Thursday 30 June 2016

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.


Thursday 23 June 2016

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