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Europe
2004
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The following day (Sunday) we left behind Andre & his wife after a great breakfast, and some very happy memories of our short stay in Brugge..........Unfortunately Dez also left his walking boots behind so spent the rest of the week in just his bike boots....Nice!
A wee bit of advice for anyone touring on the Continent, especially France, Spain and Belgium. If you intend traveling on Sunday, fill up with petrol on the Saturday. We didn't, and had a bit of a panic finding fuel when we left Andre's on Sunday morning. Most garages are closed Sundays but most take cards in a machine at the side of the pumps - not UK issued ones though. So much for the EEC eh? We had to head out onto the Autoroute as that was our only hope of finding petrol. It was a bit of a tense time for a while and I was just thinking that I must be running on the rust from the bottom of my tank when the welcome sight of a service area loomed into view.
Once
we'd fuelled up we set off in the direction of Luxembourg, where we were to book
into the Fort Reinsheim Hotel in
the City. Dez was in his element,
playing with his new GPS en route, we took so many wrong turns I reckon we must
have put another 50 miles at least on the journey, he did take us down some pretty
nice roads though.
Pete and Dez consult
the GPS & route to try and find the way to Luxembourg - If only they'd
looked to their right..........!
The Fort Reinsheim
Hotel Luxembourg
(Photo Pete)
The Fort Reinsheim
Hotel
Luxembourg......Hmm! Bit of an oddball place, run by what appeared to be a pair Lesbians. Now't wrong with Lesbians you understand? In fact like most blurks
I'm partial to a bit of womanly togetherness now and then but these were two seriously
scary "women".
it was a bit like a slightly more luxurious Stalag14,
only with a couple of female East German shot putters in charge. If you can visualize a slightly larger
Geoff Capes but with bigger tits you'll be somewhere near to forming an image of lesbo number one.
We were treated to a demonstration of her not inconsiderable charms when Wesley handed his card over to pay
(in advance, and we
weren't about to argue believe me.).
There was a problem, for some reason the machine wouldn't complete the transaction.
To say she weren't
best pleased would be a gross understatement. With her moustache all of a quiver from the steam erupting from her nostrils,
this formidable female leaned over the desk with a look of murder in her eyes and boomed at Wes, "ZIS CARD EEZ
NO GUTTE!" If Joe Bugner had been in the vicinity she'd have actually made him look quite feminine.
After using another card which worked ok she morphed into all sweetness & light,
which if anything was
even more disturbing.
There was no secure
bike parking here at the hotel, we had to squeeze
all the bikes onto this little
raised area at the back.
The following morning at breakfast, Pete
and me were down first, I think Wesley and Dez had been on the
Absynthe and had
decided to lie in. Pete
couldn't figure out how to get the glass door to the cool shelf open to get the milk out, so he
was eating his Cornflakes dry. At this point scary Lesbo No2 made an entrance. About 50
years old complete with dyed blonde spiked hair & tattoos..... Pat Butcher on steroids.
She stood in
front of him, looked down at the dish with the dry Cornfalkes, then back at Pete
with a look of total
disbelief. We thought Lesbo No1 could yell, but this one...Fook me!...................
S.L 2 .........."VYE DO YOU HAFF NO MILK?"
Pete: "I....erm, couldn't get the door open".
She grabbed hold of him and commanded him follow her to the cool shelf, then with a
look of intense teutonic smugness she slid back the door. I'll swear to God she'd not only been a member
of the Nazi party but she'd also been drummed out of it for cruelty. She was a very harsh wom....erm,
personthing. I could almost read her mind,
"Stoopid
Englander Svine".
The final indignity for poor Pete was when "she" went back behind the counter, leaned on it and just stared at
him while he ate the now soggy cornflakes. He admitted later that he didn't even want them anymore but he was
too scared to leave
them in case he got shouted at again. If Pete had ever harboured any thoughts of visiting a
dominatrix, then they flew well out of the window that day
Plotting tomorrow's
route
As
hotels go it was clean enough, but the rooms were very small and
claustrophobic. Staying there if you're touring by car would be ok I
guess, but when you have to stash a load of bike gear - leathers panniers,
tank bags etc. the last thing you need is a room which really only qualifies as
a cupboard.
