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Success!
- Aug 8
- 8 min read
There and back again......again…
According to Mark Twain, success is a journey not a destination. But then he never tried riding a motorbike from Scotland to Nordkapp and back.
Having made it successfully from Nordkapp down through Finland, across to Estonia, through Latvia and Lithuania and into Poland I’m now successfully riding through the Polish town of Sowalki. However, Sowalki isn’t a destination. Where I’m actually headed is the small village of Bolcie, to see a piece of granite. The piece of granite in question is an obelisk which marks the triple-point, the point where the borders of Poland, Lithuania and Russia meet.
The roads from Sowalki to Bolcie are narrow country lanes. The ride takes about forty minutes. At the triple-point there’s a car park, a bus stop and a few picnic benches. You used to be able to skip around the obelisk hopping merrily between the three countries, but not anymore. Now there’s a 3.0m high barbed wire fence, razor wire, security cameras and lots of warning signs saying do not enter Russian territory. It was interesting to see, but these days it’s not a place to hang about.
A couple of Polish bikers rock up and we have a quick chat. They’re on their way to Estonia. I’m heading in the opposite direction, aiming for the town of Łomza. Note the strange letter Ł. Polish has a total of 32 letters in its alphabet. For English speakers, Ł is pronounced like W. While we’re at it, W is pronounced like V and S is pronounced Sh. Note: We’ll be going through Warsaw later. If you’ve always pronounced it ‘Wor-sor’, then be prepared for ‘Varshav’. There may be a pronunciation test later. Anyhow. ‘Womza’ is where we’re heading today.
The route takes us through Augustow where I decide to stop for a coffee in a roadside café. A big guy taps me on the shoulder. ‘Hey. Saw you ride in. Come join us’ he says. He’s Brian, a biker from New Zealand, touring northern Europe with his wife Jo on the back of his GS1250. They have family in Holland who store the bike for them during the northern hemisphere’s winter, and they come over to Europe for three months each year to explore. Brian’s a retired farmer. ‘Yeah, selling the farm was a wrench’ he says ‘Been in the family three generations and I’ve farmed it for 35years, but we’ve no-one to leave it to so we had to sell it’. They’re fans of speedway races and are on their way to a big speedway festival in Riga. Nice couple. We chat about our respective difficulties with 90-day visa/non-visa restrictions. Apparently Romania is now in the Schengen Area which it wasn’t when I was there, so the border crossing is simpler but the 90-day limit applies there too now.
The roads from Augustow to Łomza are quite rural. There are interesting little towns along the way such as Szczecyn (are you ready for that pronunciation test yet…?). By mid-afternoon we’re in Łomza. I’m not planning to explore much here, it’s just an overnight stop. The ‘Retro’ hotel has everything I need, a car park, a single room, and a restaurant and breakfast is included. Tonight I can eat well. The Polish currency, the ZŁoty, makes life more affordable for me when compared to the Euro or any of the Scandinavian Kronas. A slap-up meal for less than a tenner is a welcome treat for the wallet at this stage of the tour!
As we head west across northern Europe the weather seems to be getting worse. It rains in the night and is threatening more rain when I wake the next morning. I pack up and head out. I’m planning to rack up a few motorway miles today. My 90-day limit in the Schengen Area is still on my mind and in any case, I now have a date to keep with a ferry from Holland to the UK. In Łomza Garmin throws me a curve ball by trying to take me onto the motorway at a junction that’s still being built. Ah-ah. Sorry Garmin, let’s try that again…. Eventually we’re on the toll road heading west. It rains, as promised. There are tolls to pay. I do my best to make sure the toll-station tickets don’t turn to soggy pulp in my pocket. I’ve had that problem before. Seven hours later we’re in Poznan.
The hotel Liberte33 has a room for me, a car park for Tigger, a restaurant, and is a short walk from Poznan’s historic old town. Perfect. And it truly is perfect. The hotel is a modern renovation of a 19th century villa, designed to a very high standard. In the restaurant I’m the only diner. Visions of my strange experience as the only diner in that restaurant in Albania are soon dispelled when the food arrives. It’s fabulous. The chef is an absolute artist. Chapeau! All paid for in Zlotys, of course, so just for today I can live the high life.
I have time before bed to wander into Poznan to take a look round. Now I wish I had more than one evening here! The central square is beautiful. The Rathaus is an architectural marvel and all the buildings surrounding it are painted in a riot of patterns and colours. There’s a university here in the centre of the town so there’s a young-person vibe and very few tourists. I like the place.
I can’t hang about, though. Next morning I have to move on. I have to keep moving west. After breakfast I’m back on the motorway. It rains periodically. After a couple of hours I turn off to look for some more interesting roads to ride. Garmin plots me a route that takes me through a series of small walled villages, each with its own red brick town gates and gate-houses. Apparently there’s a ‘Red-brick Route’ that you can follow here if you have the time. I stop in a layby in a forest to eat lunch. Shortly afterwards we cross the Oder river which marks the border between Poland and Germany. There are Polish police stopping cars and trucks here as there have been at all the Polish borders. The queue of trucks waiting to cross from Germany into Poland is several kilometres long. Tigger and I are waved straight through as usual.
