Oooo, I've never worked for an organisation that had its own stamp before! I first saw this about a year ago but we were sworn to secrecy and the Royal Mail have finally launched it today. Exciting, egh?

Friday Fun 7

A colleague sent me this 'cos she said it reminded her of Jon! She's only met him once, so the impression he made must have been startling!

We can see where she's coming from, but this blog cannot condone the wearing of facial hair.

There are loads more on YouTube by the Gentleman Rhymer, the country's leading exponent of 'Chap-Hop', including him doing 'All Hail the Chap' at the Lass o'Gowrie*, Manchester (ah, brings back memories) - enjoy...



Oh, and, don't forget that it's the 4th Chap Olympiad this weekend. We won't be there 'cos we're hosting Mr Oscar, but it should be great fun.

* The book I'm reading at the moment, Andrew Davies' The Gangs of Manchester, gives this description of the Lass in the 1870s, "'No pen could describe' the fearful state of the hovels of Deansgate, where the Hop Pole Inn...was frequented by 'the very lowest dregs of society'...The district between Oxford Road and London Road was little better...One man was seen entering the Lass o'Gowrie on Charles Street 'with nothing on but his shirt and shoes'. The observers noted that 'A fearful state of demoralization exists about this house'".

Track Day June 2010

Just before we went on holiday we did a ride-out with the local police followed by a scoot round the track at Combe. Well, Jon did the scoot round the track and I chicken'd out! The photos, taken by this chap, are on our photo album on the right.

Ferrets on Tour

We're just back from taking the motorbikes on a trip to Germany; which entailed going through 5 countries (I did hope we'd go through Luxembourg to make it 6 but we just went round the top of it instead) and travelling 1,620 miles - that's more than my bike has ever done in an entire year before! After putting off doing a bike trip for the last 3 summers because the weather has been so awful, this year we decided to just book it and go whatever the weather did. It worked and after drizzle on the first few days the weather was good for the rest of the holiday - if a bit too hot towards the end!

This shows the danger of getting satellite TV, as we were inspired by Henry Cole's 'World's Greatest Motorcycle Rides' on the Travel Channel. But he did make it look a lot easier than it actually was - probably 'cos he has a camera crew help him navigate! Below is Google Maps' suggested route - I can't say that we stuck to it though. We wanted to do some of the 'Castle Route' and the 'Romantic Route', but also ended up doing bits of the Mosel Wine Route and the Nibelung-Sigefried Route too. You know the Germans - they even organise their tourists! Reviews of all the hotels we stayed in can be found on Trip Advisor, well, if they publish some of the rather more scathing ones that is...


View German Trip June 2010 in a larger map

Day -1 - Friday night

We decided to break the journey to Dover by staying in the Premier Inn at Slough on the Friday night. I now heartily agree with John Betjeman's assessment of the place and it's down there with Croydon as one of the most charmless places I've ever been to. It started to rain as we got stuck in the one-way system whilst following the, frankly rubbish, directions from the hotel's website. This set the tone for journey, as we knew every day when we were nearing our destination because it would either start raining or there'd be a road diversion that would add at least half an hour to our journey! I think June must be national road works month in Germany.

Day 1 - Saturday

This stop-over roughly halved our journey to Dover, so we had plenty of time to get there on Saturday and didn't have to rush or worry about getting lost. The ferries now have proper motorcycle parking bays, which is a great innovation since we last travelled to France. They used to just lash the bike to the wall of the car deck, using a manky bit of foam to protect the bike's paintwork from the ropes. If you were lucky a member of staff would do this for you, but you were on your own once you'd docked. Now you drive through a ramp into a metal thingie that grips your front wheel whilst it's strapped down using the back frame. Staff insist on doing this and undoing it once we docked.

Our first destination on the Continent was the Pomme D'Or in Oudenaarde, Belgium. This was a bit ambitious but should have been easily do-able in a reasonable amount of time. But the cross-winds on leaving Calais and heading up to Dunkirk were extraordinary, and after an hour or so of counter-steering (and diversions) I couldn't hold the bike up any more and we had to find a different route. So we dropped down to Wipers/Ypres/Ieper and across country. It was very affecting driving past little knots of graves in tiny graveyards by the side of the road, all beautifully tended by the War Graves Commission - and the names themselves: 'Tyne Cot' Cemetery, 'Irish Farm' Cemetery and 'Colne Valley' Cemetery are so evocative of the groups of men from a single town or borough who joined up together and all too often died together. The sheer number of these graveyards in the Ieper area (the Western Front) is just as awful (in the true sense of the word) as the acres of graves in one single place at the Menin Gate.

Anyway, the diversion added several hours to our journey and we reached the Pomme D'Or at 9pm tired and rather grumpy. But the hotel was lovely and even had a decanter of port in the room - free! - which was extremely welcome. It has a lovely brasserie attached and a very elegant restaurant. Unfortunately, as it was raining, we couldn't go out onto the terrace bar, but we enjoyed the food and Belgian beers in the brasserie. It was such a great place that we were sad to only stay for one night.

