All Over

Approximately 12,000 kms on the bikes & 13 countries in 2 months its home for a rest. The V Stroms have performed brilliantly again. Only problem has been my smartphone which died & caused a few gaps in this blog in the last 10 days. To bring you up to date, we left Ireland at the port of Rosslare & ferried across to Pembroke in Wales on dead calm seas. Our only night in Wales was in the Welsh hills at Abergavenny, camped at a golf course camping ground. We managed to avoid the thunder storms around us, for our last night in the tents. All good trips must come to an end & the following day we headed to Horsham, to meet up with the rest of the Kiwi team of seven bikes for a last night dinner at the local in Billingshurst. Bikes had to be cleaned thoroughly before loading on the 19th at Felixstowe in the container for the journey back to NZ.
Until next time, thanks for following this blog & our journey. We have crammed a lot in, in a short time, as this was my first visit to this part of the world, every day brought something new. A great trip, if you ever have the oppurtunity, give it a go !

One night of glamping, never hurt, our last night in Ireland was in this B&B

Success At Isle of Man

Bruce Anstey from Auckland NZ took out the Superbike Final in a race record time to add to his current lap record from last year. It was a proud Kiwi contingent heading back to our campsite & a hastily made flagpole with the Silver Fern flying from the top. In today's Supersport 600, Bruce came in second only 8 seconds back over 240 kms of racing. A great effort Bruce.

Had to add this photo of a guy blowing up an airbed in the departure terminal for our ferry to Larne in Ireland. The ferry departs at 3am, so a long night ahead of us

Isle of Man

These guys racing motorbikes on these roads at 300 km / hr is crazy. They get airborne going over the rises in the road. IOM is a beautiful place, even though the weather has not been perfect. The sheer size of the event & number of supporters has to be seen to be appreciated.

Castle at entrance to Peel Harbour on east side of IOM

New Zealand Memorial

We were camping the night in a farm camp site in Northern France & a Brit also camping there told us that there was a NZ memorial & cemetery in a near village that we had passed by, the previous day in Le Quesnay.  It was well worth backtracking to. At the entrance to the town there is sign giving directions to the memorial. It was the efforts of the NZ soldiers breaking into the fort held by the invading German troops in WW1 that gave the NZ troops the respect that they are held in even today

. We signed the visitors book which contained names from recent visitors from NZ. The cemetery is kept in great order by the village  community.

Sobering

We are camped at Verdun in northern France for 3 nights while we wait for the other riders in our group to

catch up before going on to Calais for the Chunnel crossing back to the UK & on to Isle of Man. Verdun is the centre of the action in WW1 & the memorials & war cemeteries are everywhere. The largest single cemetery by far is the United States with 14286 soldiers buried on a hill side with the nearby monument of remembrance erected by the US, with a replica of the Statue of Liberty at its 200 ft top. The view from the top takes in all the surrounding villages & farmland.
The vastness of the 104  acre US cemetery,  each with a marble cross or Star of David  & the soldiers name, rank, hometown & any honours, is truly sobering. We have also passed numerous French & German military cemeteries in a 20 km range of Verdun. It is estimated that over 700,000 of 2 million troops in the region either died here or suffered serious injury.
Tomorrow we hope to lighten things up a little with a visit to some of the locks on the canal system.

Got To Be A Winner

OK guess what this is. Yes its a coin operated dispenser of that staple of the French diet, a baguette. For €1 you get a fresh warm baguette, out of the machine.Boy did it taste good. Most of it was gone by the time we got back to the campground. So for you young entrepreneurs, this has got to be a winner in NZ. Better than the overdone coffee pedlars on the side of the road.

Border Hopping

Three countries in one day, seems crazy, but I left the camp site in the morning in Austria on the Rhine Delta , which is a huge lake feeding the impressive  Rhine river, rode back through Switzerland & ended up camped just over the border of France in Colmar, camped beside a river full of  trout. The farm land either side of the Rhine is very fertile with crops looking good for the summer harvest. In this region the villages are only a few kms apart, with traditional multi storey homes. The early summer season is seeing camping grounds with about 75% occupancy compared to when we first arrived in Europe when they were empty.

Trout at the doorstep, not sure why I bought salmon at the supermarket.The water was crystal clear too.