How to win friends and have real adventures.

Delving deep into the EU again….

By Jon Newey - retired Architect, Blood Bike rider, Adventure traveller - with Tigger - Triumph Tiger 800 XRX

At the end of my previous blog Tigger and I had just made it onto the early-morning ferry taking us from Douglas on the Isle of Man across to Heysham on the UK mainland.

The crossing should take four hours but we’ve been delayed. There’s an announcement on the tannoy, but it is garbled and incomprehensible. Something about a banana, I think. Puzzled looks all round from the other passengers, most of whom don’t have English as a first language. Turns out it’s the other ferry, the Manannan, which has loaded up in Heysham but is unable to sail. I don’t know why. The guy making the announcements seems to be doing it with his head in a bucket of water. The banana has to unload and move away from the quay so that our ferry, the Manxman, can slide in…..I think.

We get into the dock two hours late. As you might expect, Heysham ferry port is utter Bedlam. Everyone off the ‘banana’ is waiting together with all the people who were already waiting for the Manxman. It is chaos. At the head of the queue waiting to get on the ferry is A TV crew: Richard Hammond is there doing some report about the TT.

I

extract Tigger from the melee of machinery inside the Manxman. We chug carefully down the ramp onto the concrete quayside. We thread our way through the mayhem and make our way towards the M6. Meanwhile, back on the Isle of Man, Race-Week is just getting started. Spoiler alert: The weather continues to keep everyone guessing, more riders crash and are injured (but thankfully nothing worse) and the big race, the Senior TT, eventually gets cancelled altogether.

Tigger and I have a couple of days to get across the UK to Harwich, to catch a ferry to Holland. I visit my Mum and I stop for lunch with an old school fried who I haven’t seen for 45 years. How time flies. By early evening the following day I’m in a Travelodge near Ipswich, just twenty minutes away from Parkeston Quay. At 7am the next morning I’m up and on the road, aiming to be at the ferry check-in by 7:30. The roads are quiet and we make it easily. Tigger and I join the queue of cars, bikes and camper vans waiting at passport control.

A short way ahead I can see a German biker who has pulled out of the queue and is frantically turning out all his pockets. The car in front of me pulls forward a few inches and there on the tarmac I can see a red EU passport. I can guess what’s happened. Here’s my chance to make a fellow biker very happy. I hop off, pick up

the passport, check the photo in it, and hand it over. Now I have a German friend for life! He’s just been to Scotland to do the North-Coast 500. He had awful weather and everyone told him ‘You should have been here last week, it was great…’ Ah, but you’ve seen the real Scotland, I tell him.

The ferry isn’t too busy this morning. There’s lots of space on the car deck, lots of space in the various lounges, and the tannoy announcements are crystal clear in multiple languages. Take note Manxman! The sun shines, the sea is calm, seven hours passes quickly and it doesn’t seem long before we’re arriving at Hoek van Holland. I make my way back down to the car deck , take the velcro strap off Tigger’s brake lever, unclip the ferry’s holding strap, and Tigger trundles down the ramp onto terra firma.

What’s nice about this is that I’m back at the same ferry port where I completed last year’s ‘Go South’ tour. Now I’m at the start of my ‘Go North’ adventure. In my mind I can sandwich the two trips together to make one big route, taking me all the way from Scotland to Western Sahara, to Nordkapp and back. I like the thought of it.

Bunnik Hostel

Tonight’s destination is Bunnik, a suburb of Utrecht. There’s a nice-looking hostel there where I’ve got a bed reserved in a 6-person dorm. It’s only an hour’s ride away. It’s 7pm by the time I pull into the hostel’s bike park. It’s a great place, a converted manor house with big rooms, a moat and a bar in the adjacent stables. Meals are served until 8pm so I check in, drop my bags onto one of the beds and order something randomly from the Dutch-only menu. That’s a thing I like doing when I’m travelling. I’m happy to eat almost anything and I don’t have any allergies so I sometimes live dangerously and simply point at something on a menu with no idea what’s coming. I like the surprise! This time it turned out to be chicken, rice and cashew nuts. Yum.

There are two other men in the dorm, both about my age, maybe a little younger. Jochaim is German, a cyclist on his way to England for two weeks. He’s keen to visit the Yorkshire Dales, and Birmingham, and Manchester. Maxim is Dutch. He’s a long-distance hiker. He’s also a sound-recordist so he takes an interest in my Youtube setup of cameras and mics. The challenge of getting good sound from inside a helmet on a moving motorbike isn’t lost on him! He tells me he’s recently quit his job to pursue his passion for being a professional pianist. He’s sold his house and all his recording equipment and he isn’t quite sure where his life is going next. He’s spending a week in this hostel after which his diary is just blank pages. He’s about to buy a Steinway piano but right now he has nowhere to put it. Now that’s a real adventure!

