Panniering Through Europe

Will be keeping an eye on this one. Im from the UK and the furthest ive been south is Spain and east is Germany :eek1


Am hoping to go to Norway next year.

I'D HELP YOU ABOUT BEFORE I COME TO TURKEY

SUPER TRAVEL HAS BEEN...: Alkış

I've had the same experience on the 'Ring, I made it round a couple of times by (slow) car, which is relatively safe.
Once I tried it with my bike of that time, a 2006 Suzuki Bandit 650 (yeah...). Scariest track riding I have ever done, cars just see you as another kerb they need to hit... Never again :)

Lovely finish to a great RR! Thanks, man! It was worth the wait, definitely. And I love the way you wrapped it all up with your closing observations. I'd be interested to know how it felt to be back "home" after being "at home" on the road for 5 months. Did you wake up in the morning feeling odd because you were NOT still on the ride? Did your family and friends find that you'd changed a bit? How does it feel to settle down again?

Congrats on the RR and trip. I hold you and your report personally responsible for my complete lack of productivity at work the last 2 days while reading it. I'll accept reimbursement via paypal, as well as a written apology.

Some of us take extended adventures to find ourselves or get the travel bug out of our systems, but it seems more often than not, you just learn how resourceful you are, and how badly you wanna do it again!!

Adrian

How long do you think it took you to go up Norway and back down Finland? Thats what I want to do next

Norway took about a week and a half to go all the way up, but that was with 2-night stays in Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim, as well as nearly two days spent hiking. If you're on a mission I'm told it takes four days or so. Nordkapp -> Stockholm took four days including a whole day spent in Rovaniemi, but that was 11 hour days down straight roads.

I was expecting some kind of reverse-culture-shock from being back but I was surprised by how instantly familiar everything was - within a day it was basically like I'd never left. I was expecting this big rush of relief to sleep in a room without 15 strangers in it, or to be able to do all the things I'd missed like flicking through junk TV or drinking a decent cup of coffee... but as soon as I landed I was straight back to taking these things for granted.

I'm not too worried about taking those simple shallow things for granted though. I can't say that anyone's said that much has changed about the way that I am (although I'm a bunch skinnier... getting back to the gym has been depressing). That said, I certainly have changed - when you're travelling you get this certain sense of being separated from the world that I alluded to at the end of that last post - not caring about the silly little things in life... and I'm happy to say that that's stayed with me. Travelling wasn't so much a process of finding new things about myself as finding out that who I was was exactly who I wanted to be, and becoming completely comfortable with that.

As far as settling down, it feels really good to be honest. The whole trip feels to me a little bit like when you're racing down a straight road and go off a little rise and get some air. You feel the suspension unload, the wheels leave the ground, the hairs on your neck stand up, you get that butterflies-in-the-stomach rollercoaster feeling - it's fun. Then you drop, you feel yourself become heavier for a second, the suspension dips, you feel the road again through the handlebars and you're ready to corner again - that was fun, but it's business time now. I loved my experience, I'll do it again someday (hello South America), but it wasn't real life. After spending 5 months riding around by myself and thinking about my life back home, I've got so many ideas for what I can achieve with my life. As a young person in the technology industry there's so much out there that's yet to be done. I want to be the one to do it, and I've never felt more focussed on this than now.

So sorry - I'll give you a percentage of the profits. Seeing as I didn't make any, I'll accept your share of the loss via paypal .

I should have been in bed 4 hours ago and just finished reading your R&R ... Great simply brilliant and well written!
Thank you for sharing.

Cool review. I am wondering: howmuch did it cost you to ship your bike such a long way (and back)? did you have a special insurance etc.?

It worked out to about $1000 each way including port costs, insurance etc. Shipping insurance is included with the shipping but you don't have to pay for it if you don't want to (it's $200 each way). I used tradelanes.com.au.

Thats a good way of doing it - the last time I looked it seemed that hiring a bike for a short term was expensive. In 1982 we bought a secondhand bike and toured around Europe and the UK for a couple of months and then sold the bike at the end through the same dealer we purchased it from.. Lost a bit on the deal which we had factured in as a cost. The hassle was the time to sell the bike at the end. This way its your own wheels which you know well.

Great report by the way.

Cheers

Great end to the report! Have been following for a few months now and was chuffed when the last update finally turned up.

Well done, sounds like a properly good blast :)