Back on the road again, and my first blog post on ManicNomads.com!! Wow, Dave is going to flip when he sees this!!
After an exciting, fun-filled 2015 summer/autumn of motorcycle adventures through much of Eastern and Western Europe, I had arrived at my winter parking spot – Benidorm, Spain: Home to most of my close Spanish relatives, living in a seaside resort along the sunny Mediterranean coast. Benidorm became my temporary home, as I took a needed hiatus from four months of amazing European riding and sightseeing: A tour that started on July 20th, riding from Seattle, Washington to Vancouver, Canada. There, I picked up my dangerous goods documentation and delivered my motorcycle to Air Canada Cargo for shipping to London, England. The next day, we both took off from Vancouver, landing 10 hours later into Heathrow. The following day, I signed the paperwork to release my bike from British customs, loaded it up with my travel gear, and headed to Folkestone to cross the English Channel via the Chunnel – an amazing feat of architecture to Munich, Germany where I met up with my riding partner, Dave Lovely.
From Munich, we began our journey northward through Luxemburg, Netherlands into Hamburg, Germany and on to Scandinavia, where we rode from Copenhagen to Oslo, Norway, through the mountains, along the fjords, enjoying long days, twisting roads, amazing bridges and tunnels that boasted the incredible feats of its Norwegian engineers. Up and up, northbound we rode, past Trondheim, across the Artic Circle, and onto the ferry boat of Bødo, sailing to the beautiful Lofoten Islands where we road from island to island via bridges and tunnels, until again we were on the mainland. Into Tromsø we rode, where we stayed in a cabin with a group of Spanish riders, all of us heading in the same direction: North. The next day we took another ferry and rode along more fjords, through barren hills, taking E-6 all the way to the northern-most road in Europe: E-69, which continued north. The last leg of the race northward – we rode down into a 216-meter deep, 3.5 kilometer-long tunnel, surfacing onto an island that would eventually lead us to the cliffs of Nordkapp – our finally destination overlooking the north sea – and the furthest north one can ride or drive in Europe; a milestone achievement with over 4,000 miles/7,000 kilometers of riding completed. What a fantastic first leg of our European adventure it was.
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