Day 2 - Sunday

The next destination was the Ibis in Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), Germany. If you're trying to remember why you've heard of Aachen, it was the site of Charlemagne's main palace, there was a treaty signed here at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and it was the first German town to be captured by the Allies in WW2. Oh, and there's a link to Chippenham too, as Alfred the Great's father was born there!

We got horribly lost in Aachen trying to find the hotel (actually, we got horribly lost trying to get out of Belgium too! We were so grateful to the van driver who stopped to help us when we had the map out) - my fault I'm afraid - but finally landed about 4pm. All Ibis hotels are pretty standard, but I really liked this one, it looked out over trees and one of the city's old entrance gates was in the road just below it. Luckily, the cathedral is open 'til 7pm, so plenty of time for late sight-seeing.

Days 3 & 4 - Monday & Tuesday

The next day we headed for the Ibis in Heidelberg, for two nights this time. I've got to say that on the whole German drivers were very considerate to us poor lost bikers, who were probably more like mobile chicanes! The proximity to the Nurburgring meant that there were some fast cars around. Oh, and for any Top Gear fans, Germany is full of Dacia Sanderos. We decided today to get off the autobahn and take the A9 which runs down the Rhine (as recommended by someone at work who'd been stationed out there) and it was such a great road. We stopped at Boppard for lunch (Gulaschsuppe (Goulash Soup) our favourite!), but could have stopped anywhere en-route as there were such beautiful castles and towns by the road that you wanted to stop and take pictures, but there were just so many of them that you'd never get anywhere! There were also vines growing everywhere, not just on fields by the side of the road but on almost vertical hills above the road too. That was quite a long run (more getting lost). But we did find some lovely 'biking' roads that were virtually empty. We found all week that many roads were really quiet and even on A-roads we could be the only things going in our direction for miles at a stretch.

Again it was about 9pm by the time we were out of the hotel and looking for food; which was found in Zapata's next door to the hotel - Jon made the mistake of going for the special offer on the schnitzel. The restaurant had a South American theme, hence the name, so they had Argentinian beef on the menu - not that Germany doesn't produce plenty of its own, as we could smell the bi-products on the way down! All I can say is that the Germans use a lot of natural fertilisers on their fields.

The next day we used the excellent public transport system to get to Hiedelberg Castle - there's a funicular railway to get up there! Wooo Wooo Wooo!!!! There's an apothecary museum, which was very interesting as there was laudanum, cocaine and absinthe; and that was just in the café! ;¬) The castle is also home to the Heidelberg Tun, a huge barrel that was scorned by Mark Twaine in 'A Tramp Abroad', "Everybody has heard of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it, no doubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions say it holds eighteen hundred thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels. I think it likely that one of these statements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the mere matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. An empty cask the size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me. I do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free of expense".

The old town was also lovely. This is going to sound a bit odd, but one result of us bombing the crap out of nice German towns during the war is that it gave the churches the chance to invest in some really innovative stained glass in the post war period. We saw some lovely windows in the Franciscan church in Rothenburg and saw this in Heidelberg.

A real find was the restaurant in the garden that the Kurpfalzisches Museum in the Old Town - and that the western regions of Germany do flammkuchen like they make it in Strasbourg... mmmm, delish. The garden was really quiet and the restaurant not expensive and open 'til 11pm.

Days 5 & 6 - Wednesday and Thursday

The next day we set off to Rothenburg ob der Tauber. We used the autobahn until Bad Wimpfen, were we stopped to do a bit of sight seeing. Actually, you could stop in any small town along the route and you'd see half-timbered mediaeval quaintness a-plenty, it seemed quite difficult to find an ugly town in this region! We saw some amazing birds of prey whilst riding along. They were about the same size as buzzards but flew lower than buzzards do, one flew along side us in the field for a hundred yards or so, whilst another time one flew along in front of Jon.

Then we took the the pretty roads to Rothenburg, which included the customary diversions dictated by road works and us getting lost. Riding into Rothenburg on cobbles through the tower pictured above was amazing - like riding into a mediaeval theme park. I'm glad that I didn't have to tackle those cobbles in the wet. I don't think I've ever been in a town which is still so completely within its mediaeval walls. Bits of the town are closed to traffic during the day, but luckily vehicles going to and from the hotels are exempt from those rules. It's a shame that the 'welcome' we got in the hotel spolied the entire holiday for me. Read about it on Trip Advisor, if the review is still there, because the owner has already had my review removed from the website we booked it through!

The covered town walls were fantastic, sorry if you get bored of all the photos of them in the album. There were lots of churches to look round but we didn't get chance to do the museums because the town itself was just so wonderful to wander around. They even brew their own beers... Which were available at the Gerhaus Hotel. The venison goulash and the flamm at the Reichs Kutchenmeister were scrummy.

