Post by Phil on Jul 15, 2006 20:16:46 GMT
I had planned to go to Austria this year on the bike, after reading Muppets “Where the birds don’t sing” thread in the Bikers oracle tours section, it inspired me to be a bit more adventurous.
So here is an account of our travels into the unknown along with the costs and links to various web sites that I used to plan and book the trip.
Our ferry route was to be a landbridge sailing from Belfast to Stranraer in Scotland and Newcastle to Amsterdam. After trawling around the net for the cheapest fares, I went back to the travel company I normally use which is NUTT TRAVEL who are usually competitive on price.
DFDS Seaways quote for the landbridge fare with a 2 berth cabin inside lower deck came in at £390, where as the Nutt Travel quote was £336 for a 2 berth cabin inside upper deck, a considerable saving compared to the company running the ferry route.
UK to Vienna
So on the 24th June we set off on the 0740hrs sailing on the Stenna Voyager to Stranraer, then a leisurely bimble the 150 miles to Newcastle for 1730hrs sailing to Amsterdam.
The ship we were sailing on was the King of Scandinavia, loading of the bikes was very slow because they were loading all the bikes onto the port side adjustable car deck and were letting so many on at a time then waiting until the bike owners had tied down their bikes. Plenty of tie down ratchet straps and lengths of rope were supplied, although the crossing was so smooth one strap would have sufficed.
I’ve always found that this crossing have good entertainment during the voyage and we were not disappointed by the cabaret that evening in the nightclub, the group “Peter & The Jets” and the “Frontline Dancers” were excellent and put on a very good show.
Next morning up bright and early full of anticipation to get on with the trip, we waited 45 minutes on the car deck to get off the ship to wait in another line for 30 minutes at the passport control as the police breathalysed every biker, (no car drivers were tested although I had spoke to other bikers later in the trip who came through Amsterdam port on different dates and they said that car drivers were being tested ) 5 were pulled to the side and arrested for being over the limit from the previous nights drinking.
My original plan for this trip was to ride through northern Germany and into Poland via Dresden but checking out other biking sites I was informed that the roads in Poland were crap and a lot of road works was being carried out, so going back to Muppets thread I decided to take the train to Vienna / Wien.
I telephoned the Deutsche Bahn booking centre in Surbiton, 08702 43 53 63 and booked the overnight train from Dusseldorf to Vienna, cost for the one way journey for the bike on the train was £32-04 and the 3 bed sleeper compartment was £201-46.
Or you can BOOK ONLINE HERE.
So a total of £233-50, for this you get a choice of 6 items of the breakfast menu and complimentary Bottle of fizzy water, apple and choccy biscuit, a small bag containing a hand towel, sealed cup of water for rinsing after brushing your teeth and a small bar of soap each. And you cover 600 miles (mostly motorway on bike, direct route ) overnight, which if you take in say 3 nights hotel, fuel, squaring your tyres off etc doesn’t seem so expensive.
So a leisurely ride the 150 miles or so through Holland to Dusseldorf , I found Holland to be the most expensive place for petrol of the whole trip at €1-42 per litre, and this wasn’t even a motorway filling station.
I learned from last years trip to write out a route card because my GPS system (Co- Pilot ) would take me on some strange routes, and sure enough it wanted to detour off the route that I had plotted on my computer, but it got me to the train station in Dusseldorf without too many wrong turns.
We had a really hot day, but when I was waiting to get loaded on to the train, the sky turned dark and a warm wind picked up, then within minutes a torrential downpour with thunder and lightening, the likes I’ve never seen before started, the bikes were abandoned as the riders ran for shelter, even the railway staff stopped loading the vehicles onto the carriages, 20 minutes later the rain stopped and we were loaded on to the train.
Be aware that when riding the bike onto the train you will be loaded onto the lower deck which means you will have lie on the tank to get low enough to avoid bashing your helmet. The railway staff will tie down your bike but make sure you disarm your alarm and don’t leave anything on the bike that may blow away.
The 3 person sleeping compartment is compact, I measured it to be 5’6’’ wide x 8’ long, with a small wash basin & mirror and a small wardrobe, toilets are at the end of the carriage, so don’t bring a lot of kit on with you. Smoking is not permitted whilst the train is in Germany but you can smoke when it is in Austria (from about 5am )
The carriage attendant will come around and make up the beds for you, we found it hard to get a decent sleep, with the noise of the train (even with earplugs in ), the rocking from side to side and the stopping and starting at various stations and uncoupling carriages.
At 9am the next morning you are in Vienna ready to start the next leg of the trip, unless like me you’re the last vehicle to be put on the train and the BMW driver in front hasn’t disarmed his car alarm, which has been sounding all night and drained the battery, so we have to wait until the railway staff get an electric truck and try to jump start the car, with lots of sparks and smoke.
