If any of you follow me on Twitter (@charly_sedici), you'll have some idea what this is about but if you don't, I'm going to explain.
However, before we get onto that I need to quickly warn you that posting over the next few weeks may be a little on the sparse side due to lots of revision sessions, exams etc. but the majority of exams (10 out of 12) will be completed by the end of May so it should go back to normal after that. And now on to the point...
The Grand European Tour
My parents and I have decided our holiday for the year will be a bike holiday because they are amazing fun and a lot more interesting than sitting on a beach for a week. We'll be going in August but we are fully booked for the three ferries and train we have to take.
We'll be gone for 15 days and get back a few days before I get my results for my GCSEs. We start the journey at Portsmouth and take an overnight ferry to Santander, Spain. After arriving in Spain, we'll be riding across Spain passing and potentially stopping (dependant on how long we want to ride for, light) at Jaca before crossing the Pyrenees into the South of France, passing through places such as Narbonne and Nice.
We will then cross over the border into Italy for a brief period, past Milan for a quick stop at Venice hopefully. After the brief crossing of the northern part of Italy, we intend to enter the edges of Switzerland before heading south through Zagreb, Slovenia to Croatia where the final destination is Split.
From Split, we will take another overnight ferry to Ancona, Italy. We will then ride around central Italy for a couple of days. We are hoping to visit and ride through Pisa and Parma (it all sounds rather food-y doesn't it?) before heading to Livorno.
At Livorno, we will be catching an overnight train to Den Bosch in the Netherlands. We will then ride from Den Bosch to Rotterdam where we will catch a final overnight ferry to Hull, England and ride home from Hull.
If this all goes to plan and we don't have to cut any of the proposed route out because we want to stop somewhere because it looks really nice or we just can't be bothered to do any more riding, we will be crossing through 7 countries, excluding England. We wanted to go further, however we had certain time constraints and my parents didn't feel that they could close the business for any longer than two weeks.
They sell soft motorbike luggage and accessories if you were interested. (www.windingroads.co.uk - this is the website, if you're looking for something, we'll try our best to help you find it) and being a small business that ships out all over Europe, we can't afford to close the business for too long but I think the route looks good for what it is and it should be a good holiday.
I'm planning on taking lots of photos to provide a pictographic representation of our trip as we go - Europe's scenery is beautiful so I reckon it'll make a great collage.
Anyway, I'll try not to post about motorbikes for a couple of posts unless something major comes up that I really want to post about. I hope that you enjoyed your long bank holiday weekend (if you live in England; if you don't, I hope you had a good weekend) and I'll post as soon as time allows. Until next time..
