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After our eventful night camping in freiburg where we got a huge downpour resulting in a very wet morning. After a brief breakfast we headed in to town where we used the internet cafe to update the previous blog post… That was just where the fun began. After our blog post we realised that the time on our laptop was still setup as UK time. We raced back to check out of the campsite before it closed for a few hours at 1pm… After getting out about 5minutes to 1 we went to hein gericke to get a new mirror and headlamp for heathers bike.. She broke her mirror when she dropped her bike all the way back in Belgium.. We managed to find a mirror that almost looks the same for a bargin price of 32euro… sweet.. the people in hein gericke thought it was strange that she did not need two matching mirrors.. well they found out why about 5minutes later when we went to leave heather dropped her bike again.. In front of the shop.. in the middle of a very busy road. Not only did she drop her bike but she also broke her pannier rack.. whoo hoooooo success.. nothing like some broken bike bits to really make this an adventure. After struggling to pick up the bike the hein gericke staff actually came to the rescue and helped get the bike up.. and repaired.. Thanks!!!.. They stayed out the front to watch heather successfully leave about 30 minutes later with her bike in one piece.

After finallly getting out of town we rode some amazing black forest roads which I can highly rate for anyone who is into beautiful scenery and amazing roads. I will upload the gpx files from the GPS with the exact routes soon…. After being so hot in freiburg it was artic cold across the top of the black forest mountains. We ended up finding a camp site on a big lake near the Swiss border… for you guessed it.. crap weather.. it rained pretty much the entire night and when we woke it was still raining. We cooked breakfast in the annex of the tent and prepared to get going.. As soon as we put on our over coats the dam weather started to improve.. typical. The over suits turn into ovens when the weather is good.. hopefully they will be useful when we are in Siberia in 5months time… Its odd thinking.. 5 months here we are only in our second week and we have another 5+ months to go worst case…

This leads us to our trip. After leaving the camp site on the lake we took our third ferry trip for the journey. Crossed the lake on route to Austria. After reaching Austria we did some minor bike service tasks and headed for our first proper mountain pass. The “Hof” which we managed to get across without any incident.. mountain passes 0 bikes 1… Now we are sitting in a beautiful town in the Alps chilling out and taking a day off to do some hiking in the beautiful scenery..

The "Hof" view Austrial

After leaving our first campsite in Austria we got to look down on our first real panoramic view of the valley where we camped.

Looking down into the valley our campsite was in.

Here is an image of the storm coming in at the campsite.

Storms coming in while camping in Austria

We stayed a day in Luxembourg to get some stuff sorted… Here are some photos of the City.

Luxembourg looking out over the valley.

And the old town centre.

Luxembourg City

After the initial GPS problems that plaged us until Luxembourg (Thanks to Ed for making the maps available) we managed to actually get somewhere… that somewhere was Champagne in France. It was great riding via Verdun to see the war memorials and where the trenches had been in World War One. We also played Where’s Heather..

Where's Heather? Verdun France

One thing that has been a constant on this trip so far has been the excellent roads with beautiful scenery to keep it from becoming boring. So far we have done just over 900 miles/1450 kilometres. After spending the night with Natalie and her Family we tried to leave.. but it just was not heathers day… Her bikes battery was flat and we couldn’t push start it.. After multiple attempts in the pouring rain we ended up borrowing Natalie’s jumper leads to start the bike… One problem.. where the hell is the battery.. Luckily after starting to take the bike apart we found a place where the genius BMW engineers put a positive connection.. now we only had to find a good enough negative ground. After a few attempts we found one that worked perfectly and “Sparkie” came to life.

James working to bring 'Sparky' to life

Now that we had two running bikes it was time to set off for Germany…. If only it was that simple.. Thanks to our wonderful friend the weather.. we managed to ride about 150km before the weather was soo poor that we ended up wild camping in the Forest near Flirey on the D958

After a very wet night we managed to ride out on the very muddy tracks.. The weather had not much improved and the days riding was slow and steady to Freiberg in Germany. This lead us to our second ferry crossing. From France in to Germany!.. Totally unexpected but a welcome break for the 30 second journey. One big problem with this section of the trip was that there are no petrol stations which accept UK mastercards or maestro.. A really nice “surprise”.. on the up side at least it shows that the R1200GS can do over 400 miles on 32.5 litres of fuel if you ride like a sissy… riding behind heather makes that pretty easy.. te he he

Having stayed at the http://freiburg-camping.de/ camping site right near the centre of town. Highly recommended except that its so expensive.. 21euro for two people.. for a dam tent!!! dam I feel like scrooge.. We got over it fast enough as soon as we hit one of the beer halls in town for some great beers and quality German food. If your in the area and are interested here it is Martins Brau erste freiburger gasthausbrauerei Http://www.mbfr.de