McHaggis 'o Scotland - from a Danes perspective

[Tigerman1962]

Eagerly awaiting the next installment!!

[El Dudeness]

Excellent that so many are subscribing. Thanks!

I'll be creating the next episode during today and tomorrow....

Stay tuned.

[Mike101]

Great stuff.

Keep it coming and don't worry about your english...it's much better than most of ours on here.

Mike

[Fried Egg Sandwich]

Subscribed too.

Excellent tales of adventure. B)

[El Dudeness]

Oyten (D) - Ijmuiden (Amsterdam) (N)
Monday 22/07-13
369,7 km
Ø 74 km/h
Ø 5,2 l/100 km (19,23 l/km)


At 07:15 my eyelids began to creep up and after awakaneing 2-3 seconds passed before I could recognise the yellow walls and drapes in the room. I thought I still was in my sleeping bag in the forrest.
My brain immediately started contemplating on several different possibilities to the weird stuff we witnessed during the night and despite of many excellent suggestions in the end I came up with nothing. I just didn't get it. Nothing made any sense.

I localised the hotel's wi-fi and commenced geeking a bit round in the maps on my iPhone to find out our exact location. I knew we were close to Bremen and normally I'm in complete command of my own whereabouts, the sat nav, the maps and all that crap but this time it was Pia at the rudder because she was driving my GS and the sat nav was mounted on that. I'd done all the work in MapSource prior to that with way points, routes etc. so now I was "just tagging along".

And speaking of Pia. She, unwillingly, awoke because I started mucking about in the room (a bit loudly on purpose) because we'd agreed with the kitchen to have breakfast at 8 and it was getting to be that time.....
We're both munch-a-holics and on our way to the dining area we discussed the expectations to the famous German breakfast table when it's best.

We were not disappointed:



While we sat and munched we had a few chats with the owners of the cosy little "Gasthaus" - very friendly and very curtious. They did run a tidy ship with many decorations....BUT....I got to discovering something whilst we were feasting this lovely morning. Something quite disturbing. And that was an odd passion for DOLLS!



There in the middle of everything there were dolls all over the place. Especially in the windows.

Why...oh but WHY would you place dolls in the windows??!
Double up on the creep factor!

Back to Defcon 1 again!!



We really shoveled in on the calorie account and even packed a little bite to munch on the way into Holland. After breakfast we cleared the room and met this guy on our way out dangling from another window:



Appearantly he's the German "Sandmand".... Still don't get it...

The time was a little to 9 as we finished loading the donkeys. Ahead of us we had a mixed stage waiting with som highway and motorway as well as some sweet times in the Dutch capitol, Amsterdam.

It was already baking at 27* and we knew we had a hot day installed and therefore it was even the more difficult to jump in full gear. Oh well - the pores of the skin should receive some air when we got riding as I opened every single ventilation mechanism in the suit before we took off.

We got a nice view of our resque station in the morning sun light:



The goal for today was the DFDS boat to Newcastle and if we had Lady Luck on our side we could score a lunch in the heart of the hashish city before that.

The first stretch of road went by the autobahn in the morning traffic around Bremen. No biggy. I stood up at every given oppurtunity to let the air cool me down.
We closed in on The Nederlands and I got heaps of flashbacks from when I visited the place on one of the season's earlier mc road trips with one of my mates riding pillion.



Holland is actually quite a fun place to tour around in. Flat as hell but there are so many canals, bumby cobbelstone roads and in the right season, tulipe fields, that I thinks it's worth a visit if you haven't gone yet. Also the Dutch's English dialect is just soooooo great to listen to and it cracks me up every time so just that is actually worth doing the miles for.

Today we took our breaks in a more frequently manner to soke up on the H2O depot and ice cream. A day like this is just not the day to go down on fluids, sugar and salt.

It was warm. Really stinking hot and two minutes after this picture was taken, the thing that absolutely shouldn't have happened......happened....



STAU!!

He had reached Zwolle (incidently a town where Pia told me of a time she visited with some class mates where they tipped sleeping cows in a field) and everything stood still. Except the temperature which slipped up to 38*!!

Even if I didn't have my panniers attached I wouldn't have stood a chance slithering past the jammed traffic. The two lanes on the far side were dominated by lorries and the inner lane was narrowed in.
A swift decision and the two GS's made it across some grass and into a roundabout directing us away from the motorway and through the town.
A copper followed me for about 15 minutes but lost me without any notes. We came round and up on the motorway again and luckily past the traffic jam.

