Hotel Madness

So for a while there, I had three separate hotels booked for the same nights and was looking at a fourth!  I think I must be addicted to Booking.com!

Cath put me onto one along New Road in Chatham, which seems to tick all the boxes pretty much. It is cheaper than one near me and although two quid per room, per night more than the Premier Inn, comes with a full English brekkie. Not only is it closer to my place than the afore mentioned Premier Inn but is also in walking distance of Cath's but more importantly, the venue for our pre tour welcome dinner. For that I am planning to hit a Chinese 'eat as much as you like' venue. The food is all cooked to order there and the service is very good too, all for fifteen quid. If we are lucky we may get some Saturday night entertainment thrown in too. Like most of this stuff, that though is a long way off and I expect some of you are wondering why I am writing all this with 300 days still to go. You may have a point! Things will probably go fairly quiet over the winter though, so you should make sure you enjoy every morsel while you can.

I digress, I'm not finished with hotels yet.  As I booked the one in Chatham, I cancelled the expensive one near me. And then I had a thought. One of those I'd booked in Germany was quite expensive. I wondered if it might be any cheaper now. Ha,ha!  Cheaper, each room was thirty quid cheaper, so I hastily booked another four rooms and cancelled the existing booking. The Hogs will thank me for that, more money for some tasty weissbier!!

I might take a look at some of the others too, though maybe I should concentrate on something else for a while. We'll see ;-)

Re-routed

OK, I've completed the review of the route and re-jigged fuel stops where necessary. The upshot is, there are only 2, maybe 3 days when we shall have to jump on some multi lane roads, days when we have somewhere to visit, so can't afford to dawdle. Even then, I think they are ones in France, that are only 2 lane. In fact, the widest road we'll be on will be the M20 on the run to/from the channel tunnel, before we even get on the continent. 

In mileage, I think there is an extra 30-40 on the twisty stuff. Time wise though, we are looking at an additional 25 hours riding time, over the entire tour. I must say though, now I've had a closer look, some of those roads should be a real hoot to ride on and so long as the sun is shining, who cares if it takes a little longer. We can always get Tomtom to re-route us if we feel the need to speed up anyway.

In undertaking this little exercise, I've managed to pull us away from service station fuel and, in France particularly, steer us towards supermarket fuel. That should save us a few euros over the course of a few fill-ups and leave us more towards our own liquid intake ;-)

I've also booked some hotel rooms for before and after the tour, at the moment too many, of differing quality and cost. Better to have these things sorted early, even though leaving it later and not paying the cancellation premium, would save money. Once things are a bit more firmed up and by that I mean the numbers of Hogs travelling, I can maybe look to cut the costs a bit more.

I did it M way

OK, I've revisited the routes briefly The TYRE software only has a global setting for avoiding motorways so I've had to toggle that off and on to see the affect on mileage and duration. No surprise on timings, one is amost double but some mileages are actually less.

Further investigation required but I don't think we'll have any major issues or replanning.

Nobody's Fuel

Don't know what I was worried about. I've managed to identify fuel stops for the entire tour already, though I might revisit it to see if there is anything more suitable.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on which way you look at it, I discovered that Via Michelin maps have a friendly little petrol pump symbol, which when clicked shows them all on the map. Unfortunately because, I'd already done two thirds by my tried and trusted method of scouring Google maps for service areas on the big roads or for buildings that looked petrol station like on the smaller ones. Easier when GM shows a little petrol pump but it is by no means as comprehensive as VM.

One thing that became quite apparent though during this exercise, is the number of major roads, that's motorways or dual carriageways the route is taking. I'm not sure now whether this was something I was previously aware of but I may duplicate the route maps to see what we get when motorways are omitted.

There are a lot of very decent single lane roads on our route and I think it unfeasible to expect to avoid all motorways but the other Hogs are somewhat uneasy with multi lane roads, so I'll take another look at maybe offering a better balance and try smaller roads that run close to the existing route. The issue with the smaller roads though, as we found out on the Reservoir Hogs Tour in 2012, is that even on motorcycles it can be difficult to pass and we don't really want to spent our riding days stuck behind farmer Jules or the European's favourite, the white camper van. Not such a problem if we are just riding A to B but with places to visit, time saved on the road, is time we can spend at the 'attraction'.

I'll let you know how I get on with that.

Meanwhile, it struck me that when the Hogs come to town, they're gonna need somewhere to stay, I just don't have the room in my little flat for three additional bodies and gear, so I've booked a hotel just up the road.

Finally for now, there's a bit of a question mark over whether we shall be four or just three Hogs on this tour. Biggsy is doing up his house at the moment and all his spare cash is being ploughed into the property, so as yet he is unable to commit to coming. We're all hoping that he can, as the four of us had such a great time last year. He's got some time to make his mind up, I shan't be looking to book the Eurotunnel crossings until the new year. Fingers crossed.

Keeping the show on the road

That means, finding regular watering holes for our steeds. As with the Reservoir Hogs Tour of 2012, I shall be looking to stop for fill ups around every 150 miles. Dudley's Harley only has a tiny peanut style tank, so we are restricted to what he can do on a tank full. I'm not too sure about the other two Hogs but, as those who have followed the Ashes Tour blog will know, I can easily get 200 out of the Sprint. For me then it'll be a case of little and often!

I've started to take a look and already this looks like being a task as equally difficult as getting the accommodation, more so in fact. So far all I am certain of, is that we can fill up at the services by junction 11 of the M20, just before we board the shuttle. After that, I think we are looking at somewhere close to our overnight stop in Waterloo.

I have a couple of apps on my phone, for Shell and BP but not sure whether they will work overseas. I doubt we'd see many, if any, BP stations anyway, so I may have to search for something for Esso and some of the foreign brands.

This should keep me busy over the coming weeks/months!

Call me thick......

but all from the very start of this tour, through the planning process, the opening of the blog, sorting the route, etc, etc, it never entered my head, that next year is the 100th anniversary of the First World War.  Not until my brother Paul mentioned he was planning a memorial trip over to Corbie, near Amiens, in the Somme region of France, to pay his respects to one of the Devall fallen, had I given it a thought.

Having given it thought though, the mind has cranked into overdrive (slight exaggeration maybe) and I have, with the blessing of my fellow Hogs, amended our route slightly, so I too can pay my respects to, not one but two Devalls, unlucky enough to lose their lives fighting for King and Country in the Great War.

Seems quite ridiculous that I never thought of this before, so thanks to Paul for sowing the seed. As Dudley put it, it is the 'wholly appropriate' thing to do.

Lest we Forget!

All booked

A bit easier when the month you want to book shows up on the website. All hotels are now booked. There are quite a few changes from the original list, meaning we shan't now get to stay in our German castle :-( Moving hotels, quite some distance in some cases, has necessitated some re-planning of the route but distances, apart from one day I think, remain about the same. The Hogs will just have to ride a bit faster and further, eh?

I'm quite excited looking at some of the roads we'll be travelling on. Plenty of twists and turns to get the knees down!

We shall be running through some pretty spectacular scenery and some of the hotels look quite 'interesting' too. 

Roll on next July.