The need to wander

Sat in my living room, my bank balance well and truly depleted, the weather not great to go out anywhere on the motorbike, and without the spare time to head off to the hills on my mountain bike!
As well as working unsocial and downright frustrating hours (why can't emergency services be 9-5?) the lingering threat of upcoming Christmas, family visits and a birthday is getting manic and filling my head, my camera's SD card, and of course the monthly statements. All of the above of course are great, I enjoy doing what I do and seeing family is a rare and fantastic opportunity not to be missed.


However......

As a pleasant and fanciful distraction (fantasy?) i have a plan formulating in my head for a motorcycle tour of Europe.

Europe... there isn't much of it on the British mainland, so i plan to head out into the wilderness of the continent!

  

As for where to begin the tour, I think I'm nodding towards catching the ferry form Hull to Rotterdam, and continue from there. To be perfectly honest this is purely designed to avoid France and more accurately, the French!

 From there, I would really like to head down to Germany to have "look" (if my Dad's reading) at the Nurburgring ... if he's not... then I'd like to go have a go round it.

From there it would be rude not to traverse the country to see my very good friend Claudia who lives in Leipzig (near Dresden).

 

Once rested and full of "Echte Deutsche Gastfreundschaft", i will be meandering my way south, through the alps (hopefully making the most of passes an avoiding long drawn out tunnels and motorways).

  

Despite all the voices in my head, and those outside of it also, saying that riding through Italy is a mistake waiting to occur, i still would really like to be able to ride though the northern valleys and past the great lakes, and stopping at my greatly missed friend Lorenzo's, in Piacenza.

From there on... i guess i would be coming home; tired, broke and thoroughly pleased with myself. This road trip ever being completed is only really possible, not really probable. The thing that keeps my passion for motorcycling so strong is that i have never climbed form the bike wishing i hadn't done that last few miles, or that I'd just taken the car. It is a real fear that this trip could make me into the tour-hungry motorcycling I might be inside, filling my soul with the experiences and places viewed form a saddle. Or i could just end up thoroughly fed up, with a snapped chain, sat in the cold rain in some motorway service station where people don't talk English, and certainly don't have spare parts for VFR's for the grumpy Englishman with no money left because he spent it all on a lap of the Nurburgring and wine.

Actually, that sounds great.