Enjoyed that ta
‘M off - Eifel, Luxembourg and Belgium
- Thread starter Wapping
- Start date
Nothing like the bit from Dover to London to dampen one's ardour after a lovely trip
Thankfully, it’s only 90 minutes, door-to-door on a good day. It is though a straight lottery as to how the Blackwall Tunnel and / or the QE2 crossing are coping. The M20 though remains very poor, with one carriageway now all but pre-reserved for trucks, for times that they are stacked up for miles. They also have miles of a separate 50 mph limit, relating to ‘works’. This is all after the wasting of many multiple millions (and several years) on trying to make it a smart motorway. Whose genius idea was that?
The Blackwall Tunnel’s congestion is exacerbated by the roadworks relating to the new Silvertown Tunnel, which (when completed) should help things along a bit.
On Saturday (gone) the Blackwall Tunnel was closed when wife drove (I was a passenger) to Maidstone over the QE2 Bridge.
I personally prefer to ride/drive to the Chanel Tunnel via the bottom bit of M25 even though the distance is further by 10 miles and adding circa 15-20 minutes to the overall journey at the time of writing. The ongoing Wisley interchange roadworks obviously are annoying, but so are those between junction 22 (A1M) and 27 (M11), where Highways Englan are adding additional emergency refuge areas (with no one in sight doing any actual work) with miles and miles worth of 50mph average speed checks.
I genuinely feel rather depressed every time I roll off the ferry or a train, after spending a week or two on the continent, then having to spend a couple of hours getting home and dodging traffic with every passing mile. Not so bad if returning on a morning ferry from St. Malo which does dock at gone 18:00 and I am out on the road by 19:00 as most of the traffic had died down by then. Still, the overgrown hedges hiding road signs and central reservation is like a jungle filled with all manner of shite.
On our recent trip, I was riding along at “blistering riding god” speeds on an unlimited autobahn, yet Germans had dropped a temporary speed restriction whilst teams of workers were litter picking (which I’ve seen very little of) and mowing grass verges including central reservations, as well as trimming bits of grass around each and every Armco barrier supporting post*. All of this on the unrestricted autobahn, where people more focused driving at serious speeds, rather than being interested if the gras been cut, between kilometre marker post 120 and 150 on a A9.
Here is the quote from the German website.
“Regular and continuous care of roadside vegetation is an important factor for the safety of all road users. The reflexion post mower MLM 200, which is specially designed for use around posts, crash barrier supports and traffic posts, reduces the potential risk to road maintenance workers because no manual finishing is necessary.
The grass can now be mown controlled by the driver – a real improvement in work safety.”
**Those Unimogs that they use to do the job are serious bits of kit
The white bar you can clearly see (bellow and in the first photo) on the first agrigate head (I assume ) is a pressure sensor which does stop of move the cutting head around each and every white & black road waste guide post placed every 100m.
*here is that clever device shown in use.
Link to a webpage for the more curious is here highlighting all manner of attachments produced for the Unimog and their uses.
**Apart from a handful of privately owned , I haven’t seen any Unimogs*** owned or operated by a local authority. Instead everything is farmed out to a 5th generation p***y run business in a must have ford Transit tipper, who skim the cream of the top, whilst doing a fecking shite job in the process.
**Yes they aren't cheap to purchase, setting owners back in excess of £100+ just for the unit itself, then further £££ for each and every abrogate head/attachment.
Anyway. A mini rant is over
Last edited:
As a follow up on the revelations over the marker posts. Ev is correct about the orientation of the reflective markers.
One thing I did notice when I passed from one German region into another, the new region inserted their own posts between those of the highways agency:
These though petered out after a couple of kilometres.
There’s a world of posts out there!
One thing I did notice when I passed from one German region into another, the new region inserted their own posts between those of the highways agency:
These though petered out after a couple of kilometres.
There’s a world of posts out there!
Bloody ell; the lack of KFC; McDonalds; and bottles of piss being cut to ribbons with the grass is amazing.On Saturday (gone) the Blackwall Tunnel was closed when wife drove (I was a passenger) to Maidstone over the QE2 Bridge.
I personally prefer to ride/drive to the Chanel Tunnel via the bottom bit of M25 even though the distance is further by 10 miles and adding circa 15-20 minutes to the overall journey at the time of writing. The ongoing Wisley interchange roadworks obviously are annoying, but so are those between junction 22 (A1M) and 27 (M11), where Highways Englan are adding additional emergency refuge areas (with no one in sight doing any actual work) with miles and miles worth of 50mph average speed checks.
I genuinely feel rather depressed every time I roll off the ferry or a train, after spending a week or two on the continent, then having to spend a couple of hours getting home and dodging traffic with every passing mile. Not so bad if returning on a morning ferry from St. Malo which does dock at gone 18:00 and I am out on the road by 19:00 as most of the traffic had died down by then. Still, the overgrown hedges hiding road signs and central reservation is like a jungle filled with all manner of shite.
On our recent trip, I was riding along at “blistering riding god” speeds on an unlimited autobahn, yet Germans had dropped a temporary speed restriction whilst teams of workers were litter picking (which I’ve seen very little of) and mowing grass verges including central reservations, as well as trimming bits of grass around each and every Armco barrier supporting post*. All of this on the unrestricted autobahn, where people more focused driving at serious speeds, rather than being interested if the gras been cut, between kilometre marker post 120 and 150 on a A9.
