Buster's Euro trip - Motorcycle-Journal Forums

buster · 04-23-2009, 10:27 AM

Well, here we are folks, istalment 1 from the recently completed trip around some of the WW1 7 WW2 battlefields of Europe, ie Belgium and France.

This trip could never be described as Great fun, it was never intended to be, it can however, be described as very enjoyable, moving, somber and above all emotional.

So, we began on Saturday morning, into the car down to Prestwick airport, dropped Anne and her clan off, they were off to sunny Espania - OLE!
Back to mine and got changed then jumped astride the bike then off to Jeff's house.

(The reason I mentioned the airport was because that was a 110 mile round trip before I even looked at the bike!)

Huckled Jeff out of his wife's arms and the pair of us set of to Edinburgh, 85 miles later we were at Pauls house. Coerced some bacon and eggs out of Paul, then 20 mins later back on the road.. next stop Newcastle another 120 mile trip - God Bless Saddlemen and thier lovely after market seats!

So at Newcastle jumped aboard the ferry for an all u can eat dinner and a few beers, next stop Ijmuiden (Amsterdam, Holland).

Paul checking out the lifeboats ..... you never know....

Then about 30 miles out from Ijmuiden, a most amazing sight a seaborne windfarm, really don't know why people complain about these things, i think they are full of grace and beauty.

Next morning we docked in Ijmuiden then jumped back on the bikes for a 200 mile hop to Lille for the first night's stopover.

Jeff's Tomtom got us to "somewhere near to the hotel" and then when we stopped to ask for directions Paul's Hayabusa started playing silly games and he couldn't disable the alarm or get it started... Bugger!

We were stuck there for a couple of hours trying different things....

Stranded...

We decided to leave the bike for an hour or so, to give the fob battery some rest (we couldn't get a new battery as it was Sunday and everywhere was shut and at this point we deduced it could only be the fob battery).

So we went back to the bike and the restaurantuer asked us to move it as he was opening up. We did, and hey presto the bike started playing again and has done ever since, we think that perhaps it was subject to some form of radio interference.

Happy days.

Next morning we set off for the war grave in St Omer, (one of Jeff's relatives lies there), hmm, I said "the war grave" I meant "a war grave" as the entire contryside is peppered with gravesites - hundreds of thousands of poor souls.. Anyway St Omer..