Day 7 - Friday


We left Rothenberg via the Klingentor gate (pictured right) and headed off on the pretty roads back to Worms and ran into diversions immediately! This led to us getting very lost in the middle of nowhere, but the Germans were so unfailingly helpful (even on occasions when we didn't actually need help!) that a young girl stopped her car to give us directions. That set us on the right path and we were in Worms for about 4pm. I've got to say that German road signs were rubbish, with towns appearing and disappearing from them seemingly at random!

Worms is one of the oldest cities in Germany and is famous to every spotty school child for its Diet. In 1521 the Diet of Worms declared Martin Luther an outlaw because he would not recant his religious beliefs - there's a very large statue of him in one of the little parks. William Tyndale's first complete edition of the New Testament in English was also printed in Worms in 1526. We were rather unimpressed by Worms, but perhaps we didn't find the nice bit! We visited the cathedral but couldn't find anything else nice to look round, but it is difficult when you've only got a few hours in a town. But we found a good restaurant and a nice bar (Cafe Pinel).

Day 8 - Saturday

We headed off for Bitburg, where the beer comes from. They do tours of the brewery, but we didn't have the time unfortunately. This was quite close to the Nurburgring so again there were some interesting cars and bikes around. There were lots of twisty roads on the way there, which Jon loved, but me less so and not helped by coming across the most ignorant road-users of the week: a group of about 8 British lads on sports bikes who overtook us and lots of other traffic on a series of blind hairpin bends down a steep hill. In fact, one of them almost didn't make it back in in time near me and I thought I was going to be spending the rest of the day scraping bits of him off my leathers and explaining to the German police that this tw*t may have been English but was nothing to do with us.

Day 9 - Sunday

We skirted the top of Luxembourg and made our way back into Belgium. Immediately the driving became somehow more, well, French (apologies to our French friends), with tail-gating and cars overtaking a line of stationary traffic in the face of on-coming traffic! As it was a Sunday there were shoals of lycra-clad cyclists three abreast across the road, it was like being in "Belleville Rendez-vous". There were lots of vintage cars, obviously on a rally, as well as a group of identical BMW Minis all hunting for petrol. Because, of course, this was France/Belgium on a Sunday and everywhere was closed, including the petrol stations. We've had this on previous trips and should have remembered to fill up the day before, but in Britain we get so used to a 24/7 culture that you just forget that our neighbours aren't the same. There were thousands of bikers on the road and when you did go past a petrol station that was open it was packed with bikers chatting and admiring each other's machines. Very sociable.

Our destination was the Chateau de Namur, a very posh-looking establishment on the hill above the Citadel. We approached it up a steep cobbled switchback road that led to the Citadel - everywhere we went this holiday seemed to have cobbles and hairpin bends! It turned out to be rather too quirky but the food was excellent. It was too far from the centre of Namur (and far too hot at 30 degrees c) to do sight-seeing, but I think the town would repay a visit, it looked interesting.

Day 10 - Monday

Today was a run up to the Ibis in St Omer, only about 30 miles from Calais, so a nice overnight stop within hailing distance of the ferry. We'd barely seen any Brits all holiday, so it was a bit of a shock to find that seemingly everyone in St Omer was British! Those that weren't were obviously also doing a stop-over before catching the ferry. All the English speaking people we'd heard in Germany were American - there were thousands of them! Rothenburg was packed with them. But there were quite a few US bases around so I wondered if some were visiting relatives or re-visiting old haunts.

Anyway, St Omer was very nice, with a cathedral built of brilliant white stone (well, half of it was, as it's in the process of being cleaned!). Inside, what we at first thought was a housemartin flying near the roof actually turned out to be a bat! Bats in the belfry indeed... We avoided the bars with names like "The Queen Victoria", "Dickens" and "Le Penalty" but had the 16 euro menu at Le P'tit Montmartre, whose chef must have Michelin pretentions as the food was fantastically presented for something at that price. Sadly, no air-con in the bedroom and it was baking!

Day 11 - Tuesday - Home

A very quiet crossing with few vehicles on the ferry. Made it back from Dover in 4 hours and that included a tea break. There was an accident at our M4 junction so we got off at Wootton Bassett and came home via Sutton Benger. It was a lovely run with very little traffic and we were really glad to have such a nice ride so close to home.

It was a difficult holiday with the getting lost becoming very wearing. I think next time we might go less far and spend two nights at more places rather than moving on most days, as the 2 stints of two nights spent at Heidelberg and Rothenberg were more relaxing. But Germany and the Germans were lovely and we'd love to go back.

But we must have slipped into an alternate universe on the ferry home 'cos we got back to find the Conservatives saying that we should send fewer people to prison and use more community sentences. What happened? They've gone left at a speed that makes New Labour's 1995 move to the right look positively pedestrian. They'll be digging up Disraeli and bringing back One Nation Toryism next and then I'll have to vote for them! (Only joking - Satan will have to buy ice skates first).