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Day 9

Unlike most days so far, I actually wake up with a plan. A mate of mine has worked in Gothenburg and raved about the city, so that’s the destination.

As much as I like camping, while in cities I’ll be staying in cheap accommodation. So I’ve booked a single room in a Hostel in Gothenburg. I choose my accommodation by looking on a search engine and sorting price low to high. As long as none of the recent reviews of the top result report any murders, they’ve got themselves a customer.

For anyone’s that’s interested, I stayed at Gothenburg Mini-Hotel. It was £21 for a single room for the night with a shared bathroom, can’t whinge at that. It was clean, had a bed and TV, for the money I cant ask for more.

Stuff dumped in the room, it’s time for a wander. My mate was right, Gothenburg is awesome! It may be in part due to the main comparison being locked down UK where the streets are dead and the atmosphere is non-existent. Either way, the streets are busy and the architecture is great. There’s a real cafe and outdoor bar culture. The other main appeal is that there seems to be a lack of the usual city dwelling pretentious pricks, everyone seems relaxed and friendly!

During my trip i really wanted to get into photography. For this reason I head back to the hostel for an early night.

Day 10

An early morning follows. I head back to the places i tagged on Google maps the day before and take the following:









Time to leave!

As Sweden was never really on the plan, its been a little rushed. I’ll definitely be going back though.

I start to head south towards the Danish border, with the use of Park4night again i find a beach that the locals will tolerate you camping on and pitch up for the night.



Day 11

Sneaking into Denmark

My original plan to leave Sweden was to take the ferry back to Germany. Like many, I had not fully understood the Danish border restrictions.

Luckily for me though I met a German biker on the ferry, he had a plan to ride through Sweden, Denmark and back home. When I asked how he planned to enter Denmark he said that as he was transiting home, it counted as a ‘worthy cause’ to enter Denmark.

With this in mind I booked a refundable ferry ticket back to the UK for a weeks time and headed to the Danish border.

The ride from Sweden to Denmark is awesome, you cross a massive bridge that touches down on an artificial island between the two countries where it turns into a tunnel. I was tempted to bust out the drone for a picture of the bridge but didn’t think this would ingratiate myself too well with the Danish police that are pulling every motorist over on said little island for questioning.

I arrive at the police check point, explain I’m off home and showed my ticket. The police officer seems pleased with this and she sends me on my way…I’m in Denmark!

Arrived in Denmark

While in Denmark i decide to ride the Danish TET. I pull over after an hour or so for some food, thoroughly unimpressed with the Danish section of the TET. Its about 5% dirt and the rest is roads, almost doesn’t seem worth it.

Meeting other bikers

While eating two bikes pull up behind me in a car park, they had spotted me on foreign plates and pulled over for a chat. They turned out to be Alice and Henriette, two Danish ladies that pass their time riding dirt bikes. Henriette has done her fair share of traveling on a bike, check out her website, fortheloveofwheels.com.

As we’re all riding the Danish TET we decide to carry on as a trio. After Henriette wanders off route we end up at one of her friends small holdings eating koldskål, which, translates to Cold Bowl. As you might be able to guess, it was cold and served in a bowl. The Danish are not an inventive bunch when it comes to naming stuff!





Meeting new and interesting people on route is one of the great things about traveling, hopefully many more encounters like this to come! Thanks again guys for your hospitality!

Finding a camp spot

After leaving the guys at their friends small holding I head for another spot I’ve found on my faithful app and pitch up on the coast just in time for another awesome sunset.



Day 12

This is the second day i wake up with a plan, hopefully this wont start being ‘a thing’!

I’m going to make some good progress today, head down through the rest of Denmark and back through Germany to the Netherlands. I’m not planning on doing any sight seeing in Germany. Northern Germany doesn’t hold much appeal for me (sorry Germans). I lived in hamburg for 8 months after I graduated so I’d prefer to spend my time in places I haven’t been able to explore before.

Getting through the German border was fairly straightforward. I use the same story I used at the Danish border only this time the police officer isn’t so interested to see documents.

Once through the border I pull over and cancel my ferry ticket, its done its job!

After that its many hours of riding through Germany to get over the border and set up camp in a little woods. Not much else to say about that!

Day 13

Back in the Netherlands and time to slow down a little, I’m meeting my girlfriend Char in Amsterdam in a few days and its not far away.

If you’re going to do nothing for a day, there’s no better place than a beach, so I pack up camp and look for a beach near by. Luckily in the Netherlands there’s a fair few lake and canal beaches.



That’ll do!

I’m not going to lie, very little happened for the rest of the day!

