Long Way Home

[Whethefakawe]

A V-twin from 1910....Wanderer V2, from Germany....408cc, 4 HP. A real boulevard racer.


Nice collection of 1970's Italian bikes, mostly Laverda's but also MV Agusta and Ducati

 

[Whethefakawe]

A 1972 Munch 1200 TTS....German


A NSU from around 1910.....beautiful detail




A DOLF....(no, not ADOLF)  shown in earlier pic...also beautiful engineering from the early 1900's




A BMW or two....




Not one Jap bike......OK that's it.

 

[Whethefakawe]

After a Red bull and a litre of water cured my headache from looking at so much in the museum, I headed north-west, destination WIESBADEN. It's about 40 k's west of Frankfurt, but I stayed off the autobahn as long as possible, going through small towns like this...


It started raining, and once again the Belstaff raingear I'd bought 4 years previously and used maybe twice worked as advertised....can't say enough good about it, just a basic jacket and pants but they kept me bone dry.

By the time I reached my destination in Wiesbaden it stopped raining. I found the Wiesbaden cemetery easily, thanks to dilligent application of the 6 P's.

A short explanation....I was NOT on a ghoul tour of Europe's cemeteries, despite what it may sound like. There was a scientific, historical method to my madness, not relevant here. At this huge, park-like cemetery I paid my respects to someone I'd heard of since I was a kid, but most people don't realise he was a real person: The Red Baron.

AKA Manfred von Richthofen, the German ace pilot of the First World War. And NO, fucking Snoopy wasn't buried anywhere near....that's just yank creative masturbation.
The entrance:


The Baron's grave. It's actually a family plot, most of the clan are there except his younger brother who was also a big-shot Fokker pilot and was buried in Berlin, where the communists concreted over the cemetery he was in in 1962 when the wall went up.


Just west of Wiesbaden I hooked up with the Rhine river, and followed it north all the way to Koblenz (eventually). But barely 30 k's later, where the river turns north at a little town called RUEDESHEIM, my most  favourite wankers messed up my plans. It was Saturday, and the whole town was blocked off for some fucking Hardly-Ableson "ride". Meaning all the big fat, glossy mid-life crisis 'bikers" were sitting at beer gardens and weinstuben comparing jackets, R1000 T-shirts with eagles on the chest, and thick-soled, chrome-studded boots with the cute little strap over the bridge.

I was annoyed, because the only road along the river was blocked off on both sides of the town....not sure why....probably a "parade".  So I had to navigate the maze of alleys and narrow streets through the hills, until I got back to the river road a few k's north of the town.  There I saw this sign:


I remember Suzi Quatro from the 80's....she is German, did you know that? and I liked her music (sort of - was mostly pissed when listening to it). The Polish peace sign is for the bit of wisdom at the bottom  :imaposer:

Fuck I only lagged.

Even harder when I saw THIS sign...fitting place to have a Hardly ride


I'm not making this up.....

It drizzled on and off all the way up the rhine. Some views:


These cargo boats (ships?) used on the Rhine aren't small....carry around a 1000 tonnes of freight...check the station wagon on the stern.


They load them to the gills, too...this is an empty one


I didn't take many photos, as the weather was a bit dull...light not good. In bright sunlight this ride is beautiful though...the hills along the Rhine are covered in vineyards, that's where wines like Johannisberger Riesling comes from....


As usual, just about the time my arse  started bleeding from the KTM's seat, I saw a sign saying "gasthaus" out the corner of my eye and turned around, and spent the night in the top left bedroom of a good rural German couple's house. I forget their names, but they both looked like ....well, anybody who eats a lot of red meat and quaffs a lot of beer  :biggrin:

 

[baiker 2]

Always worth the read, but bru, you take long smoke breaks.

 

[Whethefakawe]

Ja well....as I mentioned, a moot point now...don't smoke though, just travel.... :biggrin:

The gasthaus was 2 or 3 km from the "Lorelei" - a sharp S-bend in the river where, according to very old legends, some Saxon bint sat on a rock flashing her rude bits and luring unsuspecting sailors (how TF do you sail UPstream??) onto the rocks back in the middle ages.