It's also best not to try sitting
on the en suite bog if you have longish legs, well if you have any legs at all really because it's a bugger of a job getting the door to close. It wouldn't in our room anyway.
Leaving the bog door open and having a poo when you're home alone may be the very definition of
personal freedom, but Pete and me ain't that close so it could have been quite embarrassing. On the upside though there's a
nice Indian
restaurant called the Royal Bengal about a block down the road towards the city
centre on the Route d'Essh, we ate there and it was
really quite gutte.....sorry good!
As a footnote to this little tale, about 6 months later Wesley got a
call from his credit card company, the thieving old dykes had been trying to debit his
card again. Fortunately it had expired
by now so the bank was alerted to
their little scam.
I suppose the Rheinsheim could be described as one of the more ........."colourful"
hotels that we've stayed on our travels, if nowt else it was interesting and it
gave us a laugh or two!
The Black Forest en
route to Emmendingen
The run across to
Germany was quite uneventful for us. Riding through the western part of the
Black Forest was a real treat, with roads like those shown above to have a play
around on.
Eventually we arrived at Emmendingen and once again had trouble
finding the hotel....which to be fair wasn't actually
in Emmendingen.
One thing the Germans
excel at is their hotels, they are usually superb and despite what you hear about
the German people being abrasive and humourless, the ones I've ever had dealings
with have always been very nice. Contrary to common belief some of them
actually have a sense of
humour too ....................................sometimes!
Black Forest Gatso!!
We
arrived at the superb hotel Windereuter
Hof quite late in
the evening, it's a fair old trek to Emmendingen from Luxembourg,
so when we arrived, of course the restaurant had closed for the
night.
This is one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed in, rather than
have 2 double rooms as we usually do they gave us a suite which was
superb. The cleanliness of the place was staggering and the staff were
just brilliant and so efficient - well it is Germany.
The Hotel Windenreuter Hof, Emmendingen. Germany
(Photo Pete)
The hotel Reception area
Smoooooooooth
Operator! Pete
pulls a Fraulein in the hotel reception (Photo Dez)
The plan was
to get a taxi
into the town to eat, but one of the staff a very pleasant wee thing called Frau Schneider insisted on opening up the
closed restaurant for us to eat there, can you imagine
that happening here in the UK?....Erm nope - don't think so!! She sat us in the bar and arranged
for 5 buckets of beerfor us, the Germans drink their beer out of huge buckets and any race of people who do that have our utmost respect.
The meal was pretty
stupendous really. 5 courses which had cost incredibly little, and unlike the
French they have lots of gas so the food gets cooked properly! The waitresses were brilliant,
not a hint of animosity because they'd been asked to
serve after hours, in fact we even had trouble in getting them to accept a tip. A highly rated hotel,
the only criticism is that there could have been a few more beers in the mini bar, it was
empty within 5 minutes but then again we can empty a full sized bar in 5 minutes
so that's a very unfair criticism.
Tomorrow we head off
through Switzerland and back into France for a nights stopover at Chamonix Mont
Blanc, so a good nights sleep was required. I had to ring Wee Jimmy Krankie first
though, it was my wedding anniversary. Well, you have to show willing I suppose.
We
can always rely on him to empty the Hotel mini bar.
(Photo Wesley)
In the Black Forest
on the way to the Swiss border
This was the longest run of the tour. We were about to ride down through Germany go over the Swiss border, through Switzerland and out the other side into the French Alps to Chamonix.....A long days ride!
We started off ok, with a very pleasant run in fine sunny weather through the Black Forest. Going over the Swiss border the intention had been to buy a vignette so we could legally ride on the Swiss Autoroutes. However, when we arrived there at a small town who's name escapes me, there was a bit of a kerfuffle going on at the border control so the guards just waved us through. This left us with a bit of a dilemma, do we chance using the Autoroute and risk getting a hefty fine if we're caught without a vignette? Or try to stay on the minor roads? In the event we managed to find our way onto an Autoroute down towards Lake Geneva but luckily we never got stopped. Bit of a worry though.
