End of the Road

On Monday, July 7 left Nevers for Brest, at the Western tip of the Brest peninsula, which is where I had planned to end the trip. I rode through Bourges, Tours, Rennes, and got to Brest in the evening; this was one of the longest rides of the trip, at 769k. In the morning, I came as close to running out of gas as I did the whole trip, because none of the moronic French gas stations have attendants or accept normal credit cards, so I had to ride all around Never and Bourges, having several stations not accept my credit card, before I found a station with an attendant and filled up and bought a map--didn't want to be riding blind again like yesterday.

Anyway, when I got to the outskirts of Brest, I didn't like the look of it--too big, kinda grimy, so I decided to go all the way to the end of the Brest Peninsula, to a town called le Conquet. This was more like it, very small quaint fishing village/tourist trap. Found an expensive hotel (weren't any cheap ones) and walked around town for some pix:

Stuart had texted to say that he would not be able to make as far as Brest, so I suggested that he go up to St. Malo, at the northern base of the Brest peninsula, so he diverted there...hopefully meet up with him tomorrow! Anyway, le Conquet is a cool little town and a good place to end the RTW part of the trip (ie, I hit the Atlantic, so connected back to Ocean City, Maryland where I started in March).

I had hoped to linger on the beaches of France for a few days at the tail end of the trip, but the weather was terrible--cloudy, rainy, and cold, so there wasn't much attraction to that. So on the morning of July 7 I set off along the coast of the Brest peninsula toward St. Malo to meet up with Stuart. Rode 333 very slow kilometers through Ploudalmezou, Morlaix, Lannion, Terquier, and St. Brieuc before getting to St Malo in mid-afternoon. Found Stuart's hotel near the train station, got a room, and set out with Stuart to explore the town---it is actually a very cool place, but oddly deserted. I didn't take any pix of it, but there is also a cool town within the city walls. Here are some shots of the area:
After a night in St Malo, Stuart and I were ready to push on, I had to go back toward Heidelberg to leave my bike, Stuart was heading up toward Scandanavia somewhere. So we decided to go check out Mont St Michel, which is very close to St Malo, and would play it by ear after that. Here are some shots of Mont St Michel:

We didn't spend a whole lot of time in Mont St Michel, just took some pix and left. We didn't really have a destination, decided we would head sort of northeast and see where we ended up. Stuart put his GPS to good effect again, and we had a great day of riding on little tiny country roads in Normany, through Vire, Falaise, and Rouen. Finally, it was getting kind of late and we pulled over in Poix de Picardy, a pretty blah town in the middle of nowhere. Found a hotel (with difficulty), had dinner, and went to bed...

OK, so July 10 was the last day of the trip. We weren't far from Waterloo, so we decided to go check that out, and then I would head to Heidelberg, and Stuart up north. So we went to Waterloo, checked it out, kind of a sad, derelict monument to Napoleon, and the giant mound which they built by digging up half the battlefield. Oh well...after our quick look at Waterloo, had a nice lunch, said goodbye to Stuart, and then headed off to Heidelberg via Bastogne and Kaiserslautern.

Here's a few shots of Heidelberg, its a very nice city. By the time I got there, I'd done 10,509 miles since picking up the bike in China, less than what I had done by myself around the US last fall (about 15k miles). Anyway, here are a few last shots from the trip, including from a classic car rally in Heidelberg while I was there:

Through the Alps

I was pretty excited to get into the Alps, and wanted to test out my new camera that I bought in Munich (my old one did not hold up well to the grit of the road, and the lens periodically refused to open). So here are some shots:

Radar had recommended Andermatt, a town in the Alps, and since I didn't really have anywhere else in mind, I decided to check it out. On the morning of July 5 I said goodbye to everyone from the trip who was at the hotel and rode from Garmisch through Feldkirch and Chur to Andermatt. The road was beautiful, but much more twisty than I was used to after the wide open spaces of Russia. Anyway, pulled into town late afteroon and it looked pretty lively, so I decided to stay. Here's my bike parked in front of my hotel, and the stream running through town:
There is apparently some kind of bear theme in Andermatt:And the famous Russian general, Suvorov, stayed here. Kind of an odd place to bring an army, in the middle of the Swiss Alps, I wonder if he was on vacation?
Anyway, even though it was a Saturday night, the town was totally dead at night...had dinner, walked around trying to find something going on, without success, and went to bed early.

The next day, I had agreed with Stuart to meet him in Nevers, France, so I headed out that way via Interlaken, Jainpass, Lausanne, St. Cerque, Buxy, le Ferte, Luzy, and Decize. Great road and great views:

This is Jainpass, nothing fancy but very pretty, nice ride:

The weather had been kind of iffy all day, and finally as I approached the French border I started heading back into some low mountains, where it started raining and getting cold. When I reached St. Cerque (I think that's the town I was in, and I think I was still in Switzerland!) I was drenched and freezing cold, does this picture look cold and damp, or what?