Ja right. Sounds like an excuse for poor seamanship...rivermanship? to me. Whatever....bad boating.

While I had a plan, following a route to find different things, much of this trip - as all my rides - was random...the best way to ride, when you see something interesting, you stop  :biggrin:

Just before breaking away from the Rhine the river and road passed through REMAGEN, another name that rang a bell for some reason...turns out it was yet another big WW2 battle, at the LUDENDORFF bridge across the Rhine. Remagen was significant because it was the scene of the first ever jet bomber attack, using a guided missile nogal. German, what else?

The bridge was damaged but only collapsed ten days after the yanks captured it....some soldiers were killed when it fell into the Rhine while Jeeps etc were driving across it. Timing is everything....

The bridge in 1945



Today:




Stayed on the river road, went through KOBLENZ like pap through the minister of defence....it was still drizzling, didn't take many pics, concentrating too much on staying alive. After another planned stop in Cologne, I started bracketing my next planned stop: SPA. The road passed through the ARDENNES, famous for yet ANOTHER 70-year old happening, the Battle of the Bulge - big in American memory. It's not a big area - I only saw a portion of it, but still - and since there was too much history I knew nothing about, I kept going except for one or two stops.

Going downhill into Belgium on twisty mountain roads, my arse started bleeding again so I was very glad to get to Spa. It was Saturday (Sunday??) and some race meeting had just ended - people leaving the area, lots of okes on superbikes trying to emulate what they'd just seen....

 

[landieman]

brilliant!!!!RR.making everyone very jealous,i'm sure :thumleft: :thumleft:

 

[Whethefakawe]

Hope not - that's not the intent....just recording a ride!

I was excited to see SPA - but all in vain. because the track lies at the bottom of a narrow, steep forested valley, access is difficult - only by a few roads, and these were all gated and controlled - no wandering around freely like at Nurburgring and Monza. Some race meeting was also just letting out...maybe if it had been a different day I could have gotten on the track, but doubt it.

Because of the restricted access and topography, one can only see small parts of the track from any point.

As far as I know parts of SPA are public roads, and is only closed off for races....used to be at least.


When you look a bit closer, you can see EAU ROUGE going up the hill in the distance, just to the left of the red box. This was about the extent of my SPA experience....


I was standing at bottom centre of this photo when I took the above shots:


Literally 500m up the road from the gate by the hairpin, I found this little motorsports-themed hotel:



I knew I was done for the day, so hit the pub at high speed, then got a room - the oke was nice, gave me the top floor room above the entrance....prime view. The pub was racer's heaven....photos, flags, posters, all kinds of racing memorabilia....my kind of place  :biggrin:

Had a nice lunch and several beers - Belgian beer is a WHOLE nother story.....and chatted with a young Dutch oke who'd just finished his pasta meal after a long bicycle ride  and had red spaghetti  sauce all over his face...he couldn't figure out why I was laughing the whole time. There were several okes from some or other racing team at the next table, and I was curious whether my out-of-tune ear for Afrikaans would understand what they were saying...well, two spoke Deutsch,(which I DO understand), and the others a totally incomprehensible language....NOT French, NOT Slavic....I surmised it was Belgian French but wasn't sure. I only found out the next day that Flemish isn't spoken in this part of Belgium....but that's another story  :biggrin:

View from the room the next morning....as mentioned, 500m to the left down the hill is the LA SOURCE  hairpin


One would think that riding on the smooth, well-organised roads of Europe is easy. It IS...but a KTM seat is a KTM seat.....I found that about 400 km a day with numerous stops was enough for my arse....consequently went to bed around 8 every night, and up early....6 at the latest, usually got on the road by 7 am.

As on this day....ten miutes later went by this little airport in the middle of nowhere...saw the MIRAGE and stopped...the Belgians flew the Mirage 5.


It's one of the most purposeful-looking machines ever designed methinks....SHARP comes to mind....


I was headed to France, and pushed on....the east-west freeway through Belgium was very busy, lots of trucks....concentration required....saw signs for HERSTAL, where the FN factory is, and went by 20 km south of WATERLOO....considered stopping but had to get to my next planned stop....next time....

