The holiday was almost over and we were just trying to find a different route back to the UK, avoiding not only the roadworks delays around Hamburg but also the boredom of the Hamburg to Calais sector. We stuck to the autobahn from Puttgarden at first but our Hamburg avoidance strategy brought us on to the back roads for a while, slowing progress considerably. Peter had chosen the Black Forest town of Baden-Baden as our destination, and we got back on the autobahn as soon as we could to cover the miles.

It felt good to be unbound by speed limits again; in Germany, even the camper vans travel at 80 mph! We came across a section of gridlocked traffic that brought back memories of Hamburg, but this time it was different: the cars in the fast lane pulled over to the left, almost hugging the central reservation, to allow motorcycles a safe and easy passage. We trickled past, the weight of the laden Valkyrie notwithstanding, and possibly saved 45 minutes on that stretch. One guy hadn’t read the memo and was blocking our path, but the guy behind him gave him a sharp horn blast and gave us a shrug and a grin to say “some people”! You gotta love German drivers!

Peter had found us a quiet and slightly weird campsite outside the town – weird inasmuch as we were the only people camping, and all the other caravans seemed to be semi-permanently attached to wooden chalets. The facilities were minimal but it had a decent bar and excellent restaurant, which seemed to be the place to eat for miles around: we had to book a table for each of our two nights there.

Baden-Baden, pictured above, is a beautiful and historic town, dating back to Roman times. It has a well-preserved Roman bathhouse, impressive town centre, old churches, a beautiful park – but it doesn’t possess a single bureau de change! Having stocked up with Norwegian krone in advance of our trip, in case our UK credit and debit cards didn’t work everywhere (they didn’t, but more about that in a later blog), but having spent less time than anticipated in Norway, we had loads of krone and not many euros. Staff in the banks shook their heads and suggested we try Stuttgart – 100km away! The relatively unhelpful attitude of the staff in two banks, the campsite and a mini-market was more an indication of disinterest rather than rudeness, but it was in marked contrast to the friendliness we encountered almost everywhere else.

Peter plotted our exit from Germany on a road called the L500, which I’d never heard of but apparently is much loved by German riders. We headed there after breakfast and enjoyed the first few miles as the road twisted and wound its way playfully up a mountain. The traffic was light, but it soon started to rain. Then we were in thick cloud, or possibly fog, reducing visibility to maybe 10 yards in places on an already very challenging and now slightly greasy-looking road. The morning’s ride suddenly became a matter of survival rather than unadulterated pleasure.

The Garmin will receive a blog of its own soon, but it is not a great tool for micro-managing one’s route in such situations – it’s too clunky and not great for seeing the bigger picture. Peter consulted Google Maps to find a way out of the cloud-bound area. It was a good thing, too – Google was able to highlight that our road was closed farther ahead, blocking our planned route into France, which the Garmin, not operating in real time, could not. With Peter giving directions over the intercom, we branched off the mountain road and descended into a valley, eventually emerging out of the cloud into much clearer weather and, near the French border, some welcome sunshine.

If past trips had taught is anything, it was that European motorways are rarely interesting. They’d also taught us that local roads in places like France and Germany take you through interminable villages with their little roundabouts, speed limits and speed humps. Many, perhaps most, of those roundabouts are so small and tight that there is no natural flow for a heavy two-wheeler, so it can be hard work. So it was that day, and after an hour of tedious travel we opted instead for the autoroute towards Paris and Calais. I remember on first long-distance trip in 1976 or thereabouts watching with envy from those rural French roads as the traffic sped past on the autoroute, which as an impoverished 22-year-old I shunned to avoid paying tolls. Yes, the fuel was more expensive on the autoroute, but we’d long since stopped caring, and €1.90 a litre for E10 no longer seemed extortionate after paying £1.90 in the UK earlier in the summer. We made faster progress toward the French coast and stopped for the night at a campsite in the medieval city of Laon.