So Where Are We Going This Year?


Mick and I have been touring in Europe for a few years now. Planning begins in the winter and by early summer we are raring to go. The Alps are usually involved because they are a great biking area that we have come to love over the years.

 

However it is always good to add new places. For the last couple of years we have started off in the Picos de Europa mountains , taking the ferry from Plymouth or Portsmouth to Santander on the north coast of Spain.

Last year we headed for Corsica. Three years ago we rode overland to the Alps and then further east to Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.

Three years ago I rode down the spine of Italy and then across Greece and Turkey with two German friends, arriving finally at Mount Ararat in the mountains where Turkey, Iran and Armenia meet.
 

The Kotor Serpentine road

This year we decide to explore the Balkans. We have seen a few YouTube videos of the Kotor Serpentine road in Montenegro so that becomes the ultimate destination for this trip.

 Our route will take us across Western Europe to the Alps. Then south through Croatia and Bosnia & Herzogovina, finally entering Montenegro in its north east corner and working our way in a circle to Kotor and the Adriatic coast.
Where Gavrilo Princip changed history
 Now it is time to fill in a few more destinations. As history nuts we reckon Sarajevo and the site of the assassinations that started the First World War is a must visit place.

Back in 2004 I visited Bosnia where I was best man for my cousin Liam when he married Vanda whose home town is Doboj in the north of Bosnia. It was still a devastated place back then, just nine years after the Balkan War of 1992-95 when Doboj was just a few miles from the front line.

 Most buildings were laced with bullet holes and mortar damage, and we passed thousands of houses in various stages of repair and rebuilding.

While I was there I was given an English translation of a book by Ivo Andric. "The Bridge On The Drina" won the Nobel prize for literature, and is a series of vignettes describing life on and around a famous bridge that was built in the 16th century by the Ottomans to span the Drina river.
It stands in the town of Visigrad near the Bosnia-Serbia border, in the south east corner of the country.

 I have always wanted to visit this bridge; now I have my opportunity to do just that.
The Bridge on the Drina

 Next comes the detailed route planning. I like to find twisty roads and Alpine passes I haven't ridden before. For this I use a combination of Tyre software and Google Maps. Tyre lets me save routes in both TomTom and Garmin formats.
I don't reserve accommodation in advance because no plan survives contact with the tarmac, but it is good to compile a list of likely camping sites and hotels while I have the facility of good internet connectivity at home.
We will camp in the more expensive countries, but hotels and pensions are very cheap in the Balkans so we won't be roughing it all the time.

 One thing we do book advance is our passage through the Eurotunnel. We set 23rd June for the bimble start, and book the tunnel for early on 24th June at a cost of £35 each for the 35 minute trip. Euro Bimble 2017 has achieved escape velocity!

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