I DID exit into NAMUR - couldn't resist trying to find the famous MX GP track, but realised almost immediately it would take an hour or 3....hadn't plotted it on my MAP (no GPS for this boy, remember) so gave up on the idea and continued after filling up with E1,60/litre  petrol.

As usual, didn't even realise I was out of Belgium until I saw French flags here and there. Illegal immigrant's wet dream  :biggrin:

 

[Whethefakawe]

This is the SOMME region of France, slightly north and east of Paris....beautiful area, which was ravaged during the madness that engulfed Europe almost 100 years ago. The scars and leftovers from the First World War are still everywhere....

Not in this little village though, can't remember the name, just one of hundreds of scenic, slow-paced rural villages in France.


In accounts of WW1 battles you read about "sunken roads"...this is what it looks like, the road is lower than the farm fields on both sides.


My research, the underlying reason for this trip back north through Europe, led me to several cemeteries all over this area. At this time of year, IE. early summer - first 2 weeks of July - this part of France is absolutely beautiful....grain in the fields, wildflowers everywhere, weather is PERFECT....the many war cemeteries seem totally out of place, and when you read some of the headstones or understand why they are there, it puts a bit of a damper on a beautiful day....

Various scenes in the SOMME area

 

[Whethefakawe]

F**king computer and Imageshack getting stupid....will try again

 

[Whethefakawe]

OK continue....










Riding through the French coubtryside is excellent....kids in swimming pools, bicyclists, trctors on the roads towing all kinds of farm implements.....many of the main roads are toll roads, so I stayed off them...spent the nightin a "motor-hotel" just south of ARRAS.

I got two of these with my coffee:



Yes, that's sugar....easy to see why the French aren't fat  :biggrin:

The town of ARRAS


Ooh la la....sexy robot in Arras


OLD road sign in Arras...not sure how old, but from early 1900's I'm guessing.....

 

[Whethefakawe]

Wandering around the small backroads, I saw a sign for LONGUEVAL, and it seemed vaguely familiar so checked it out. Turns out it's the little - LITTLE - village at DELVILLE WOOD, where the South African 1st Infantry Brigade suffered 80% casualties in 6 days in July 1916....I didn't realise till later that I had been there on one of those exact days...

I'm not going to expound on the happenings there or the memorial, that's all online ...I knew next to nothing about all of it....it is described as "..one of the bloodiest battles of the Somme..." which speaks voluimes, as the Somme battle was one of the worst slaughterhouses ever in recorded history.

The place is beautiful, and eerie...the whole forest is a memorial today and is fenced off - in fact, it is a war grave - there are still bits of something like 300 men in there somewhere -  across the street is the (big) cemetery. The SA memorial is in the 5-pointed star shape of the Cape Castle. and there is a museum but everything was closed.



Got the T-shirt


Lanes between the trees, just like it had been in 1916...named for well-known streets, there's a STRAND STREET amongst others.





There is ONE original tree left in the whole wood, it has pieces of shrapnel embedded in it....the terrain all around is plowed up, old shellholes etc:


Trenches still clearly visible...walking down them I had a seriously strange feeling...hair on my neck stood on end...really. Can't describe it, it's just eerie and I was very jumpy....very unusual behaviour  




There are signs advising people NOT to wander into the wood...the undergrowth is still full of poison gas residue and you can get very ill from it.

It was hot - 31 degrees - so I took a nap under the trees here - very quiet and peaceful, birds singing in the trees, no human noise of any kind....



This is what it looked like in 1916

 

[Whethefakawe]

A few k's after leaving Delville Wood, something caught my eye as I rode through a small village (and I mean SMALL - a shop, 10 or 12 houses and a barn or two) so had to turn around and check it out  :biggrin:

It was a brown pile of something in someone's barnyard:


Upon closer inspection I almost bek@kked myself.....


Ja kopperaal....a pile of ordnance dug up out of farmlands....these were safe, hopefully, but I didn't take a souvenir....people STILL get hurt and killed every season when ploughing their lands to plant crops and so on.....

