345 and counting!

Yes folks, it's only 345 days till the Wild Hogs take to the road on the 2017 Scandinavian Tour. Fingers crossed neither of us has an 11th hour medical emergency, this time round.

In my last post I mentioned about re-booking the hotels. I was able to re-date some and to re-book some others but there remains a number that are not yet taking bookings, so I shall have to keep a watchful eye on them over the coming months. I think I have made one change at the moment, that being our second night stay in Kolding, Denmark. I've managed to bag us something cheaper and a little closer to the town centre. There was nothing wrong with the previous selection at all and it was available to book again, but I took the opportunity to save a few kroner. Take care of the pennies and the pints will take care of themselves ;-)

I was able to re-date my Eurotunnel booking and transfer it to the car, so we shall be having a day trip across to France in September instead, a booze run basically.  Grizzly, spent a couple of days in Belgium to use his crossing and then stayed a couple of days with me. That gave us the opportunity to meet up with two of our Route 66 tour chums, Simon and Vivien. We had a nice few hours lunching and chatting at The Leather Bottle in Cobham, Kent. Grizzly had wanted to visit an old fashioned English pub. Not only does the Leather Bottle ( http://www.theleatherbottle.pub/index ) fit the bill, as an old English pub but it also has the added bonus of being featured in the Pickwick Papers. Indeed, Charles Dickens used to stay in one of the rooms. It was nice to see Simon and Viv again and a big surprise for Grizzly, as I'd kept the meeting a secret.

That's all for now. Come back again soon to see how I'm getting on with the re-planning.

Operation Cleanup

Cleaning up the mess that follows the cancellation of a trip, can be a real pain and quite fraught. I was lucky, we were lucky, I should say, that not too much was booked and paid for up front. The accommodation, most booked though Booking.com, could all be cancelled, without penalty. By the time I took a look at my bookings though, on the 27th, one had already passed its date and another had about 13 hours left. The latter, I cancelled straight away. The former would result in me having to pay NOK440 for late cancellation. Nothing ventured, etc, I emailed the property and explained the situation. Happily for me, they agreed to waive the fee and I was able to get that booking cancelled too.

My aim was, wherever possible, to re-date the bookings till next year, rather than cancel everything and have to start over. I've spent a lot of time choosing the accommodation and apart for a couple of compromises, that I won't re-book, I do still want to stay at them. The good thing is, that come 1st July, the 2017 July dates will be available on Booking.com, so I should be able to re-date the remaining hotels to next year. One, a camping site, have already re-booked me.

Aside from the accommodation, things like Eurotunnel, ferry crossing, etc, also have to be sorted. Grizzly is using his Eurotunnel crossing and I can re-date mine for sometime between now and October. The other stuff already paid for, I will just have to take a hit on, as with an excess (deductible) on the travel insurance policy, there is no point in trying to make a claim.

I'll be busy over the next day or to getting the accommodation re-dated but that won't take away the disappointment I shall feel when I wave Grizzly off on his short break, on Sunday morning.

I've made some changes to reflect the tour is now 2017 but I won't change this blog web address. Don't want to lose all my valuable readership, eh?

That's all for now.

Best made plans......

I'd deliberately not posted anything over the last few months, mainly because there was very little to say and because  I thought if I kept you hungry, that would keep you coming back for more.

This post could be said to be my scheduled post, given that D-day was/is just over a week away. The content though, is not what I had planned.

Many of you reading this will already know, that with just 2 weeks to go to the off, I suffered a heart attack. I'm happy to report that it was caught in time (clearly!) and that the NHS have me all fixed up, having fitted a tiny stainless steel stent to one of my arteries. Fixed I may be and touch wood, will remain so going forward, with my box full of tablets but that doesn't mean everything is OK and I'm ready to rock 'n' roll. No, my recuperation period, time off work and time off the motorcycle is going to be about 6 weeks, maybe more, so you don't have to be Einstein to realise, that for me, ze tour iz over! Not sure why I said that in a German accent, maybe because we would have been staying a few nights in Germany en-route to/from Scandinavia.

To say I am gutted, would be an understatement. Having spent as long as I have planning this tour, to have it snatched away from me at the eleventh hour is hard to take. The main thing tough, is that I am still alive and thus, will be in a position to re-schedule for next summer instead. Yes, you read it here first folks, the Wild Hogs Scandinavian Tour, leaves Blighty on 2nd July 2017.

Of course, it's not just me this affects and I feel quite guilty, that Grizzly has lost his holiday too. However, all is not lost for my rounded Irish chum, as he still plans to come across to the UK on 1st July. He's also going to go across on his scheduled Eurotunnel crossing to spend (probably) a short time in Belgium. He'll then come back and stay with me for a day or so, before heading back to Ireland. Not quite the same as 20 days touring Scandinavia but better than nothing (my lot) I guess.

Not sure what I am going to spend this summer (if it ever arrives) doing now. Normally, I'd be doing the next tour but that's done now already. Obviously I will have to make some little adjustments but otherwise I'm going to be at a bit of a loose end.

There isn't much else to say at this point in time, except to say, watch out for the next updates.

Cheers

Change of Hotel

Copenhagen has been a pig to find decent biker friendly accommodation and in that, I mean with parking, Hens teeth are less rare than a hotel with it's own parking in Denmark's capital. My first hotel choice was a compromise, cheap and with some car parking close by, where we may be able to stick the bikes. I'd seen another hotel that reportedly had it's own parking, though admittedly at a cost but had dismissed it as it was more expensive. Not that anything is cheap!  Then, when reading the small print for the one I'd booked, I discovered that we would have to pay for blankets and towels! That added cost made it more expensive than the other one, so, I revisited the second one. On a room only basis, including linen, it is cheaper but for just an additional £4 over the cost of the first hotel, we can add breakfast and potentially have the use of the garage, for free.  Failing that, there is plenty of on road parking, some motorcycle bays too, surrounding it and I'm reliably (?) informed by the Copenhagen tourist office, that motorcycle parking on street or in car/motorcycle bays, is free.

Needless to say, I have ditched the first and booked the second.

Apart from that, I've been continuing with our tour itinerary and tour book, adding little surprises for Grizzly, to keep him interested and stop him getting a numb bum!  The tour book will need to wait until all the roads have opened again, so I can add the route maps but otherwise it's ready to go to print.

There's now just something like 105 days to go to the off. Roll on summer.

Fleshing Out

Well, it's been a while since my last post. To be honest, I did so much up front, that there's not been a lot to report on.

Over the last week or so though, I have been going through and writing our planned itinerary. During this, I have managed to add some bits and pieces for us to stop at/visit, to help break up the riding. I shan't go into any details now, you'll just have to make sure you keep up to date with the blog, when we eventually hit the road in July. Suffice to say, I think I have found some varied and interesting things for us to do. The original routes were in danger of just becoming A-B rides which didn't necessarily fit in with the times we could check in to some hotels, so rather than  take the 3 1/2 hour  journey, I've taken us off the main drag and given us a longer but more leisurely time in the saddle.

Grizzly, a.k.a. for this tour, Knutr, has booked his ferry from the Emerald Isle to the UK today, using a 20% off special on Irish Ferries, so that's all of the pre-bookable transport now sorted. Just like the Vikings, we shall be spending quite a bit of our time on this trip, on the water.

It all seems such a long way off still but I know from experience, it'll be upon us in no time. I for one, can't wait.

Till next time.