We drank lots last night and ended up bunging the bill (the 4 of us had 17 beers at least - not that Julian and Viv were slacking) onto Graham and my room. Graham looked very unwell when we awoke at around 0815. German beer doesn't agree with him awfully well, plus he's got a cold coming on. Graham uses my nasal spray in the hope that it'll help him to feel a little better. It's not for colds as such, but it should help.

The breakfast was solidly German with cheese, sausages and bread, but with good coffee and a waiter with intimidating sideburns, so it wasn't a complete loss. I get an SMS message from Orb saying that it's raining in Saabruggen. There, there! An hour of gentle scoffing and chat and then we start the lengthy process of returning to humanity - or in Graham's case an incredibly noisy sojourn in the bathroom, and then packing. As there's no fan in there and no window, I worry vaguely if the smell is going to make me pass out when I answer the increasingly urgent calling of my own internals.

I re-pack to get even more weight low down and in towards the centre of the bike. After bringing Ugly round the front of the hotel, I load up and Graham goes indoors to pay the hotel bill. The room turns out to cost 75 euros - the best part of 30 quid for each of us, which makes me really cross as it was far too expensive. I can't afford to stay there on the way back and say so loudly, perhaps too loudly.

Back onto the autobahn and on the long sweeping right-hander that makes up the slip road, I notice that the bike wants to run wider and wider. Jethro notices the same thing on his Triumph - which he has also re-packed for lower down weight. An initial surprise, but not hard to live with once you know its going to happen, particularly as after that Ugly seems a lot more stable on the motorway.

Nothing overly exciting happens for some time although the traffic builds up noticeably, showing up the limitations of the pre-war autobahn system. Two lanes are no longer enough for modern traffic levels in this increasingly industrial area. We see, overtake (and get overtaken by) various bikes including a group of French Harley riders all towing trailers. The further we go, the more bikes we see, which is nice :D

We stop at some services at 94 miles (34 miles today, 808 total) and after filling up with 7.78 litres of fuel, bung the bikes over near some others and head in for coffee. Before going inside, I take the opportunity to admire a German registered MZ TS250 outfit. It looks well used but quite splendid in that peculiarly MZ way. Later, as we have coffee, we watch a chap get into the sidecar and another fellow start it up. It takes a few kicks to get going but then rumbles into life to the obvious relief of the driver. He gets on and then to our surprise a third large gentleman gets on behind! The outfit chugs away quite slowly – but we don't overtake it on the remainder of the journey to the site.

Julian's trike gets the most attention from the other bikers, but then it is a superb piece of engineering. We go back outside and I start chatting to a bloke with an Ireland patch on his jacket and a strong Irish accent. Reasonably, I assume that he's Irish but in fact he's from Stuttgart. He learnt English in Cork and the accent has stuck - well amusing!

We set off again for the final stretch to the Elefant. We sit on the motorway for over 80 miles, seeing loads of bikes and crossing the river Donau 3 times - it must do some serious loops. We turn of at junction 111, but Julian doesn't recognise the lay of the land so we do a u-turn back onto the motorway. Simon topples over in the middle of the slow u-turn (easily done) and ends up flat on his back laughing his head off in the middle of the road. The only damage done is to his pride (his first drop ever) and a slight bend to his gear lever. His luggage stopped any further damage, thank goodness.

On to the next junction and we turn off again. It's the right turning this time (although it turns out the previous one would also have got us there) and we start riding up a rather pleasantly windy road into the mountains. We also start to see appreciable amounts of snow to the sides of the roads. We go through several small rural settlements, climbing higher and higher, until we see the turning for Solle. Several miles later we arrive at the turning for the site. Now there are lots of bikes as we wind along past fencing to the right and to our left a long row of parked bikes, trikes, outfits and much weirder contraptions. Cool :)))

We pass the main gates and park about 1/2 a mile further along, where the line of bikes peters out. I don't know about anyone else but despite the mild weather I'm feeling a mixture of relief and pride at having arrived. For Graham and me there's also the delight at having come on older (and reputedly unreliable) technology.

