna Hora.  I first saw it in a travel book many years ago and then it was featured in the "Long Way Round" TV series with celeb actor luvvies Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman. This is a bizarre church where skeletons of the long deceased are used as decorative materials!  It must be worth a half hour to visit. More info on Church of Bones - http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

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, ...