About this holiday then ~ Part 4

The end.....I promise!

One damp night and poor-ish meal in a restaurant later, we departed Grimsel and the pretty grim kind of woman manning the local campsite (in a beautiful spot mind you) and moved on northwards via
Interlaken to South East France and the Alsace region....only about 200 miles this time which gave us time to play on the roads through and forest close to Colmar. This though had a sobering moment when we came upon some World War 1 cemeteries, the area having been on the front line.


Due respect and a quiet moment were given and we carried on the Xonrupt-Longemer and a campsite at the edge of a lake...amusingly called 'camping Du Lac'! heh.



We were knackered, it was raining, the site was nice and it was fun trying to communicate with the girl running it, who spoke a similar amount of English to our command of French, so we stayed put for a day of rest that mostly consisted of eating and hibernation from the rain in the tent with a book or two.

The feeling that we were near the end was setting in and knowing we had to be back at the hook of Holland for Saturday and our sailing home we set off again, wet tent packed, hey, we got used to being wet and got packing our 'temporary home' down to a fine art in any conditions!

We had decided that our last night and morning should be spent in Amsterdam, a nice hotel, good food and one final blast, sex and drugs and rock and roll....and all that.

The journey through Luxembourg and Belgium could best be described as 'utility', on motorways, hot and without stopping, that was until we hit our first traffic jams for two weeks trying to get into Amsterdam....where we came to a shuddering halt and had to re-think our route.

Once into the city we found a lovely hotel that 'sadly' oh dear - not only had one place left, a relatively expensive apartment just around the corner...we took it, unloaded the bike (that couldn't be housed in the hotel underground car park because the bell hops couldn't cope with it on the lift) and made haste with the luxury of a shower!




Amsterdam was good, way better than I had expected, it has a kind of chilled, laid back, anything goes vibe about it that I loved. We could happily have spent a few days there but we made the most of our few hours, an evening and a morning, and though one feels in Amsterdam that one should do the whole sex and drugs and rock roll thing in our state of tiredness it was somewhat beyond us ....sex was a quick beetle around the red light district, drugs we don't do (even when cheap and legal) and the rock and roll....well we chose to chill in a bar after an excellent dinner, that had a guy playing 'easy listening' on a piano, hardly rock and roll but very enjoyable!

The morning came and with it our penultimate ride, to the Hook of Holland to sail back to the U.K. It was uneventful and we boarded and sailed on time. Again we had a Captains cabin so we made the most of it......and slept, finally docking at about 22.00 hours and then riding our final 100 miles home to Cambridge. In typically British style we were treated to a dull, dismal, rainy and misty ride for the final leg....... Welcome back to England!


Minutes from docking - Not happy!
I hated coming back, this holiday had been such an adventure and I loved the lifestyle, a challenge in parts yes, but the challenge was part of the fun and the experience. I discovered stuff about myself that I didn't know and learned some stuff, good and bad along the way but most of all I could have just carried on living that life forever, riding from one country to the next, pitching the tent, eating what was available, trying to communicate in different languages and marvelling at the world around me and what it has to offer. Oh, and the company was pretty respectable too! ;o)

I truly never believed that the world was such a beautiful and interesting place until now.......

When does the next ferry sail?


*All images can be found HERE if you prefer not to trawl through all this!....more added when I get a moment.