1 August 2017. After a restful and comfortable night in a hotel at St Omer I set off to catch the 9.50 ferry from Calais. It was not a good journey and I arrived at Calais with less than an hour to departure time. There were only 2 booths open to let me out of France and only 2 Border Control staff to check my passport and let me back into England, the resultant queues were ridiculously long and I was concerned that I was not going to get to the P&O check in before the boat sailed.
At the P&O desk I was directed to the appropriate departure lane and within a few minutes I was waved onto the ferry and we set sail for England.
Off the ferry and the first thing that struck me is how busy the roads are, this is certainly something I have not missed in the last few weeks, I filtered through the very long and stationary queue of traffic at the Dartford crossing and headed to Sports Bike Shop at Kirton, Boston so they could take some photographs of the bike gear I am reviewing for them.
I was pleased to be back home by earlier evening.
Conclusion
The countries I visited on this trip:-
BelgiumGermanyPolandSlovakiaHungaryRomaniaBulgariaGreeceItalyAustriaFrance
I have visited all of these countries other than Poland and Bulgaria before. I enjoyed both of them and plan to revisited in the future to explore them in more detail. I was particularly taken by Bulgaria, which deserves more time to explore and discover its hidden secrets.
All in all this was a very good trip, photographs taken along the way are essential, they remind me of the adventures, the things I have seen and bring back memories that may be forgotten without them as reminders.
Both mine and Alastairs BMW R1200GSA’s were pretty much faultless, the only incident of any kind was the end falling off Alastairs gear shift lever, as I wrote earlier this was easily fixed with the aid of a friendly Romanian.
Will I do anything different next time? Yes I will, sometimes its easy to get locked into travelling mode, the length of my adventures can be very flexible, perhaps I should stop every few days and relax in one place..
