Prague and Salzburg #1

Real quick note tonight cause we have wifi probs so Im on expensive data.
We had accom dramas in Prague so escaped early and are now in possibly the most awesome hotel in all of Austria.

Lots of pics and stories of the last 2 days as soon as we can find reliable wifi.

Till then....

Dresden. A bit over this weather now...

We've escaped Berlin and didn't have to climb walls or crawl through tunnels or anything.  And Sunday morning traffic wasn't too bad either.

Rode the couple of hundred ks to Dresden in threatening low cloud and occasional drizzle. Now that I've realised how thirsty the bike is at 160kph, we cruised at a sedate 130 - 140.  (Fuel consumption doubles over that next 20 kph up to a staggering 1 ltr every 10 kms). The fun factor almost makes up for it.  Almost...

On the weather front, we had 2 glorious days in London, overcast in Royston, rain to Hull. 2 brilliant days in Belgium and the ride to Nurburg, but haven't seen the sun since.  We've over it. Really. Sun now please.

So I've attached a bunch of pics from today, both some stills from the GoPro and from a wander around the Old City of Dresden.  For those who don't know, in February 1945, just a couple of months before the end of WW2, Allied Bomber Command thought it would be a nice idea to completely destroy the city.  So over 2 days and nights they fire-bombed the place, killed over 20,000 civilians and destroyed a few (claimed) military targets.

The city has of course rebuilt, but the scarring is still there for everyone to see.

In a way it's fitting that it was such a dark and gloomy day today.

Here's some pics of the ride here. Note the camera is fitted on the left handlebar, not centrally.

And of Dresden on a gloomy Sunday afternoon.

Menin Gate Ceremony video fixed

Apologies to everyone who tried to view the Menin Gate Last Post ceremony video.

We've fixed the link now.

Click here for the video

Kevins day out in Berlin

Hi everyone. Mum and dad took me to explore Berlin today. I got a really good education in the city's history.

I wont bore you with the details, but we walked for miles around the Berlin Wall Monuments and historical artifacts, the Reichstag Building, Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Monument and Checkpoint Charlie.

This city is actually really full on. It's easy to see why it has developed a sub culture.  Such a melting pot of races, religions and attitudes.  We even heard some people speaking english now and then. 

Anyway, here's a selection of photos from my day out in Berlin.

Love Kevin

PS... check the last pic. Score!  (Her name is Rosie... apparently).

Nordschleiffe video slightly better res

Whatever I try Youtube kills the resolution.  This is about as good as I can get.

The original is over 2 gigs so I cant think of anyway to make it download friendly.  Let me know if you can. Anyone had any experience with Vimeo?

In the meantime, this one might be a little better.

http://youtu.be/oartwKKFL-0

Berlin!

Huge day.
So much rain.
Soaking wet.
Countless traffic congestion halts.
Hours of lane filtering.
Making up time at 160kph.
More congestion.
Huge truck accident 3 lanes to 1.
Navigating Berlin roads with dodgy GPS.
Finding awesome weird hotel (Nhow Hotel).
Sneaking free parking in the basement.
Walking the streats.
Sights and sounds.
Soaking it up.
11pm now.
So tired.
So satisified.
Made it to Berlin.
Hard huge day.

Alsfeld

Just a quick one tonight.

Took us a while to get away from Nurburg with a bit of shopping and the GPS playing up again (big rant coming up one day soon about that). We intended to push to Kassel but about 50ks short the weather started threatening, so there was a nice hotel right here, and, yep. Took us about 20 seconds to decide.

Nice and comfortable but really bad wifi and only 1 device allowed.

Got some cool autobahn gopro vids so hopefully the hotel in Berlin will allow us all the catching up we want.

So till then...

Nordschleife on board video

Sorry about the quality, when we find an internet connection that will take less than a week to upload the full file, I'll re post this.

But for now, this will have to do.

Oh, and I should mention, the speedo is still in MPH not KPH. I do have the instructions to change it over, just cant follow them. You'll work it out I'm sure.

Nordschleife #1

Been there, done that!  And yes... got the T shirt.

The Nordschleife deserves every word ever written about it, and more.  It's fast, fearsome and very serious fun.

Having learned my way around here on xbox, at least I knew where the track went but not the undulations.  There isn't a flat bit anywhere.  If you're not lining up the next series of blind corners, you're holding onto your lunch through the roller coasters.  I've no idea how anyone goes as fast as they do here without flying off into the stratosphere.

And the good news is, my GoPro plan worked and I have a full lap recorded. Unfortunately it wont upload in time for this mornings blog, so I guess we'll all have to wait 1 more day.

But the camera doesn't lie. And as I know you're all itching to hear... on a very non-sports bike, (but amazing power and handing nontheless) taking it very easy (as you'll see) keeping well into both the bikes and my comfort zone and cornering a lot slower than I would if it were my bike (as the pic of the rear tyre shows). And given that breaking the Duke or me isn't an option....  I still managed 11.06 on the second lap.  Close to 14's or so on the first.

So that's it. Done and dusted and a huge thanks to all of you who have listened without complaint to my dreaming of this for a couple of years now.

Here's a few pics of both Nords and the GP Circuit to go on with while the vid takes all night to upload. Unfortunately we didn't take anywhere near as many as we should have.

It's 10pm now. Job done.

Packing up and off towards Berlin tomorrow.

Spa Francorchamps

If you've never heard that name, then you'll probably not care to much for this next bit. But if you have... then feel free to salivate over this selection of images we took today.

It seemed like a fairly basic track day, for Spa, which is way beyond anything you'd ever see back home.  This is somewhere I've wanted to visit for more years than I can remember and although we were only there for an hour, it ticked a very big box for me.

And I should probably mention, Im actually typing this from Haus Ringblick in the little town of Nurburg, which has this kinda ring road running around it and off into the country side.  We arrived too late to do anything about it, but will rectify that tomorrow.

Until then... here's some Spa action to go on with...

Oh, and here's another random from somewhere else that just dropped in... :)

But more on that later...
Need my beauty sleep now.
I've rather a big day tomorrow.