As we unpack, Graham ambles off into the snow for a piddle, so we pelt him with snowballs. Most of the luggage being removed, we set off for the entrance. It costs 15 Euros to get in and that comes with a nice little wristband, a program (in German), the 02 sticker and year bar and a big blue plastic rubbish bag.

As we move through the already heavily populated site, we discover that where last time they were here there was snow, this year there is mud. The roadway is ankle deep in the tuff, but fortunately we soon move off to a snowy bank that leads down to a pond (which I later realise is on a spring), facing the bottom of the valley. We pick a spot on the slope and start to sort out the camping arrangements. As the pond is the local peeing place, we don't camp too close.

Graham and Simon build a flat area out of snow to pitch their tent on. Julian and Viv do the same. Jethro has a slightly flatter bit anyway and so bungs his small tent up there. I can't be bothered and instead clear the snow from an area and put the tent up on the slope. This turns out to be a mistake as I keep sliding down the tent towards the entrance at the bottom of the slope. It takes a fair old while to get the tents up and all the luggage from the bikes to the camping area. As we do this, German Irish bloke and his mates turn up and camp just a bit further down the slope from us.

Graham gets the kettle on with his groovy little cooking device and I break out one of my self-heating cans of coffee. The efficacy of the device is reduced somewhat when I absent-mindedly put the can in the snow while I do something else. Silly sod that I am!

After a bit of dithering about and general not-sure-what-to-do-ness, we head up to the site exit and start the mile or so walk into the village, ostensibly to get food at the shop. On the way, we look at the line of bikes - some real oddities and some surprisingly ordinary machinery. This walk also heralds our first "burning sledge" experience. Obviously prepared for mucho snow and ice, one set of bikers has brought a sledge to pull behind the bike. This is to transport wood, straw bales and beer to the campsite. In the absence of snow and ice, they're using it anyway and the runners are merrily smoking away as they hurtle along the road at about 25 mph, no lids and 3-up on something strange. We stop at the military surplus store for a look around and I purchase a small goggled Elefant for SWMBO.

A wander round the store and the purchase of some provisions leaves us a little parched so we wander across the road to the bar. We go into the back room which has one full wall covered with a tarpaulin. I keep meaning to look round it to see why (there's no draught, so it can't be a hole in the wall) its there but never quite get round to it. This is mainly because I'm too busy stuffing my face with a rather splendid pizza. We solemnly decide to only have one or two drinks. We then all get absolutely hammered over a considerable length of time. Jethro and Julian get beyond hammered and into a weird little world of laughter all of their own - marvellous to watch. The gents bog has a urinal just under the large, open picture window. In the dark you can pee and watch all the late arrivals turning down the road for the site. Splendid!

We eventually slither our way back to the campsite feeling very happy with ourselves. It's a rather longer journey back that involves more than a little staggering. When we get to the site, I am staggered by the number of people wandering about, and the dense smoke from all the fires. We decide to walk to the bottom of the valley and drink a bit more. The stalls are closed but the beer and food place is still serving. Glauwine (?sp) for me - my first taste of this potent brew. Lovely flavour and very warming! At the bottom of the road down the side of the valley is a man standing in a fairly large pool of water whilst tugging on a pipe. We decide that he's being Germanic and weird and think no more of it. While eating and drinking, we watch some really strange machines, including a RD250 rigged to a fixed rear axle. This particular monster is incredibly hard for the (admittedly horribly drunk) rider to turn. He bounces off a Mercedes van and a wooden stall in one simple wide U-turn. Splendid :-)

After a bit more of this nonsense, we head back to the tents and turn in. As I get undressed and into the tent, I realise how cold it now is compared to the daytime, although temperatures are nowhere near as cold as they should be...

end of day 4

 

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