After I decided to take my traditionally sun burnt British body away from the beach it was time to find a camp. I find some sand dunes on Google maps surrounded by a forest and head for that.

It turns out that these sand dunes are miles of sandy tracks surrounded by forest, what a find! After an hour or so of riding round these trails i find a spot to camp.



Day 14

Being the tourist

When in the Netherlands, what should you look at…windmills of course. Time to be a complete tourist and Google ‘best windmills in the Netherlands’. Turns out, there’s a lot! Keeping focused around Amsterdam I decide to head to The windmills at Kinderdijk. These bad boys are an UNESCO world heritage site which I assume means they’re good?!

So I’m heading west with google maps set to follow the dyke along the river Lek. If you’re in the Netherlands and want a good way to see the country, I can highly recommend you follow a dyke for a while. I’m normally a mountain lover but flat has never looked so good!

To YouTube or not to YouTube

After a short break at a river side beach to top up my lobster tan, I get to the windmills. At this point I bump into a couple of guys riding awesome retro motocross bikes. After a while chatting it turns out that one of the guys is a British chap called named Graeme who is a travel vlogger. He has a YouTube channel with his wife called ‘Babe, where’s my passport?‘. Go and check these guys out, what a life they lead!

This made me think, maybe a YouTube channel would be a good idea!

After Graeme and his father in law had headed off, I wandered into the windmill site to take some pictures:



Back to camping

As has become part of the daily schedule now, it was time to find a campsite again. This time I knew where I was going, I’d seen a great little patch of grass just below the Dyke next to the Lek river.

I get there and cook some dinner. As i start to think about putting the tent up a couple of Dutch chaps rock up for a nights fishing. We get chatting and they’re fishing for eels, apparently they’re illegal to fish for but really good so they head there a couple of times a year.

As I’m not the fishing police I leave them to their evening and get the tent up.

I’ll leave it there, feel free to add your email to the subscribe section on the right.

All links are available on the blog itself if you're interested.

Next blog post, Amsterdam, Luxembourg and sneaking into France

Cheers for reading,
Mike

Blog - The Feral Traveller - My solo round the world motorcycle trip

Instagram - the_feral_traveller

Great posts, many thanks.
Please keep posting your journey - don’t be like so many on here and just fade away.

Day 15

As I’m meeting Char at Amsterdam airport tomorrow morning, I decide to get a place to stay for the night before as well. The Netherlands is getting back to normal now. There are hotels, restaurants, bars, museums and all sorts open for business so it’s great to see a lot of Europe returning to normal!

As I cant check into our little apartment until early afternoon I best find something to do. I have a little Google session and see if there’s anything id like to visit. First port of call is the beach so I pop that in the Sat-Nav and make my merry way. When i get there, its a big, cold, windy stretch of beach. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Maybe some kind of Caribbean scene?! It was so exciting I didn’t bother taking a picture.

Back to Google, I’d got it pretty wrong the first time but surely I cant screw up a Google search twice!

Next up, I find a little town called Edam. How could you not want to go to Edam?!

So into the Sat-Nav Edam goes and I’m back on the bike.

Not at all cheesy…
get to Edam and this time I’m very happy with my destination. It’s like a little dutch postcard so I get the camera out and do the tourist thing.





Heading to Amsterdam

After a wander round Edam I head to out apartment in Amsterdam to check in. I manage to find a little space next to the apartment to park the bike much to the displeasure of the old lady next door. She was fine with the pile of rusty bikes but a lovely adventure bike wasn’t to her liking it would seem. Each to their own I guess!

If you’re looking for a place to stay in Amsterdam, I can definitely recommend the L’Home apartments we stayed in. They get great reviews and for the price I certainly couldn’t complain. The location is great too, check them out ‘here‘.

I’ve got an evening to kill before Char arrives which I spend editing some pictures and watching a film.

Day 16

I wake up early the next morning to take some pictures of Amsterdam in a deserted state and end up with the following:







I then head back to the apartment, drop the camera equipment off and head to the airport to meet Char.

We head back to the apartment and settle in before heading out for dinner.

Day 17 and 18

For the next two days we pretty much wander round Amsterdam. We take in the usual sites and Chars pretty pleased to be in a country which allows people to live almost normally for a bit so we head to little coffee shops, cake shops and eat out as much as possible.

A good few days had!



Char managed to time her trip to allow her to get back into the UK before the date the mandatory 14 day quarantine begins on 8th June, shes not a daft girl!