I stopped here for lunch, the waiter saw how cold and miserable I looked and recommended some cheese, egg, bread thing--it was perfect and after that and a couple of coffees I was ready to head back out. Luckily by the time I left the rain had dwindled to a drizzle.

Anyway, somewhere around here I crossed into France. I didn't have a map of France and really had absolutely no idea where I was going, but (or maybe because of that) it was a great ride through the French countryside. Here are some pix:

I litterally had no idea where I was going other than generally West, and I had looked up a couple of towns along the way on a map I had seen, but never saw any signs for those towns. Anyway, pulled into Nevers, rode around for a while, found a Holiday Inn or something, booked a room, texted Stuart, and went for a beer. While having a beer, Stuart texted back that he could not meet me that night, would have to meet somewhere the next night...damn! Nevers looked like a real hole and I wasn't that thrilled about staying there, but oh well. Walked around down, it is kind of a dump, but apparently some punk music festival had just ended (this being Sunday) and lots of bedraggled punkers were wondering around town, and there was one tent with some farewell punk concert. Boring, no pix, meh. To summarize, Never to Nevers!

The Home Stretch

We left Passau for Munich, a couple of hundred kilometers away. Munich was the end of the organized trip, thank God! But only a few kilometers out of Passau, we hit trouble--TJ pulls over, and his bike is, uh, fecked:
His sprocket had gotten pretty worn down, but he had decided to make it into Munich before having it fixed. With hindsight, a bad call! We waited around a couple of hours until someone came with a trailer to pick up TJ and his bike, and then headed into Munich. We didn't know it, but we wouldn't see TJ again, very sad, only a couple of hours from the end of the trip!!
I had a lot to do once we got into Munich, such as make flight plans, buy a camera, and of course:
Unfortunately, it was either raining or about to rain the whole time we were in Munich, so we didn't make it to one of my favorite places in the whole world: the Chinese Pagoda in the English Gardens. Very disappointing!

Actually, we had to have our bikes serviced in Munich as well, here he is:

After a few days in Munich we left for Garmisch, were there was the big annual BMW rally. We had heard the whole trip what a great time this was, but the Organizers dropped the ball and we had to stay in a hotel 25 km away, which made me lose almost all interest. Here's a shot of this rather limp event:
We were supposed to stay in Garmisch for two nights, but I was so bored after one night I decided to leave a day early. I agreed with Stuart that we would meet up somewhere in France in a couple of days. TJ was still MIA, although apparently his bike was fixed.

On the morning of July 5 I headed out on my own for the first time since Seattle, kind of a nice feeling. Next stop: Switzerland.

Great Riding to the West!

On June 30 we left Cracow for Brno in Slovakia. I have already forgotten most of this ride, other than the fact that we got completely lost and encountered another water obstacle, and this time we could not find a crossing and had to backtrack a long way. Here's the offending waterway, Stuart was amused again:
Well, we had a hard time with directions this day, also got lost coming into Brno because the highway we needed was closed. We bumped into a Slovak biker who was kind enough to lead us about 30 miles to the right road--great guy! (sorry, no pic!!). Anyway, Brno was kind of grubby, and by the time we got unlost, parked, and went out, most of the restauarants, etc., were closed. We finally found a place but were a bit put out by the lame service. We went back to the hotel, a weird Slovak-Soviet monstrosity, and plotted a course to Austerlitz, the famous Napoleonic battlefield, which is somewhere near Brno.

Stuart wanted to go as well, so on July 1 he and I headed kind of southeast in the morning, followed the signs, and voila, found the battlefield. Here are a bunch of pix:
The parking lot attendant was a complete ass, although to his credit he let us bring our bikes right onto the grounds, as you can see above. Here Stuart is cursing him under his breath...
But that was just the beginning of a great day's ride. Something clicked with Stuart's GPS, and it took us down a bunch of really cool small roads--I generally had absolutely no idea where we were, and was firmly convinced that Stuart had no clue where we were or where we were going, but it was such a nice ride I didn't really care much. One of the pictures I wanted from the trip was to get the bike in front of some giant sunflowers, and finally found those along the way today:
But it was still early, and the best riding was still to come, in fact, the afternoon's ride was one of the best rides of the trip. Here is some typical countryside:
Then somehow we ended up on the Danube, and the things really picked up. Besides the river valley being incredibly beautiful, it is simply jam-packed with cool old castles. But first, here's the river (and me finishing off some raisons I'd bought a few weeks ago):
And here are some of the castles:
Just a great road along the Danube, not only castles but a very beautiful valley in general:
Finally arrived in Passau well into the evening after a great ride. Went downtown for dinner and beer; Passau typical German town, nice, clean, but very sterile. Too boring, no pix!