We were getting close to Amsterdam and here are a couple of illustrations on why I think Holland is a nice place to travel on a motorbike:







We were escorted to the fine capitol by terrific weather and before we knew it, after cycling a bit round the city centre, we found a great place to park our bikes, relieve ourselves of the sauna suit and find a nice café.

If you hadn't noticed it through the eyes you could definately smell that you'd arrived. Waves of pot odeur scrolled through the streets and into the helmet.

A sweet location on top of a bridge with a canal passing it below:



I managed to chomp off half of my pint in one sip and the cheeky waiter stopped - made eye contact with me, nodded - and went in after a refill. Boy that hit that spot!

While he ran inside I stepped up to a water hose that had been vertically planted inside an umbrella so it sprayed nice cool water in a diamter of about 3 feet. I wasn't the only one tempted to benefit from the situation!



After my first brew I jumped aboard a tuna sandwich and topped it off with (after the waiters recommendation) a piece of home made apple pie with vanilla ice cream.



A 360* picture view from where we spent an hour in this lovely pearl of a big city:







Unfortunately we didn't have oceans of time there on the cobbelstones as we had about 30 minutes up to where the ferry was docked so slowly we began mustering ourselves.

First time I visited Amsterdam was on a "school trip" back in 2000 and our brief stay today really reminded me that this city so much is worth a revisit if your just vaguely interested in building architecture and culture.

After my trip down memory lane I was grasped by reality yet again as I suffocated my body in the textile bike gear moving on north out of town towards the ferry. We didn't have the best of time on our side but I felt we didn't need to stress either.
We rode up to the counter and I forked over our documents and pass ports to a young lady. She looked everything over but found a mistake..... There wasn't booked any motorcycles! QUE?!! WTF?!
We got shown a building over yonder which was a bit away where we could purchase tickets but she couldn't garantee a spot on the boat. We revved the engines and raced over there and - in a very humble manner, with soft puppy eyes - asked if we could get our bikes aboard.
The woman glanced down her nose through the spectacles and told me how foolish it was to forget to book the vehicles. I agreed. I agreed very much so. She also could tell me all sorts about the reason why they send out confirmation mails and yah-da-yah-da-yah-da... how one should read them properly and blah-blah-blah......

I could seriously feel my blood pressure rise almost symmetrical with the sensation of sweat dripping down my shins. I couldn't hold it back any more.... Politely, yet veeeeery determinded (we hadn't gotten our tickets yet) I assured the little ol' skank (nah I didn't say that) that it wasn't my idea either to stand here in 30* in full outfit and beg to be able to get aboard or else our whole holiday would go down the toilet.

It was a huge mixture of vomite seasoned with the shamefull puppy eyes and she actually ended up telling me that there wasn't any room for the bikes. "But there's ALWAYS room for another bike!" I smiled to her with a wink to the eye. She smiled back and after 10 minutes she had gotten us aboard as "regular" push bikes.

We raced back to the other counter, checked in and just got on the ferry as the absolute last people there. Pheeew....the first to days were just supposed to be transportation!

It looked promising. Tomorrow we hit England and Scotland. Haggis - I bid you welcome!

The ferry journey was very pleasant. Excellent weather and Johnny Cash jam on the upper deck acompanied me with one (or more....cough...cough) bottles of Grolsch as I started out with the pen jotting to cover the day's events.









And while Schuberth got himself a well earned rest we started boiling the water for the meal of the evening.
A Travel Lunch - Chili Con Carne.





I gave it 3 out of 6 chief's hats.

After the evening grub we mosied (have no idea if that's the way you spell it) around the ship playing a bit of racing cars and some other games as well.
We ended up in the sport's bar where we played our own board game and had a drink before we retired to our cabin.



It had already been two very nice days as a start of our holiday but tomorrow it's really going to kick off as we hit the UK.

Full throttle Skipper!! Full throttle - here we come!!

[digitalcaptive]

Well I'm hooked matey, come on! next installment please

[CBSTD]

Come on Dude you can' t leave us hanging.I have just spent a week in Ostrava with work killing time this has been a god send.

[SPEN]

I"m in B)

[Dark Knight]

Brilliant write up, have not laughed so much for ages.
Keep the installments coming, may be able to meet up somewhere when you hit scotland.

[Paul]

This is a brilliant write up, I find myself reading it with a Danish ascent in my head B)