The perfect start
…. with sunny weather and perfect packed panniers, yeah that was the plan, what we got was 5 degrees, rain, hail, strong wind and luggage that was completely not thought through. The bikes were very overloaded because we forgot to send some of the stuff with the van that is taking the rest for storage in Sweden. I’m so happy that we didn’t forget to send the big oak cabinet with the van as that would probably had been a challenge to get on the bike.
Oh well, luckily it wasn’t the official start of the trip as that was when we left the HUBB UK event in Donington a week after. 9.30 in the morning we had a fabulous send off from the event http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/events/hubbuk/. There were lots of people who photographed and filmed us and I got the feeling of being a celebrity and I think we both quite enjoyed it 😉 Earlier I had been very calm about the trip, it’s been so surreal but at this moment with all these amazing people who had taken the time to come and send us off, I was completely unprepared how it affected me. It was like something had hit me very hard and for the first time I actually understood that we are off on an around the world tour on two motorbikes and a tent. I had goosebumps, tears in my eyes and the biggest smile ever on my face and when talking to
Short break in the Netherlands
Anders said afterwards that he had had exactly the same feelings. For about half an hour after the send off, the only thing I could say was “f..k that was amazing” and Anders told that I must have said it hundreds of times.
With a slight toothache I even managed to get an appointment to the dentist just a few hours before we had to be on the ferry and I think the dentist felt sorry for me as he fixed my tooth for free, what a lucky day.
The plan was to take the freight ferry from Immingham to Gothenburg but of course we were too late and didn’t get a place. Instead we ended up on a ferry from Hull to Rotterdam in the Netherlands and had to ride on these very boring motorways through the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark.
The 1300 km (808 miles) ride from Rotterdam to Kungsbacka in Sweden took one and a half day. The reason why we had to ride such a distance in such a short time was that we got a phone call from a guy from the moving company that said that our stuff will arrive in Kungsbacka at lunchtime the day after.. eek!
Nice view from the tent when free camping in Denmark
The first night we manage to find a place to free camp in Denmark and it was beautiful spot and we could really get the feeling of being in Scandinavia.
Just to mention is that I have only dropped the bike once since we left England. This happened after we had been riding on the motorway for a few hours and stopped for petrol. I had to do a u-turn and for those of you who are bikers you will know that there can be some difficulties to go from hours at high speed to very low speed in a few seconds… As a result I got a big bruise on my leg…. and one on my bum, ouch!
Since we arrived in Kungsbacka we have applied for extra passports, China visas and enjoyed meeting our son Emil 🙂 Next stop will be Borlänge in Dalarna to meet Anders mum and after that we are heading towards the (http://adventuredays.se) in Säfsen where we will give three presentations about how we planed the trip…. will be a challenge… will be about how to plan not to plan the trip 🙂