In a local cafe, where a stereotypical garlic-smelling Frenchman in a dirty vest tried to intimidate me by being a rude d00s, I saw a shelf full of polished artillery shell nose cones and other bits and pieces, for E8 apiece. Should have bought one, but the oke was so rude it pained me to even buy the bottle of water I did....I must say though, he was the only rude froggie I met. Everybody else I dealt with were very nice.

Not far from Delville Wood is THIEPVAL, and I could see it from 8 km away - it's the site of one of the big British Memorials to the missing in this area....very imposing monument, 50m high. When you get close, it makes you go cold....it has over 72000 names on it, 90% of which are from the Battle of the Somme in 1916,  the MISSING who just disappeared.

And it's just one of the memorials to the missing.





From the Somme area I wandered north towards the coast, and went into Belgium again. Here was the ONLY sign of a border post I've seen anywhere in Europe - and it's onviously deserted - not sure if all the others had been broken down, but ..... :dontknow:


This part is FLANDERS, which was part of the WW1 front, so ceneteries, memorials and museums everywhere too...."Flanders Fields" were probably even more notorious than the Somme as an abattoir of Europe's young men almost a 100 years ago.



Forget the name, stopped briefly at this cemetery, the second biggest in Europe ....over 8000 graves in it - the biggest, TYNE COT, has over 12000....


Despite being on a historical research trip, and my interest in all...well, MOST.... things old, the ever-present reminders of the criminal stupidity of politicians, even in a civilised place like Western Europe, was getting a bit depressing...needed something a little more cheery...like a good Belgian beer or six.

Or a CIRCUS :blob1:



Unfortunately, it was middle of the day...any show would only be at 8 pm or so... would have been fun  :biggrin:

Flanders looks a lot different than France....much more crowded, for one thing - like the Netherlands


And I started seeing words and names I could read and understand.... this one's a bitch, they say (not that I would know, being 29 years old)  :imaposer:

 

[1ougat]

sub

 

[Whethefakawe]

About 3 pm I cruised into YPRES, one of the bigger towns in the area, a very historical and OLD town which is, however. mostly known for being yet another WW1 killing field. The town and it's 700-year old CLOTH HALL was flattened during WW1, and completely rebuilt afterwards. Its history goes back to a century BC, and it was world-famous for its textiles all through the middle ages.  

Ypres in 1918




Same two buildings today, the Cloth Hall and the Cathedral:




It was blerrie hot, and I  was hungry and thirsty - but trying hard to control the urge for beer - wanted to ride another hour or two before finding a place to sleep. I sat down at an outside table at a nice little pub across the street from these two buildings, and ordered some food. Also took my boots and jacket off - good resaon to sit outside with the smokers.  

From where I sat, I noticed this elegant bike rack:



The pub next door was closed, and I never found out what the name meant...or implied  :laughing4:


I was starting to chuckle, and then noticed a real-life CACOPHONIX at the next table






Now I was REALLY laughing and starting to consider having a beer (just one). While engaged in such musing, an oke sat down at the next table, lit up a zol and said ":...wil je een pintjie saam met my drink??"

I jumped, as it was the first real Flemish I'd heard, and realised I could understand it very well....that specific question anyways. I'd kind of thought that Flemish was more like Dutch, which is f**king unintelligible to me....can only catch maybe every sixth or tenth word of THAT.

Well, it would have been churlish of me to refuse....so I said "...seker!"

Three Belgian beers later my riding for the day was OVER. We had a good time, met these two okes, the big oke's name was Ronald...forget the other one's name, talk-talk-talk and they figure out they had both been paratroopers in the Belgian army back in the 70's....a good time was had by all :biggrin:

 

[Whethefakawe]

The three of us closed the pub down - around 8 pm, shockingly early - and Ronald and I went two doors down for Thai food. Then he got in the mood for Scotch....and then the wheels fell off.