Further on we arrive in Neu-Brandenburg and pull into the car park of the Park Hotel. This hotel doesn’t have a restaurant but there’s a Mexican place next door which will do just fine. We’re back in the Euro-zone, though, so suddenly everything is twice as expensive again.
Neu-Brandenburg is an interesting place. The old medieval town’s 7m high wall is still intact. The wall is circular, with huge brick-built gatehouses at each of the four compass points. The original moat is still there (now a dry ditch) going all the way round. Several of the lookout towers have been converted into quirky houses within the wall itself. It is all quite quaint and picturesque. However, the modern history of the town is a brutal contrast. The town was destroyed by fire when the Russian army arrived at the end of WW2 and 600 civilians chose suicide over surrender. That’s horrific. Strolling through the town on a quiet sunny afternoon in 2025 those events are very hard to imagine.
Dinner tonight is a chilli in the Mexican restaurant next door to the hotel. I finish my meal and ask for the bill, only to find that there’s no wallet in my pocket. Doh! I’ve left it in my jacket in my room. I make my apologies, dash back to the hotel and then nip back to the restaurant to pay. Phew. No harm done.
Bremerhaven is my next stop. After a hearty fruhstuck (that’s breakfast to you and me) I spend a couple of hours on a German autobahn making my way slowly past Hamburg. It is Saturday, the first day of the main German holiday season. The motorway is crammed with cars and caravans. I endure it until I’m beyond Hamburg before turning off onto some smaller roads. By mid afternoon I’m at the Havenhostel in Bremerhaven.
Tigger and I are getting closer to home now, and this is a hostel I’ve stayed in before. It is clean and neat and there’s plenty of secure parking, but there are no cafés or restaurants nearby. I’ve been to a Greek place in Bremerhaven itself before. It takes me a while to find it and when I do I find that it is closed. Malakas! It doesn’t matter, though, because I’m at the stage of the tour where I need to eat the remaining ‘emergency’ food supplies that I have in my panniers. There’s plenty left there for a good meal. Back at the hostel I give Tigger a bit of a service (lube the chain, check the tyre pressures, top up the oil etc) and get an early night. Tomorrow I have a long ride to tackle to get Tigger to the ferry port at Hoek van Holland.
And it is a long ride. We cross the border from Germany into Holland, and we stick to Dutch motorways for a gruelling eight hours. I stop only for petrol and for snacks. I don’t linger because I have a schedule to meet. The ferry check-in is at 18:45 and I don’t want to be late. Dutch motorways are fairly efficient but they are not pretty. No-one goes to Holland just for the pleasure of riding the roads there! Dutch roads are just a means of getting quickly across the flat landscape. My back and shoulders are sore by the time I’m parking Tigger in the queue at the ferry port. We’re here. Passport. Ticket. Rain. Onto the ferry. Velcro strap on the brake lever. Ratchet straps across the seat. I chat briefly to the two British bikers in front of me, and I realise that I’ve seen no other Brits for the entire length of this tour. Not a single British registered vehicle, not a single British biker. Seems amazing but the only Brits I’ve seen have been here in the ferry port.
This is an overnight ferry. I have a cabin to sleep in. There’s a restaurant on board which passengers are allowed to use for two hours before the ferry departs. Before long I’m well fed and tucked up in my bunk. Not only was it a long ride today, but since I left Vilnius I’ve been riding every day without a break. Load the bike, ride, unpack, sleep, repeat. But we made it to the ferry on time, and once I get back to the UK I can slow down and take my time getting back to Scotland.
Harwich. Suffolk. Norfolk. Lincolnshire. Derbyshire. Yorkshire. Northumberland. The Borders. Scotland. I stop for a few nights here and there along the way, so once I leave the ferry it actually takes me four days to get home. But then suddenly that’s it. I’m parking Tigger outside my own house. The trip is over. We’re done. Finished. Another big tour successfully completed.
Maybe Mark Twain was right, success is a journey not a destination….. but then again, arriving back home – the ultimate destination - counts as big success too, I think.
Now....Where should I take Tigger next?
Tigger miles in 2023 = 8,024
Tigger miles in 2024 = 6,259
Tigger miles in 2025 = 9,469 (= 15,240 km)
Total adventuring to date = 23,752 miles (38,000 km)
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Countries successfully visited in 2025 = 12
Currencies successfully used: 6 (GBP, Euro, Danish Krone, Icelandic Krona, Norwegian Krone, Zloty).
Longest tunnel successfully ridden: Nordkapp tunnel, 6.8km (twice).
Highest altitude successfully ridden: Sognerfjellet pass = 1,434m
Books successfully read: 9 (Jamaica Inn, Pride and Predjudice with Zombies, Mythos, Heroes, Odyssey, Ministry of the Future, Handmaid’s Tale, The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Three-body Problem).
Paintings successfully completed: 31
Tigger repairs/servicing: One rear tyre, one headlight bulb, one oil/filter change.
Major ferry crossings: 6
Minor ferry crossings: 5
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