Black Forest Route/Accommodation Suggestions?
Indeed Wapping is your expert on this one…..
I am far from being an expert, trust me. What I do like doing is looking at what is free on the internet (or downloadable for a few pennies) and then keeping a note of things of interest. Using UKGSer has also been a good library to keep things in, one of the reasons why I try to share what I find.
What experience I might have comes from:
A. Having ridden or driven around chunks of Western Europe, getting me used to how long it might take me to go from A to B to C and back again. This thread is a prime example…. How long has the fellow really got for his A to B to C to A jaunt?
B. Having a bit of imagination as to where to find out ‘stuff’. It doesn’t bother me that much of the ‘stuff’ is in a foreign language, as a map is a map is a map and a picture is a picture. That Google will now translate ‘stuff’ fairly well is just a bonus.
C. Not being afraid to try something, as that is the only way to learn. Yes, I make mistakes. Yes, I have ground through the city of Nancy in the height of summer in a traffic jam, instead of looping past on the motorway. Yes, I have got my Blackbird stuck on a near vertical footpath, which I mistook for a road. I was stuck and had to perform a multi-point turn to inch it around, one slip sending it and me into a heap. But that is a part of the fun, at least when it’s over.
D. Having learnt lots of confidence from my father, who travelled all around France, Germany, Italy and Spain from about 1945 (when he was about 18) onwards, well into his early 80’s with nothing more than a paper map and a Green Michelin guide book. He never touched a computer in his life and never owned a mobile phone. If he could do it, so could I….. and so can anyone. One of the best pictures I have is of my mother, ‘cooking’ , on a gas ring in the boot of a Morris Minor, somewhere in the Dolomites on their honeymoon in the mid-50’s. Today, bods worry if a hotel is going to be friendly and, if it is, want to be told how to get there. The same bods on this forum then accuse today’s teenagers of lacking imagination and go.
This thread is a classic example. Calais to the Black Forest, via the ‘ring is (taking non-motorway routes) about 500 miles. The fellow and his friends wants, if I read it correctly, routes and hotels (possibly there and back) and roads to ride when they are there. In all, that could be well over 1,000 miles. We already, just in a few posts, have hotels dotted about all over the place, with no idea on how they might be joined up or even if the fellow (and his mates) will find themselves anywhere near any of them; not helped as we have no idea how long he and friends has available to make the journey.
The internet has made lots of things really easy. But in making it easy, it has somehow made it really hard.