Well not really, there was no breaking of bottles or bones, or any other unruly behaviour. Just a R1700 bill, after which we ended up at a nice little bar at the back side of the Cloth Hall:





We'd switched to single malt looong before, and I sort of knew that the next day would be hell...but you know how it goes....at 3 am it was time to find a hotel  :imaposer:

The only one close by was....closed. So I ended up sleeping on old Ronald's kitchen floor. In my riding gear, on my blow-up mattress. Slept like a baby too except the bastard remembered at 7 am that he'd left his wallet at the bar, and therefore  his problem was mine too...he kicked me out, and went looking for his wallet....so  I  went back to sleep in a church garden around the corner.  

Three hours later I was ride-capable, and left Ypres behind....wandered around the countryside in a Scottish fog, but still saw some interesting things. In the little village of POELCAPELLE is a memorial to a French hero pilot of the 1st WW named GEORGES GUYNEMER, who disappeared into thin air during an air battle near there, aged 22.


The small building at left is the TANK CAFE, which has an interesting history of its own, named after a British tank that had been shot out in front of it during the war and stood there until 1941.




In another village I saw this cafe:


And what I thought at first glance, to be a knocking shop....but the Belgians aren't as skeef as the Dutch...don't have those kind of establishments all over the place....turns out it's a SEWING shop  :imaposer:


This part of Belgium is rural....not in the context SAffers know it though - small farms, what we'd call "ama-plots". Animals everywhere, saw these cows in a field, and something just didn't look right....





:imaposer: I had a good laugh...body-building bovines? mutated Jack Russels? Couldn't tell, but it was farking funny.

Shortly afterwards I saw this oke and stopped to take a photo of him....


I'd shut the 950 down, and when he heard me laughing at him, he tuned: "...I'm going to MO-O-O-O-R you..."


It was bloody hilarious....as babalas as I was, it had me laughing very hard.

After a while, said babie REALLY kicked in....I stopped at a roadside cafe and ordered some food and 18 litres of water and several coffees....people were looking at me very strangely, I sat there staring into space like a dog passing a peach pit, feeling too k@k to even move my eyeballs, until the coffee and water overwhelmed the single malt and I perked up.

Jissis I just never learn.....

 

[Aquatic]

Love it!

 

[Whethefakawe]

While I was riding around in a daze, I ran into some major road works...ended up on obscure backroads of the kind that get you robbed and killed in Africa.....just kept heading north-west, into the sun....eventually got back on the main highway paralelling the coast and turned west towards Dunkirk and Calais.

I investigated a place called BRAY DUNES, as part of my historical quest. Just down the coast from DUNKERQUE, where the British army jumped into fishing trawlers and rowboats to get away from those nasty nazi's in 1940....actually the beaches for several miles were used to evacuate something like 330 000 soldiers, including this one at Bray Dunes.

Beach looks perfect for dirtbikes or anything to do with WIND sports, but the water is colder than a witch's tit....




Near CALAIS it was sleepy time...had only done maybe 200 k's for the day but had to get rid of the babalas...found a nice hotel, like a Formula 1 except cleaner and nicer, just off the freeway and was asleep before the sun went down  :lol8:

The area around Calais is very busy, it's one of the big ports for traffic to and from the UK- although much of it goes by the Chunnel nowadays. I continued west and south, past BOULOGNE SUR MER, and got off the freeway again near my destination(s), two small villges in the countryside. It was another stunning day:





I saw a white layer of fog or something out to sea - English Channel, to be exact - and only realised much later that it was the white cliffs of DOVER




Rode out to CAP GRIS NEZ - this is about as close as you can get to England in Europe. As the Somme and Flanders were heavily impacted by the First World War, this part of France was by the Second. There are still bunkers, shellholes, all kinds of relics and scars left over....the infamous footage of Hitler and Goering looking at England through binoculars was taken at Cap Gris Nez.. it's REALLY close to Dover....35 km, you can clearly see it with the naked eye.


Cap Gris Nez is now a nature reserve, with walking paths and lookout spots  over the Channel.

The area was plowed up by several years of shelling and bombing....these bunkers were part of the ATLANTIC WALL that General Rommel built to try and deter the inevitable Allied invasion of Europe.


An old bunker makes a convenient lookout platform:


Considering the proximity of the Englisg coast, THIS was quite threatening - the big bunker was a massive gun emplacement, and the train-mounted gun speaks for itself....both these appear in some (in)famous photos of the WW2 days.
The train gun was of 280mm calibre with  a range of 62 km...must have caused some sleepless nights across the channel...

