250 to Germany.

[Brenhden]

I parked and wandered around looking for the munster and wandered into the main uni building. Its hard to imagine walking into a uni in the UK! Onwards to a cat themed café for eggy bread with apple sauce. Then onto the munster and a good catch up with Charlotte.

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It was about 30C and there was a market around the Munster (cathedral) which was full of cherries and sausages.

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Ate a Freiburg Lang Rott which was a foot long red sausage and got the girls some handmade cuckoo whistles but could not find anything for Charlotte. I stopped for a coke amongst all the alfresco diners and about 1400 started back up the mountain. I raced off and a guy in a Skoda Fabia RS was chasing me, I really hammered my bike but could not pull away as the hill was so steep. Eventually we met cyclists he could not pass and I got away (luckily before I fell off the mountain) I got to the top and started down. It was maybe 10C at the top so it was nice to warm up a bit. Back on the road home and it was good fun. I went past camp and back to town and stopped to shop. I got two things for Charlotte and came back for a swim and a beer at the bar. Eventually got served (service is terrible in Germany), then went inside for dinner (Weiner schnitzel) and chatted to a Dutch couple. After that came back to find lots of new campers, sat with coffee and biscuits looking at the lake.

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Journey time 6 hours. Distance 85 miles.

[Brenhden]

Day 9 22/06/18 Friday.
Up at 0645 after a great night’s sleep considering how cold it was (3C). I’d had to stuff clothes under my bed as I was touching the floor. It wasn't till morning I realised one of the struts under my bed had come off. Breakfast, shower, pack and pay 106 euros and I was on the road for 0915. The road from Titisee to Frieburg is amazing. It runs through a canyon and has a cool tunnel, however I was stuck behind a bendy bus and a bendy lorry so it was slow and dull. Out and onto the motorway for a day of motorway and I went the wrong way.

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Not nice.

I missed the turn for France and did a detour and missed the N159 so took an awesome mountain road to Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg and back down the other side. I missed the turn off at Nancy and I went too soon for camp. I arrived about 1630 but had to go to a cashpoint, the only one was in a massive local casino, it was packed with old people and really weird, I was escorted to the cash machine and out again. Even though I was the travel weary on I left the place feeling soiled.
I booked back onto camp and pitched amongst the hornets etc, the difference here is massive, at Titisee there was no life, here it is full of bugs. I went for a quick swim in Lac Der as it was about 25C here. Stopped for a beer at the kiosk and listened to the old men chatting in French. Back to camp for coffee and a shower. For dinner I had cassoulet in a can with fresh bread, toms and local wine.

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Lush.

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This dude, almost crashed into camp.

Travel time 8 hours, distance 236 miles.

[Brenhden]

Day 10 23/06/18 Saturday.

Up at 0645, breakfast, tea, shower and pack by 0845 and on to road. It was a chilly morning so I had full WP on, I retraced my steps to the motorway passing through Tudor villages full of people riding bicycles with French sticks in the baskets. It’s a straight line from Rheims to Calais and I only went the wrong way once I think. I was making good time and even tried a max speed run hitting 145kmh, at one point my range went from about 190km to 120 km per tank! I had a home made cheese and tom roll for lunch and made it to Calais by 1345 and paid £106 for ticket. After queuing quite a lot I made it to the train with about 50 other bikes and spent the journey chatting about bikes.

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Arrived in Blighty about 1430 and struck out for home . When you leave the train you get straight onto the motorway! It was a lot hotter here and I got out of my WPs. I stopped at Cobham services for an M&S Caesar Salad wrap and was amazed at how shit it was, the whole place was filthy. Back on the road and I stopped for fuel and a stretch and Cheively and as I was flagging I put some drum and bass on to get me fired up. Back on the M4 and the traffic was stopped, I filtered up to the front and found two traffic cops sweeping a smashed pallet off the road. One came over and spoke to me but I couldn’t hear a word he said over the drum and bass so just gave him a hopeful thumbs up… Luckily there was another biker who he also spoke to. He moved the cones and the other guy set off so I followed him. We had about 25 miles of clear M4 to ride which was so good I maxxed the bike home and got in about 1910 stowed the bike and went to see Charlotte.
Hours journey 11.5 Distance 491 miles.

[Brenhden]

Total distance 1953 miles.

Summary:

The Black Forest.
Extremely pleasant, great roads, good food, nice and warm, I was there for about the right amount of days although you could do it in fewer.

The German’s.
Friendly and reserved, speak good English and love motorbikes. Load of people came over to take about the Rally.

The Bike.
After all the testing I did to see how it would work I still set off with two things totally untested:
Grip Puppies
Three finger levers
Alas they were both in the same part of the bike and didn’t initially get on very well. The grip puppies move your hand further back reducing your finger reach and allow less space for the lever to be pulled in. This meant that I had to adjust them several times before I could reach the clutch lever easily and fully engage it. Also the three finger clutch only reaches across enough for two fingers comfortably but there is not enough space to pull the lever without squashing finger three so you end up with your third finger on the ballend (snigger).
However the grip puppies are comfy and great on the long drive.
The bike itself handled the roads brilliantly, its perky engine was always pulling hard enough to have fun where I expected it to and also handled some serious full power blasts across countries.
No numb bum or sore legs either, wind deflection works really well.

The Kit.
Everything I previously tested worked as expected and I’m quite pleased that my kit is settled for future weeks away, there were are few highlights though:

Lightweight camping bed: It’s so tight that it forces itself into a parallelogram shape and becomes less effective so ever couple of days I have to take it apart, stretch the material back into a vaguely rectangle shape and re build it. It’s also fraying a little bit and I doubt it will last many trips.

Clothes pegs: I took four and used them every day, they are now permanently in the kit.

Trangia: Totally top bit of kit but the jellified alcohol I accidently got didn’t work so well. Proper meths is the best.

Aldi down sleeping bag: Every night I went to bed in a long sleeve compression/thermal layer on which was super useful as when I needed a wee in the night I had a warm top on. I also put a polycotton liner on the outside and on colder evenings I put my down jacket over my legs. Sounds a bit of a faff but it worked perfectly and had a very low combined weight and pack size.

These glasses are perfect for going under a helmet, even my pop down shades never touched them:

[Godspeed]

Perfect Ride report..... been waiting for this for ages

[pinball1008]

Brilliant, always enjoy your ride reports.
Thank you.

[diggermanbob]

Great ride report and nice to see a small bike doing the trip

[kev.t]

enjoyed reading that. thanks for posting

[Spike941]

Nice one. Thanks for taking to the time and posting a good write up. Great trip.

[boboneleg]

Nice one Brenhden, great ride report. Do you think the uprated ECU affected your mpg and is it worth having?