We awoke to the continuous noise of rain drops on the tent!  Dozing on & off we hoped for it to brighten up…..NO!  It rained all day; by the time we had packed up the tent we were soaked.  Luckily in the shower room there were hair dryers which we put to good use for our hair & our clothes!!  So once packed & ready to leave we realised we could not find the swipe card to let us exit through the gate.  Basically, we unloaded the whole bike to find the bloody thing!!!  After a good 20 minutes of searching we found it.  It was in Steve’s trouser pocket…….From there we rode off to the local DHL post office to send some souvenir’s we had purchased from the ‘Castles’, which took a good 45 minutes or so.  As time was getting away from us and we still hadn’t had any breakfast we decided to go to the hotel we had lunch at the day before & did a bit more emailing & blogging. Most importantly we needed to get the address of the HPN motorcycle company for our randevu  (sorry can’t spell) with Claudia & Werner.  Whilst at the hotel we decided to have a late breakfast, early lunch of delicious pumpkin soup & bread roll.

 Once underway we suffered further delays in the non-stop rain of about an hour & a half, which put us further behind our meeting with Claudia & Werner.   Mr P, one of the Directors of HPN, helped out with some minor maintenance!!  Whilst there Mr P gave us a personal tour of his ‘factory prepared’ off road endurance races, Paris Dakar.  Steve, felt very honoured to have been able to view these ‘thoroughbred race bikes’.  As it was after 7:00 pm we went to the little village & booked a room in the pub.  Claudia & Werner had dinner with us & then they headed back home for a 7 hour trip to Ramscheid.  This would be the last time we will see them again until we arrive back home in November.

Head Cam video, in Bavaria

We had a pretty good sleep, nice & cosy. When we woke this morning (Tuesday) the sky was a bit over cast but no rain.  The TV weather report showed the weather to be improving over the next few days.  So far that has proved to be true.  We were back on the road by 10:30 heading South towards the Alps.  Part way decided to do away with any GPS navigation & went by compass directions to see where that would take us.  Guess what?  We found snow on the Alps!!!!  It looked freezing cold.  I’ve got goose bumps now thinking about it. 

Leaving an Austrian Ski Lodge after Coffee.

Even more flowers !

View from a pass heading back into Germny from Austria.

Alipne Stream / River.

Another angle on the same pass.

In the later part of the day we stopped at many hotel / motels looking for accommodation, to our surprise a lot of it was booked out or way over our budget.  Finally we found a smallish Hostel , that had internet & a place out the back to store the bike securely.  It was around 8:00pm by the time we went for a walk & found a nice Chinese Restaurant for dinner.

Mess in the home last night (20Sep2011). Drying the tent etc...

Steve & Debs Chinese Laundry

Sexy Bike!! Still going great.

See you in the morning!


P.S. It's a great day. Sunny and not clouds, cool (2'c) but warming to 20'c they say. Will be heading for the hills soon.


Stephen and Deb.