Right, My ferry is booked from the Isle of Man to Heysham on Senior race day, 10th June, with a return from Liverpool on 15th July, so lets take a look at the route that I intend taking between those dates.
On the 10th June after landing at Heysham I have plenty of time in hand to meander over to Hull for the overnight crossing to Rotterdam. From Rotterdam I will be travelling through a small part of Holland before crossing northern Germany before a short ferry ride into Denmark. From Denmark I cross into Sweden and spend a couple of days rolling up to Stockholm where I will spend 3 days taking in the sites.
From Stockholm I am catching the overnight ferry to Tallinn in Estonia, arriving on my birthday, 17th June. (during my trip across the USA I actually started out from New York on my birthday after kicking my heels for a week trying to get my bike through customs....memories).
After spending a few days in Tallin I intend heading to the Baltic coast at Parnu before riding down the coast road to Riga, the capital of Latvia. From there I will head back to the coast at Liepaja and continue down the coast to Palanga in Lithuania. I will then cut in land to the capital, Vilnius, via a heritage site, The Hill of Crosses.
From Lithuania I cross into Poland and make my way, over a few days, to Warsaw, where again I will spend a few days enjoying this fine city before continuing to Krakow. Whilst there I will visit Auschwitz-Birkenau and another World Heritage site, the Wieliczka Salt Mines.
Leaving Karkow I cross the border into Slovakia where I plan to visit Bojnice Castle before turning west and into Czech republic. There are a few place that I will visit whilst in this country, amongst them are the sandstone rock formations back up by the Polish border, and the Church of bones at Kutna Hora. I will then make the short distance to Prague where, again, I will chill for 3 days.
It is anticipated that Rob and I will meet up whilst in Prague, hopefully on the 7th July, before we journey back to Zeebrugge together where I will catch the boat back to Hull, but in the meantime, we will visit Munich, so that Rob, a Manchester United supporter, can pay his respects at the memorial to the Munich air disaster.
From Munich our route takes us through the Black Forest to Strasbourg where again we can spend a couple of days. (we should have visited here on our French trip last year but circumstances were against us so we will fit it in this year). From Strasbourg we will ride up via Luxembourg and to Fumay in Belgium where we hope to take a ride on a death slide across a river and through a wood (the web site blurb says that you reach speeds of 60mph, really can't wait for that one, will need clean underwear I am sure!!!).
Then for me its back to Zeebrugge and the overnight boat to Hull before crossing to Liverpool for the evening crossing back to Douglas and work the following day - that will be a shock to the system.
In the meantime Rob will go onto Amsterdam for his Take That concert, well, someone has to like them I suppose.
Well folks, thats the plan, it just takes for me to save loads of pennies now. Thanks to Bill at work, the annual leave is booked, as are all ferry crossing, together with a hotel in Tallinn for my birthday, so it just leaves to say, Roll on June.
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