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After our eventful night camping in freiburg where we got a huge downpour resulting in a very wet morning. After a brief breakfast we headed in to town where we used the internet cafe to update the previous blog post… That was just where the fun began. After our blog post we realised that the time on our laptop was still setup as UK time. We raced back to check out of the campsite before it closed for a few hours at 1pm… After getting out about 5minutes to 1 we went to hein gericke to get a new mirror and headlamp for heathers bike.. She broke her mirror when she dropped her bike all the way back in Belgium.. We managed to find a mirror that almost looks the same for a bargin price of 32euro… sweet.. the people in hein gericke thought it was strange that she did not need two matching mirrors.. well they found out why about 5minutes later when we went to leave heather dropped her bike again.. In front of the shop.. in the middle of a very busy road. Not only did she drop her bike but she also broke her pannier rack.. whoo hoooooo success.. nothing like some broken bike bits to really make this an adventure. After struggling to pick up the bike the hein gericke staff actually came to the rescue and helped get the bike up.. and repaired.. Thanks!!!.. They stayed out the front to watch heather successfully leave about 30 minutes later with her bike in one piece.

After finallly getting out of town we rode some amazing black forest roads which I can highly rate for anyone who is into beautiful scenery and amazing roads. I will upload the gpx files from the GPS with the exact routes soon…. After being so hot in freiburg it was artic cold across the top of the black forest mountains. We ended up finding a camp site on a big lake near the Swiss border… for you guessed it.. crap weather.. it rained pretty much the entire night and when we woke it was still raining. We cooked breakfast in the annex of the tent and prepared to get going.. As soon as we put on our over coats the dam weather started to improve.. typical. The over suits turn into ovens when the weather is good.. hopefully they will be useful when we are in Siberia in 5months time… Its odd thinking.. 5 months here we are only in our second week and we have another 5+ months to go worst case…

This leads us to our trip. After leaving the camp site on the lake we took our third ferry trip for the journey. Crossed the lake on route to Austria. After reaching Austria we did some minor bike service tasks and headed for our first proper mountain pass. The “Hof” which we managed to get across without any incident.. mountain passes 0 bikes 1… Now we are sitting in a beautiful town in the Alps chilling out and taking a day off to do some hiking in the beautiful scenery..

The "Hof" view Austrial

After leaving our first campsite in Austria we got to look down on our first real panoramic view of the valley where we camped.

Looking down into the valley our campsite was in.

Here is an image of the storm coming in at the campsite.

Storms coming in while camping in Austria

We stayed a day in Luxembourg to get some stuff sorted… Here are some photos of the City.

Luxembourg looking out over the valley.

And the old town centre.

Luxembourg City

After the initial GPS problems that plaged us until Luxembourg (Thanks to Ed for making the maps available) we managed to actually get somewhere… that somewhere was Champagne in France. It was great riding via Verdun to see the war memorials and where the trenches had been in World War One. We also played Where’s Heather..

Where's Heather? Verdun France

One thing that has been a constant on this trip so far has been the excellent roads with beautiful scenery to keep it from becoming boring. So far we have done just over 900 miles/1450 kilometres. After spending the night with Natalie and her Family we tried to leave.. but it just was not heathers day… Her bikes battery was flat and we couldn’t push start it.. After multiple attempts in the pouring rain we ended up borrowing Natalie’s jumper leads to start the bike… One problem.. where the hell is the battery.. Luckily after starting to take the bike apart we found a place where the genius BMW engineers put a positive connection.. now we only had to find a good enough negative ground. After a few attempts we found one that worked perfectly and “Sparkie” came to life.

James working to bring 'Sparky' to life

Now that we had two running bikes it was time to set off for Germany…. If only it was that simple.. Thanks to our wonderful friend the weather.. we managed to ride about 150km before the weather was soo poor that we ended up wild camping in the Forest near Flirey on the D958

After a very wet night we managed to ride out on the very muddy tracks.. The weather had not much improved and the days riding was slow and steady to Freiberg in Germany. This lead us to our second ferry crossing. From France in to Germany!.. Totally unexpected but a welcome break for the 30 second journey. One big problem with this section of the trip was that there are no petrol stations which accept UK mastercards or maestro.. A really nice “surprise”.. on the up side at least it shows that the R1200GS can do over 400 miles on 32.5 litres of fuel if you ride like a sissy… riding behind heather makes that pretty easy.. te he he

Having stayed at the http://freiburg-camping.de/ camping site right near the centre of town. Highly recommended except that its so expensive.. 21euro for two people.. for a dam tent!!! dam I feel like scrooge.. We got over it fast enough as soon as we hit one of the beer halls in town for some great beers and quality German food. If your in the area and are interested here it is Martins Brau erste freiburger gasthausbrauerei Http://www.mbfr.de

So here we are.. day three of our trip. After an initial rush to Dover, where we missed our original ferry.. YES great start.. and by only 5 minute. We ended up being moved to the 2:30 ferry thankfully.. Arriving in France we rode for around 2 hours to the nights accommodation covering just over 200miles on day one. The relief to finally be on our way is immense.