 

[Whethefakawe]

Next stop was London, so I rode north through the nature reserve to CAP BLANC NEZ (White Cape) about 10 k's north of Cap GRIS Nez (Black Cape). Very nice piece of coastline.

At Cap Blanc Nez, and looking back at GRIS Nez.




On a high point at Blanc Nez stands a statue of an oke named HUBERT LATHAM. Talk about someone who came s-o-o-o-o close to fame and fortune - although he was from a very wealthy family - and got the short end of the stick on more than one occasion....

He was the FIRST person to attempt to fly across the English Channel, in 1909. He took off from Cap Blanc Nez but plopped into the drink after only 13 km. Undeterred, he got another aeropane (called an ANTOINETTE) and tried again in July 1909. The weather was bad, and he and his crew slept like righteous men, thinking it's too nasty to fly...meanwhile, another enterprising frog named LOUIS BLERIOT, camped just down the beach and took off at dawn - the weather had broken just enough for him to get off....he made it to England, and won the 1000 pound prize money put up by the DAILY MAIL.

Latham woke up, and set off in pursuit of Bleriot...and got to literally ONE mile from the English coast before he went swimming again. He wanted to try a third time, but the company that made the Antionette wasn't keen.... :imaposer:

I know this is a bit off-topic but it makes me laugh my arse off for some reason - on a previous visit to the London Science Museum I'd seen an Antoinette....anybody who  got NEAR the bloody thing,never mind tried to fly it across the icy Englsih Channel, had some seriaas ballas.... :laughing4:


Point of the story is....at the top of Cap Blanc Nez stands this statue of Latham....big bullet  hole from WW2 and all....




He did some other ballsy things in these type of rattletraps before going to CONGO (not DRC, the other smaller one) on a hunting expedition in 1912, where he was murdered by his porters in June....THAT's not funny....but somehow it is....some things never change  :imaposer:

Well....ol' Hubert may not have been the first to fly the Channel, but he was, and presumably still  IS, famous for these reasons:
1) He was the first to ever smoke a cigarette while flying an aeroplane
2) He was the first to ever land an aeroplane on water (intentionlly OR unintentionally)
3) He was the first ever to fly over a city
4) He was the first to ever shoot ducks from an aeroplane

Hell - who needs the bleedin' channel?

Not ten k's up the coast, literally on the outskirts of Calais,  I rode through a beach town called....BLERIOT PLAGE. Whatever the place had been called before 1909, it was changed to "Bleriot's Beach" after his cunning stunt in July of that year. How's THAT for fame hey??
The water tower has his face on it....and there's a small memorial nearby, not nearly as grand as Hubert's, but still....




Shortly afterwards (and 50 fucking Euros, I might add) I rode onto a ferry bound for Dover. There were lots o fother bikes aboard too. I stayed on deck despite the biting wind, and took photos of Calais receding behind the boat....





Right after leaving the harbour,  Bleriot's water tower and beach passed  just off the port side....and I started laughing again.



Poor old Hubert the cigarette-smoking, duck-shooting pilot....and victim of Africa   :imaposer: :imaposer:

As the boat neared Dover, the sun partially broke through and lit up the white cliffs in a spectacular display. I wished I had a pro camera....could have taken some magazine cover photos....beautiful.







Off-loading went very fast, and within a few minutes I was on the way to MARGATE  and MANSTON. Bit of a wasted loop, as it was almost 6 pm and everything was closed....not to mention, the traffic was murderous. I also learned lesson ONE about riding in the UK - it's not as small as it's supposed to be  :evil6:

Showed up 3 hours late at the relatives' house and got k@kked out because dinner was cold...but all's well that ends well.  :biggrin:

That's it. My bike is still in London, making plans now to get it somewhere else.

One  more page....

 

[J-dog]

witty and fascinating! Thanks for the stories!

 

[baiker 2]

Another great wrok avoidance chapter, thanks

Couldn't help laughing at the sign - in english - on Calais harbour "keep well to the west"