Here is the quote from the German website.
“Regular and continuous care of roadside vegetation is an important factor for the safety of all road users. The reflexion post mower MLM 200, which is specially designed for use around posts, crash barrier supports and traffic posts, reduces the potential risk to road maintenance workers because no manual finishing is necessary.
The grass can now be mown controlled by the driver – a real improvement in work safety.”
**Those Unimogs that they use to do the job are serious bits of kit
View attachment 338864
View attachment 338865
The white bar you can clearly see (bellow and in the first photo) on the first agrigate head (I assume ) is a pressure sensor which does stop of move the cutting head around each and every white & black road waste guide post placed every 100m.
View attachment 338866
View attachment 338867
*here is that clever device shown in use.
View attachment 338870
View attachment 338871
Link to a webpage for the more curious is here highlighting all manner of attachments produced for the Unimog and their uses.
**Apart from a handful of privately owned , I haven’t seen any Unimogs*** owned or operated by a local authority. Instead everything is farmed out to a 5th generation p***y run business in a must have ford Transit tipper, who skim the cream of the top, whilst doing a fecking shite job in the process.
**Yes they aren't cheap to purchase, setting owners back in excess of £100+ just for the unit itself, then further £££ for each and every abrogate head/attachment.
Anyway. A mini rant is over
The sell unimogs in my village…On Saturday (gone) the Blackwall Tunnel was closed when wife drove (I was a passenger) to Maidstone over the QE2 Bridge.
I personally prefer to ride/drive to the Chanel Tunnel via the bottom bit of M25 even though the distance is further by 10 miles and adding circa 15-20 minutes to the overall journey at the time of writing. The ongoing Wisley interchange roadworks obviously are annoying, but so are those between junction 22 (A1M) and 27 (M11), where Highways Englan are adding additional emergency refuge areas (with no one in sight doing any actual work) with miles and miles worth of 50mph average speed checks.
I genuinely feel rather depressed every time I roll off the ferry or a train, after spending a week or two on the continent, then having to spend a couple of hours getting home and dodging traffic with every passing mile. Not so bad if returning on a morning ferry from St. Malo which does dock at gone 18:00 and I am out on the road by 19:00 as most of the traffic had died down by then. Still, the overgrown hedges hiding road signs and central reservation is like a jungle filled with all manner of shite.
On our recent trip, I was riding along at “blistering riding god” speeds on an unlimited autobahn, yet Germans had dropped a temporary speed restriction whilst teams of workers were litter picking (which I’ve seen very little of) and mowing grass verges including central reservations, as well as trimming bits of grass around each and every Armco barrier supporting post*. All of this on the unrestricted autobahn, where people more focused driving at serious speeds, rather than being interested if the gras been cut, between kilometre marker post 120 and 150 on a A9.
Here is the quote from the German website.
“Regular and continuous care of roadside vegetation is an important factor for the safety of all road users. The reflexion post mower MLM 200, which is specially designed for use around posts, crash barrier supports and traffic posts, reduces the potential risk to road maintenance workers because no manual finishing is necessary.
The grass can now be mown controlled by the driver – a real improvement in work safety.”
**Those Unimogs that they use to do the job are serious bits of kit
View attachment 338864
View attachment 338865
The white bar you can clearly see (bellow and in the first photo) on the first agrigate head (I assume ) is a pressure sensor which does stop of move the cutting head around each and every white & black road waste guide post placed every 100m.
View attachment 338866
View attachment 338867
*here is that clever device shown in use.
View attachment 338870
View attachment 338871
Link to a webpage for the more curious is here highlighting all manner of attachments produced for the Unimog and their uses.
**Apart from a handful of privately owned , I haven’t seen any Unimogs*** owned or operated by a local authority. Instead everything is farmed out to a 5th generation p***y run business in a must have ford Transit tipper, who skim the cream of the top, whilst doing a fecking shite job in the process.
**Yes they aren't cheap to purchase, setting owners back in excess of £100+ just for the unit itself, then further £££ for each and every abrogate head/attachment.
Anyway. A mini rant is over
Unimogs | Atkinson Vos
www.unimogs.co.uk
Hi Richard,
Many thanks for sharing this report and the routes.
Dave (Darkhorse) and I have just spent a week following mainly your trip. We could not book you hotel but we found an alternative no far from yours, Hotel Restaurant Haus Zwicker, in Bleialf, https://www.booking.com/Share-5TLX4h
which we found to be very good.
The trip went well, the routes were great so many thanks, again, for sharing.
Regards,
Oscar
Many thanks for sharing this report and the routes.
Dave (Darkhorse) and I have just spent a week following mainly your trip. We could not book you hotel but we found an alternative no far from yours, Hotel Restaurant Haus Zwicker, in Bleialf, https://www.booking.com/Share-5TLX4h
which we found to be very good.
The trip went well, the routes were great so many thanks, again, for sharing.
Regards,
Oscar
Thank you, Oscar.
Great that it all worked out for you.
I have tried to stay in the Bleialf hotel myself, but the dates didn’t match up. I have copied your post into the German accommodation section, where others might find it useful, too.
Great that it all worked out for you.
I have tried to stay in the Bleialf hotel myself, but the dates didn’t match up. I have copied your post into the German accommodation section, where others might find it useful, too.
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