Near Europe
Amiens, Sindelfingen, Konstanz, Brenner, Großglockner, Salzburg, Rothenburg, Ypres
My first experience of European motorcycle touring started badly…
We were flagged down by a Gendarme about ten miles north of Amiens. He gestured for us to stand well away from the bikes and demanded driving licences and passports. We figured it was a pull for speeding and resigned ourselves to a ticking off and an on-the-spot fine.
Moments later, a further two police cars pulled up and another six Gendarmes piled out, many of them brandishing the latest in Gallic assault rifles. Suddenly, this looked a lot more serious as one of them started poking around the holdall strapped to the back of my friend’s bike and the pair of his son’s first training first that he keeps as a good-luck charm and practical replacement for the broken zipper-pull. Gingerly, he opened it up and started rummaging in it furiously. Eventually, his ashen face broke into a smile and the one Gendarme who spoke English explained:
"We get zis call. From a wumman. She zed zer are two Engleesh, Going varry fast on motorbikes to Amiens. And zey av a DEAD BABY in a bag!"
Seemingly, some gap-toothed peasant had seen the trainers and jumped to the perfectly logical conclusion - for a French gap-toothed peasant that is - that two English, motorcycling savages had murdered some toddler and crammed the corpse into a holdall. Being English, and therefore lazy and stupid to boot, we had left the hapless infant’s feet sticking out!
Somewhere in the Austrian alps. Not the best photo ever but probably the one that captures the exhilaration and freedom of riding around Europe on motorbikes better than any other I’ve taken.
The Porsche Museum at Zuffenhausen. I think this is known as ‘specialist’ material in the trade…
Amiens in Northern France. The scene of the opening for Sebastian Faulk’s novel ‘Birdsong’. The house on the right is meticulously described as the setting for some of the torrid love scenes at the beginning. It’s a museum now and open to the public which explains how the author could write about it in such vivid detail.
The Italian Dolomites & Großglockner in Austria
Bavarian town & Rothenburg-oder-Tauber
Rothenburg again: manages to look both entirely authentic (which it is) while appearing to have been built last week, so meticulously well maintained as it is.