Day two.. or should I say the first full day of our Holiday. No more rushing around preparing, no more farewell drinks, no more alcohol.. whoo hooooo.. detox.. 10 pints down to 0.. feeling it now.. grumpy mode has set in.. withdrawal from the booze I say.. or maybe its just the pent up frustration of months of planning and frustration with visas not working out as easily as we had hoped. I guess that IS the adventure.. the rest of the trip should be a “walk in the park”… Heathers still not realised that I am just here to annoy her.. ahh feel the freedom of being on Holidays.. 6-7 months of nobody elses company.. ha ha ha.. she’s looking over my shoulder saying she would not be surprised. Ha ha ha more fool her te he he.. anyway enough about us.. lets talk about the trip..

The GPS crashed..

Old school GPS.. maps.

giving us completely bogus directions in a huge 120km loop.. nothing like technology to really let the trip down. So far its been a complete nightmare using the GPS despite using it several hundred times in the past it must start speaking french as soon as it crosses the channel. All I have say about this is f.garmin.. fill in the dot with whatever suits!! As I am sure many people have heard me say in the past.. Its blasphemy to call support.. Its a sign of a shit product.. oops oh well that must be Garmin. Its caused me to break my cardinal rule of not using support. At least we had some humour on route.. Heather had a bus load of boys mooned her as the bus drove past.. she had a little giggle. ha ha ha.. got to love being a kid… could not imagine having a group of oldies going past mooning.. that would be seriously twisted…. At least it livens up the motorway miles.. that and the gps asking us to do u turns at 130km/hour when you can’t. Heather also managed to show off her ultimate Skills.. while pulling over to take some photos of a really sweet panorama she dropped her bike.. of course what most people do is to stop and pickup the bike.. not our trusty heather.. she takes the photos while leaving her bike smashed against the gutter.. At least we get blessed with a few really helpful Belgian teenagers who helped pickup the bike so we didn’t have to take all the luggage off.. the only casualty was her left mirror.. RIP mirror. At least she got some good photos to make it all worth while.. Having read that people in Belgium are not helpful we have been completely surprised by how helpful they have always been with us.. maybe its because they know we are stupid!!! (or not english)

Day three started with some amazing riding around in yet more circles thanks to our trusty gps.. I know fool me once fool on you.. fool me twice fool on me.. at least the scenery was beautiful on route with some amazing flowing roads with some of the most amazing forest to resivour roads I’ve ever ridden with huge panoramas of the country side. After finally getting completely lost we ended up being helped by a really nice Belgian guy who gave us access to the internet in his house to print out good old google maps directions.. yes we are on our way again to Russia we come.. with some love on top in a liberal dosing..

Score Board..

Mrs Lamb: I would like to add that James has had more wobblies and to put icing on cake he stepped on bubble gum, I almost laughed as you could imagine add on top of his frustration.

Well we are on the final leg to get our Russian visas, cutting it fine as always though we like to live on the edge! The only visa that fits our journey is the 1 year multi entry business visa, costing us £1000 so we are praying we get it as thats a big loss in funds and our trip. We do have a backup plan however we feel confident with the OBT  the agency we have gone with, as they have come highly recommended.

We have just one final visa to get and that is for Kazakistan, however since we will be requiring a double entry visa which needs an invitation. The company that is organising it has advised us that we can only apply two months before date of entry. So we have organised few more days in Istanbul to get there which is great sure be a beautiful city so we dont mind staying a little longer to explore the nooks and crannies.

The trip is less than one month away and its almost finally apon us. We have planned to leave the UK  for good on Sunday 31st of May.

It is crazy how the time has been flying past only a week ago it felt like we had 2 months to go. Now we have 26 days and all the emotions are flowing. It has been two years in the planning/saving and its all coming to a head. Soon it will be all about riding motorcycles and being day in day out tourists on our little adventure… but until then its all about paper work, planning and preparation.