Breakfast the next morning is muesli and a boiled egg. Oat milk. Vegan butter. I’m staying two nights here so I leave Tigger where he is parked and I set off to walk into Utrecht. The short walk takes me through a wooded area surrounding an ancient fortress on an island. This is part of Holland’s 16th century ‘Waterlines’ defences. This was the coast in those days (it isn’t now…) and there is a string of 20 or so fortresses for protecting the land. A system of sluice gates meant that low-lying areas (which is most of Holland to be honest) could be flooded knee-deep, too deep for a cavalry charge and not deep enough for boats. Clever stuff. Closed to visitors on Tuesdays. Too bad.

I’m not here to see 16th century buildings, though. I’m here to visit an icon of 20th century architecture, the Rietveld-Schroder house. I find it easily right on the edge of the town. When you know where it is you can’t miss it. Its white and grey walls and flashes of primary colours make it stand out from its conventionally drab neighbours. Designed in 1924, it is now over a century old. Originally it looked out over an orchard and open countryside, but since 1960 it has looked out over the Utrecht ring-road. The constant roar of traffic is unavoidable. The architect, Gerrit Rietveld, threatened to demolish the house after the ring-road was built, but thankfully he didn’t. His client and partner, Truus Schroder, lived in the house until her final days in 1984. Since then it has been fully renovated, has become a Unseco World Heritage Site, and is now open to the public. I’m keen for a peek inside. The house is full of quirky unique features. In the upper floor all of the internal walls can slide so the layout of spaces can be varied throughout the day. There are folding shelves, sliding tables, and everything works by a system of ropes and pullies. It is bizarre but wonderful.

Rietveld-Schroder House

Next I wander into Utrecht old town. There are canals and bridges and cathedrals, There are no cars just bicycles. There are Dutch people in a park wearing Jimmy hats and tartan sarongs doing a strange version of ‘De Hijhland Games’. I never find out why.

I stop at a deli to buy food for this evening. It will be cheaper than eating in a café. The main challenge for me on this trip is the need to stick to my self-imposed spending limit of 100 Euros per day. That’s for everything: food, fuel and accommodation. In Romania, Turkey and Morocco it was easy to live for half that amount. The exchange rate between the Pound and the Euro makes it a challenge in Northern Europe, though, and it will be almost impossible in Scandinavia where the exchange rate between the Pound and the various versions of the Kroner isn’t helpful. Cooking my own meals is just one way to keep costs under control. Going teetotal is another. Oh the sacrifices I make….

Next morning I pack up and we’re on the road at 9. I’m heading for an overnight stop in Hude in Germany, before heading on to Lubeck the next day. On the way I visit the Kroller-Muller art gallery. They have the biggest collection of Van Gogh paintings there, more than 150 of them. There’s also a 25 Acre sculpture park which includes another building by Gerrit Rietveld, called the Rietveld Pavilion. As chance would have it, my room-mate at Bunnik, Maxim, has recently played an open-air concert in the pavilion. I think it’s on Youtube. I’ll have to find it!

Rietveld Pavilion

From here it’s motorway all the way to my next overnight stop. As we approach the border with Germany there’s a long line of slow-moving trucks. I’m used to seeing this at borders but you don’t usually see it at the border between two Schengen Area countries. Sure enough, though, the German police have barriers across the road and are doing spot-checks. Thankfully I don’t have what they are looking for because they wave me straight through. By mid-afternoon I’m in the charming little town of Hude (population 15,000, 60% retired). A hotel that I chose at random on the internet turns out to be a really charming converted watermill in the grounds of a ruined abbey. Dinner is fabulous and breakfast is on the house. That’s how I like it.

Next stop Lubeck. I decide to go ‘no motorways’ for today, which will double the amount of time in the saddle but will be make a more interesting ride. I’ve already seen enough German motorways. With a bit of luck I won’t see another big motorway for several weeks. I stop for lunch at a roadside café in a little town called Grande. The sun is shining and the roadside terrace is very inviting. Tigger’s temperature gauge has gone up to over 25 degrees C, so I remove some layers of clothing before I press on. The clothing I have with me on this trip is intended for the temperatures I expect to find in Iceland and north of the Arctic circle. Hot temperatures might be a problem for me…. I arrive in Lubeck at 3:00pm, just in time to check into my hotel.

I have given myself time for a good wander round the old town. Lubeck has a lot of history and I want to get a good feel for the place. It’s a medieval city, built on an island in the river. At one time it was the capital of the Hanseatic League and the richest city in Europe. Sadly a lot of the medieval architecture has been lost (the RAF was chiefly responsible…) but what’s left is very charming. The seven super-tall spires are all still intact. So that’s another World Heritage Site ticked off my list.

Bratwurst and chips in a curry sauce at a street café rounds off my day. Denmark tomorrow!

Tigger miles in 2023 = 8,024

Tigger miles in 2024 = 6,259

Tigger miles in 2025 so far = 1,753

#jof’sworldtour #tiger800 #motovlog #iomtt #tt2025