The State of Play...

I've started this blog a little bit behind the planning of the trip, so some progress has already been made.

Four days ago I was sat working in my study on yet another Saturday afternoon and I got around to thinking about that bike trip around Europe I've been contemplating for a while. Rather than pursuing it's normal routine of drifting away as I focussed on my work, what started out as a thought instead became a distraction.

It began with little things; like working out how much holiday I had left, then how many miles a day I might want to ride. Before long I'd located the nearest port and found out about the ferry prices and their destinations. By my reckoning, I had 15 days of leave to take. I also figured that 250 miles a day was a fairly achievable target, giving me a total of 3,750 miles to play with...

If there was any chance of me returning to my work, that was swiftly ended when I started using Google Maps. I knew that the only destination to Europe from the port of Newcastle was in Holland so I started there. I completely disregarded place names and instead created a route through countries, starting with Germany and deciding where to go from there. My initial, meagre, draft of a plan spanned eight countries and I began to get excited.

The route was loosely inspected and first-pass stopping points for each of the 15 days were added to the map to see how the route looked. By now, I was engrossed. This was still only another project for me at this stage - an enthusiastic distraction that I was enjoying partaking in immensely.

What followed were several hours of tinkering - mapping out a fuller list of places to visit and in the process adding another three countries to the list. So, with my basic route finished I moved on to the really fun stuff - the roads!

It's at times like these I love the Internet. Pick a country, search for great roads, co-ordinate with the map and adjust the route to fit in as many as possible. Rinse and repeat Within an hour I had biker forums, holiday brochures, road review videos and all manner of other such websites plastered over my monitor. Pretty soon the route began to fill with at least one recommended great road on every day of the journey. This was turning into quite the adventure!

So, motorways. I always feel it's a toss up between either having a great time or making faster progress when using a motorway, especially in nice weather, and it's the same for this trip. Ideally the less time spent on the motorway the better, as long as I'm making progress towards the destination at the end of the day. By co-incidence, many of the recommended roads were near, or running through national parks or other great looking places to ride, so the route was altered to spend as much time as possible off the motorway, but to rejoin it again once each "pretty section" was over in order to get where I was going. Looking at the map I felt a definite balance between the adventuring and the travelling. Perfect.

And there I left it. My mind wandered again. *If* I were to go on such a trip, what would I need to sort out? Passport, health insurance, ferry tickets, bike check-up, panniers... anything else? Not really. What had started out as a notion, became a distraction and then evolved into a concept had suddenly become a possibility. I have the time off, I can have the documents ready, I can get the bike sorted and I can scrape the money together to be able to afford to do it. Uh oh...

This is what I'll be riding - a 2005 Honda VTX cruiser, "Betty"

Currently, I'm sans passport, but I'll be sending my renewal application in on Thursday at the very latest. Supposedly it's a three-week turnaround, so I'm hoping that just over four weeks will be enough time for it to come through. I'm determined to leave this month rather than next to catch the end of the European summer, but it's all resting on my passport arriving in time.

Because of the above I've not booked Ferry tickets yet as I might have to move the trip backwards a week or two depending on what happens. In stark contrast to the 3 week / £77.50 charge for my passport, I applied for my European Health Insurance Card today. Should be with me by the end of the week and was free. Go figure.

Naturally, I've also been doing a bit of window shopping. Yesterday was spent looking at and pricing up different types of pannier, today I've been checking out mountable HD cameras. I've decided that I can't really afford both (as they're both around £200), so will be checking amongst some biker chums to see if there are any saddlebags or panniers I might be able to buy cheaply or borrow for the trip.

So this is where I am:

• The route still needs to be finalised and I need to research key places of interest and stopping points throughout the trip. 

• I'm taking the VTX to the garage tomorrow but I'm going to ask if I can bring it down on Saturday with some beer in order to stay and learn a bit more about my bike through watching them check it over.

• I'm bidding on a mountable HD camcorder.

• Health Insurance card has been ordered.

I've got plenty left to sort out besides. Passport, panniers, tickets, GPS maps, packing lists, tickets, etc... It's going to be a long few weeks, but I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy it.