17th October 2014        12-15℃         380km
Giebelstadt – Meinz – Nürburgring – Kellberg

Cruising country roads, I headed towards the historic city of Meinz, where I stopped for lunch before powering onto my destination for today, the Nürnburgring.

Now in the correct location, I filled the bike with 100 octane fuel, bought a one lap pass, and headed out onto one of the world’s most challenging and dangerous racetracks. 20km of twisty tight turns, drops & climbs, and fast straights.
There were a few other cars going out on the track, and the pace looked seriously fast. I was warned to stick to the right of the track, and let others pass, particular as I’d be slow.
Hardly with the right setup, off-road tyres on a fully loaded bike, I cautiously entered the track and wound the bike up.

I was passed by cars plenty of times, and while I was out, three cars crashed, two colliding together, and the other one hitting a wall in a separate incident.

It was good fun, but the corners were sometimes frightening. Not knowing the track certainly didn’t help, but I had a blast, finished without crashing, bought a sticker and left to look for a guesthouse, just as they were closing the track due to the accidents.

A tick in the box for riding around ‘the ring’ once in my life.

9-16th October 2014        15℃        277km
Munich – Giebelstadt

I had a fantastic week spent with good friends; Nicholas, Melinda and family in Munich, plenty of time for relaxation, recuperation (with beer) and good food.

At the same time, I took the opportunity to do some maintenance tasks on the bike, installing a new front tyre, as the previous one had reached the end of it’s useful life, after serving 24,000km all the way from Beijing to Munich.  It probably had a few hundred kilometres of tread left before it became dangerous to use, so now was the ideal time to swap it out for brand new rubber.  Conveniently, just outside Nicholas’ house, there was a rock of just the right height to support the bike while I removed the front wheel.

During my rest week, I also paid a visit to the big motorcycle stores of Munich, including BMW, although no special welcome did I receive there.  I needed to replace the chain guard that had snapped of on the Pamir Highway, as well as buy a few other bits & pieces.  When I asked if there was any sort of a discount as I had ridden my BMW bike all the way from Singapore, the answer was a very clear, no.   So I paid full price for my parts and went downstairs to the BMW cafe, where I requested a Coke.   The waitress told me, “That’s free if you are having your bike serviced here, otherwise it is 2.50 euro”

I said “Well, I service the bike myself, and I’m thirsty after riding my BMW all the way from Singapore, does that get me anything?”

She responded “That will be 2.50 euro, thank you”

So no love from BMW despite being a brand ambassador for the last 7 months riding across Asia.

I set out from Nicholas’ house in the morning, with a plan to head to Nurburgring and to ride around the famous racetrack.  It started to rain heavily, and as I was getting close to Nurnburg, I took the opportunity to stop in a petrol station and check the map/gps to make sure I was close.  What I discovered was that I was 400km from where I thought I should be, having confused the city of Nurnburg and the famous racetrack.  This meant there would be no way I could make the distance to the track today, so I changed my plan and headed for Giebelstadt for the night, about halfway to the actual Nurburgring.

Riding through the backroads, passing through the German countryside was a job, small villages and farmland, fantastic smells of sct grass, manure, rain, mud, leaves and autumn time.

In Giebelstadt I found a family guesthouse that had been operating for 150 years by the same family and with a great kitchen a lovely dinner, I was soon ready to retire for the night.