As we headed down
towards Laussane & Montreaux the weather started to close in. The rain began
as
we rode alongside Lake Geneva.
We're heading into that -
somewhere in all that black cloud is Mont Blanc
As
we rode on toward Chamonix it was obvious that we were going to arrive there
very late. We'd been riding all day and we were getting quite tired by now, yet we still had a fair
way to travel and the weather was now threatening to slow us down even more. We
eventually arrived at the small town of St Martigny, from here it's a steep climb up onto the Col de la
Forclez. The higher we climbed, the wetter it got,
and darkness (as well as the temperature) was starting to fall. About 5 miles into the Col we lost
Dez & Jack, we noticed they'd gone just as we rounded a bend to find a
mudslide in front of us. The side of the mountain was just beginning to get washed
away and the only place for the mud to go was across the road in front of us. Wesley suggested for us to hang on there while he went back to look for Dez and Jack. Pete and
I waited there in the pissing down rain - well I did Pete went off into the
woods for one of his emergency pee pees!
It seemed an age since Wesley had left and we were getting worried that something had happened. Eventually they all came trundling 'round the bend. Dez's glasses and visor had got badly steamed up so he'd stopped to clean them. He also took the next photo while he was stopped.............
The Col de la
Forclez in the rain........It goes some way to show how uninviting it was up there.
(Photo Dez)
Now we were all together again we set off once more for Chamonix. We got over the mudslide ok which thankfully looked worse than it was, but by now it was getting quite dark and as we reached what looked like the summit, the rain stopped a bit. I think we had gone above the clouds, but unfortunately the rain was now replaced by thick mist. Eventually we dropped down back into the rain and entered a small town which we thought was Chamonix and Wesley went into a bar to ask the way to our hotel. As he opened the door to go in a great cloud of smoke came out to greet him, they were all smoking joints in there, and oh how we wanted to go in and join them. When he came out and told us that Chamonix was another 25 kilometres away, we all gave a little whimper ...We were cold, wet and bloody hungry!
We set off
again into the night and the next place we came to was Chamonix, but could we
find the hotel?.........Could we hell. In the end we agreed to wait while
Wesley went to look for it, it was daft us all playing "follow my
leader" around the flooded streets of the town. After a few minutes he came back, we'd been parked
right outside the entrance to the place. As we went in to the car park the
guy was just locking up, he'd thought we weren't coming, it was now 5 past
10 & we'd been on the road since 9 in the morning. By now it was really
hammering down with rain. The hotel guy offered us the use of a large garage to
put the bikes in overnight and we accepted....Parked them up then
went to get a quick wash, then off to look for somewhere to eat
When these 2 left we
were the only ones in the
place
Jack getting happy on the falling down juice
l'Atmosphere Restaurant Chamonix
As
we walked around Chamonix in the pouring rain, everywhere was either shut or
shutting and we were getting a bit worried that we weren't going to find
anywhere to eat. As we walked over a bridge that crossed the - by now in full flood -
River Arve' we spotted a lit restaurant
on the opposite side. Walking in we found it empty, then a guy who looked like the
owner greeted us and told us
they were just closing.
He must
have seen the look of pitiful despair on our faces because he shrugged his shoulders, invited us in and
sat us at a table in the conservatory which overlooked
the river. He even took our coats and put them in his drying room, then summoned 2 fit wenches to serve us and we were sorted. Just as we'd found in
the German hotel, no one rushed us even though we were the
only people in the place. It was about 12-30am when we left there, full to
bursting and happy on copious amounts of red wine. The restaurant was called the
l'Atmosphere and anyone visiting Chamonix should give it a try, great food,
not that expensive (well it is - but not when you're desperately hungry and it's
the only place in town that's open) and the view of the swollen river as it races 3 feet
below your bum cheeks makes it a very interesting place to dine.