Last of the Summer Shine

Thursday, 24th September

The day of the Equinox occurred yesterday, September-23rd, when the sun shone directly down onto the celestial equator and the length of day and night was equal.

Yesterday, therefore, was the official start of Autumn (Fall) in the Northern Hemisphere and the first day of Spring in the Southern Hemisphere. Yesterday was also the day when we left home .. for the very last time, on this fab motorcycle ride around the world.

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And it's been a busy first day back in Poland ..

.. spending the late morning and lunchtime with Tom and Aleksandra, a lovely young couple (one of their welders in-between them, above), and the owners of Holan Moto here in Wroclaw who specialise in the manufacture and supply of aluminium motorcycle panniers & accessories.

As my old original alu panniers were well and truly pooped, having been dropped and generally abused during the last 70,000 km - since leaving New Zealand 5½ years ago; I decided a while back to replace the whole luggage system with Holan custom-made mounting racks and a pair of brand new Nomada 'Expedition' panniers, complete with 17/24L top bags.  

Another good reason - besides the availability of low-cost Ryanair flights to-fro the UK - why I deliberately chose to lay-up the bike in Wroclaw for 12 weeks during our final temporary absence.

The Transalp is now transformed .. and I have to say, looking really rather dapper:

Now we have more luggage carrying capacity than we know what to do with!

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Where do we go from here? Well back home of course .. but not in a straight line. Far from it.

To start at the end: The very last ferry ride, across the Bay of Biscay from Santander, northern Spain → to the south coast of England is already booked for Wednesday, 21st October. During the period between now and then, assuming everything goes according to plan, we will have covered in excess of 6,000 km on this final leg of the trip by the time we ride onto the ferry. This is the full itinerary:

• Wroclaw, Poland
• Prague, Czech Republic
• Hamburg, Germany

Westward to The Netherlands: Amsterdam → then down to Brussels, Belgium → Luxembourg City.

From Luxembourg we'll then head due south through eastern France for 440 km [275 mi] to Lausanne, Switzerland, on the northern shore of Lake Geneva (French: Lac Léman, or simply Le Léman). After Lausanne:

• Geneva
• Montpellier, France
• Perpignan, near the Spanish border.

It will be 3,000 km [1,864 mi] to the Franco-Spanish border - that will be the HALFWAY mark of this trip. Then through the border to Barcelona, which is one of my most favourite cities in the whole wide world.

As Barcelona, in the region of Catalonia, is a little over halfway along the planned route, I aim to be there by around Friday, 9th October.



Then we'll head further south through the Spanish Costas to the township of Tarifa, which is the southernmost point of the European continent, located exactly 180° from where this adventure started on the other side of the globe, a little north of Auckland, New Zealand.

From Tarifa, 8 - 9 more days will see us riding through: → Cadiz → Seville → The Algarve, Portugal → Lisbon → Porto → Vigo, Spain → Betanzos A Coruña → Gijon → Santander.

Ferry across Biscay to Plymouth on the south coast of England → and home!

Better get on with it all then.

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