Another European Adventure

[johnbut]

We are just home from a 2 week trip round Europe.
Having seen Davids report on his holiday ours seems uneventful.
Day 1 from Yorkshire to Channel Tunnel, fuel consumption seemed very poor until I realised that in trying to set the digital speedo to kilometres I had changed to US gallons.
Spent first night in Belgium having done 430 miles.

Day 2 down through Luxemburg to the Neckar river in rain most of the way. The trophy does keep most of the weather off.

Day 3 down the Castle road and on to the Romantic road to Dinlesbuhl, a really beautiful town. It actually got down to 10 degrees centigrade during the day but stayed dry.

Day 4 Arrived in Austria a really nice hotel overlooking lake Attersee.
Stayed here for 4 days just pottering around and doing some walking, visited Halstatt, it used to be a very beautiful town, it still is but it is swamped with tourists from China and Japan. The locals even hire out wedding dresses and the national costume for the tourists to have their photographs taken in the town.

Day 8 On to Italy, first problem with bike, each time I braked the front end had a noticeable judder.

Stayed in Italy for 7 days doing some really great passes including the Sella, at over 7,000 feet. The problem with the brakes disappeared, maybe a bit of hard braking cured it.

I found that I was being very careful on the hair pin bends and felt that the trophy was top heavy compared with the ST1300. As I did more bends I became more confident in the bike and it no longer seemed as bad. That was until a bus stopped in front of me in the middle of a very steep bend, just managed to hold it upright.

Day 17 On the way back through Germany we did 350 miles in 40 degrees C, I have never been so tired on a bike, when we got to the hotel I nearly collapsed but put the side stand down before the bike did the same.

The last day was up to Rotterdam to catch the ferry home to Hull, a warm day along the river Rhine and hotter when we got into Holland. Many traffic jams and a a serious accident with a lorry upside down on the motorway made it an interesting last  day.

Driving home from Hull the Zumo 550 decided enough was enough and packed in 20 miles from home.

The trip totalled 2,290 miles over 18 days and the bike did 59 miles to a UK gallon. I was very pleased with the bike overall as I had been a little worried about the reliability having read so much about it in the forum. Compared to the ST 1300 I found the bike much more comfortable, stable and more economical.

[Tlrtone]

nice summary John,  I'm off for 15 days to Austria in just over a week so will add a write up of my own.
Hopefully just scenery and bars     and not accidents and breakdowns! 

Sounds like you had a good time though with plenty of saddle time and no major issues!

[cropbiker]

Hi john... Sounds like a lovely trip.... Hope you got some pictures for us! 

[davidcumbria]

Thanks for write up. I agree it is exhausting riding distance in this heat and you have done more than us. Also hairpins fine till something coming the other way. Hadn't reckoned on the huge difference in difficulty between the 4 left right uphill downhill types. Your mpg seems the same as us. Pity you can't change the digital speedo to read in km isn't it. Cumbria today 14 degrees. Florence 38 degrees .
Glad you're home safe and had a good time.

[GarminDave]

Nice report johnbut. 59mpg overall appears to be very good, you must be really gentle on the throttle.

I use the speed in km abroad from my GPS readout. 

Later

Dave

[johnbut]

 Hi Dave
I use the  GPS as a speedo as well.
I am a slow old rider. I cruise at about 80 to 85 mph on the speedo but did take it up to 100 mph (gps) on the German motoeways for a mile or two until I had to get out of the way of the fast drivers who suddenly appear behind you or the automated speed controller taps me on the shoulder.

[Nudger]

Johnbut,

Thanks for the write up on your trip, always interesting to read about other peoples tours.

[redcap0006]

Nice write up Johnbut, thank you for sharing your experiences.  Always eager to hear how TT behaves on tour.  Doing my first tour abroad myself next week.  Like yourself not a speed merchant but can handle it when necessary