Day 19

Day 19, Chars departure day came around very quickly, unfortunately the dates were forced by the UK government. We’re now hoping the mandatory quarantine doesn’t get extended past the planned 3 weeks to allow the next visit to be planned!

So, back to day 19, Char has an early taxi back to the airport, it’s sad to see her go but looking forward to the next visit! I get packing my stuff back onto my bike, the aim today is to get to Luxembourg so I had best get on the road.

Due to borders into Belgium being a bit of a pain, I decide to swing back out into Germany and then into Luxembourg. Again there are no issues with travel at all.

Once in Luxembourg, I head into the forest to make camp for the night.



It wasn’t the most picturesque spot I’d had during my trip but it was secluded and bang in the middle of a forest.

Day 20

So you’re in Luxembourg, what do you do, take pictures of castles obviously! In Luxembourg that’s like shooting fish in a barrel, the country is tiny and you can pretty much see a castle or some awesome architecture every time you turn around.





After castle spotting, I thought I’d wander around Luxembourg City…





Amazingly, by the time I’d seen some castles and walked round Luxembourg it was only just approaching lunch time. It really is a small country! With half a day to spare I decide I’m going to head south, back into Germany and look for a place to cross the border into France with the aim of visiting my mum.

Sneaking into France

So I’ve made my way down into Germany, I’m pretty confident that a good entry spot into France will be through the Parc Naturel regional des Vosges du Nord, please see below:



When I arrive I couldn’t be happier with my choice. I’m sure there are plenty of other areas that would work just as well for a drop of sneaky border crossing but this is the one I’m going for.

I fill the tank and head into the woods, the French border comes and goes with about as much fuss as you’d expect. I stopped at the border and take a picture.



I did hang around for a while waiting for my passport to be checked but they must have been on lunch, so I made my way into France.

Once in France the riding picked up a lot! I decided to head straight through the middle of the Vorges Mountains, this turned out to be a great idea!

Where we’re going, we dot need roads

I set google maps up to take me on the smallest roads I could find, I wasn’t expecting what that would entail! Below is the first of these “roads”. Things got better from here.



After leaving the first dirt track, I followed google maps into what can only be described as a forest. Now, I don’t mean a track in a forest, I mean just a forest.





I did for a second consider turning round and finding an actual trail. But I reached ‘**** it’ fairly quickly and decided to crack on and see what happens. I’ve got days of food and water on board, worst case I get stuck and have to camp while I sort my mess out.

Not out of the woods yet!

After I find the exit to the forest I’m back on a trail, this doesn’t make the riding any easier as the trail turns into a steep rutted track that offers zero grip.





I found that in the middle of the ruts i had enough grip to control my speed. The bike doesn’t handle the best fully kitted up but its perfectly capable of getting down routes like this. It’s a shame the pictures don’t show just how steep these trails were, outside of the rut there was no option of stopping. As I could stop in the rut, I thought it would be a good idea to prop the bike up in the rut for a quick picture.

After a few hours of increasingly interesting trails later it’s time to find a camp spot for the night. I’m starting a habit of finding water to camp next to. Today is no different. I find Lac de Pierre-Percee and make my way there. It’s pretty epic when I arrive so yet again, I’m a happy camper!

What a day!

Day 21

I wake up early and the lakes looking awesome so I send up the drone for a quick snap. The fog is rolling off the lake over the dam which looks pretty cool.



I decide that today is going to be a road day and I’m going to head across country to see my mum for a few days. I shoot across France with nothing of note to report and get to my Mums, I’m now in central France.

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Thanks for reading, please feel free to subscribe to the blog, that always gets updated first and I'll post t on here when I can. Also, a lot more pictures o up on Instagram than n the blog posts, so follow that if you'd like to see them.

Cheers,
Mike

Blog - www.theferaltraveller.com

Instagram - the_feral_traveller

That is most interesting.

Sat here in sunny Mid Wales, one could be led to believe that the rest of Europe is so well sealed up that not even a mouse is crossing borders.

I suppose the problem now is the quarantine coming back to the UK, although that is being challenged in court too.

Starting to feel as though I need another motorbike.......

Great pix, thanks!

I just popped on my logical thinking hat, there's no way any country is putting that much resource into border closures, its only on tarmac roads from what I've seen and in populated areas.

I'm not worried about the quarantine as I'm less than 4 weeks into a round the world trip so i cant imagine it will still be in place in a year.

The media has done a great job in hyping things up

Thanks for giving it a read and there's certainly worse place to be than mid Wales!

Cheers,
Mike

Blog - The Feral Traveller - My solo round the world motorcycle trip

Instagram - the_feral_traveller