Vienna to Horny Smokovec, High Tatras, Slovakia
When we eventually got out of the train station in Vienna, I wasn’t paying attention to the GPS when the bastid thing decided to go a different route and took me through the city centre of Vienna which was almost at a stand still with traffic, after an hour we eventually escaped the clutches of the city heading towards Bratislava in Slovakia, I had planned to use mostly A & B roads and stay off motorways as much as possible heading towards Banska Bystrica and on towards Poprad to Starry Smokovec.
The road surfaces were mostly good but the direction signs were very small and easy to miss especially if your coming near to a town they were lost in the sea of advertising crap, similar to parts of France, traffic on the minor roads was very light.
For this part of my trip I had to rely on the old fashioned reading a map and route card because I didn’t have mapping on the GPS for Slovakia and Poland, which took a bit of getting used to again, but we found our way to Hotel Panda in Horny Smokovec.
I used the Hotel Panda as a base for a few days, it was clean, comfortable and served a varied buffet breakfast, the hotel also has a sauna, solarium and snooker table, the reception staff were very helpful and spoke good English. Secure bike parking can be arranged in an attached garage for the princely sum of 100SK which is less than £2 per night
The hotels décor looked a bit dated on the exterior but the owner told me he was redecorating the hotel later in the year.
The cost for this hotel per night for 2 people B&B worked out at £32.
The area of Smokovec is basically a tourist village, mainly winter tourism, with hotels, guest houses and restaurants the full length of the 3 villages that join together.
We found a small restaurant 200m from the hotel, Café Santal, which had its menu also in English with a varied selection of food at very reasonable prices. A pint of lager and 5cl measure of vodka and a coke came to less than £1.
The surrounding area had at one time been dense coniferous forest but with large scale logging operations recently mile upon mile of forest has been cut down making it look like a wasteland. But the roads around here are very good with very little traffic.
I booked the hotel Panda through THIS COMPANY
Horny Smokovec to Oswiecim, Poland
We left the hotel and took the 537 & 57 through the mountains towards Nowy Targ in Poland. These are nice roads with some nice fast bends and the surface is good until you come to the border crossing.
We stopped showed the passports, removed our helmets to the Slovakian guard and were waved through only to be stopped at the next window of the building to remove the helmets and show the passports again to the Polish guard.
As soon as you left the border crossing point you were immediately aware you were in a different country, the roads were crap, patches on patches very uneven road.
I thought once I got onto the main E77 road to Krakow it would get better but this road has miles of road works and the bits that didn't had deep ruts. So drive with care
I had planned to visit the Wieliczka Salt Mine near Krakow because the Polish people who work with the wife said it was a must see, and we weren’t disappointed.
If you go to the mine don’t be fooled by parking attendants trying to get you into their car park, drive right to the mine and use the car park beside it, the attendant will even let you leave your helmets and coats in the boot of his car. Allow about 3 hours for this tour. 90minutes for the tour and another 90 minutes to get to the surface again, the lifts to the surface are original mine lifts which takes 32 people in very cramped conditions, not advised for someone who may be claustrophobic.
Here’s a LINK short video I made.
And here’s a LINK to the mines website.
We then made our way to our hotel in Oswiecim, the Hotel Galicja, a fine choice of hotel by Clive.
A very comfortable hotel with an attached Italian restaurant and a Polish restaurant.
The reception staff were excellent and would go out of their way to sort out things for you.
We used the Italian restaurant ( which was very popular with the locals )during our stay, which did very good meals, the ice-cream deserts were :lick: and 2 people could have a 2-course meal and 5 drinks for around £20.
I would have liked to have tried some genuine Polish cuisine but on the occasions that we used the Italian restaurant the Polish one was always empty, and I always work on the theory if the locals don’t eat in it there must be a reason
This hotel is like an oasis in the middle of a council estate, it is in a residential area but they are like council flats ( or if they’re privately owned, Apartments ) with a lot of graffiti on the walls, which seems to be a national past time, but I was told the gates are locked and security patrol the grounds, but I didn’t see it, anyhow just secure your bike as you would in Belfast or Derry.
The cost for this hotel per night for 2 people including breakfast was around £40.
Here's a LINK to the company I used to book the hotel.
So here is an account of our travels into the unknown along with the costs and links to various web sites that I used to plan and book the trip.
Our ferry route was to be a landbridge sailing from Belfast to Stranraer in Scotland and Newcastle to Amsterdam. After trawling around the net for the cheapest fares, I went back to the travel company I normally use which is NUTT TRAVEL who are usually competitive on price.
DFDS Seaways quote for the landbridge fare with a 2 berth cabin inside lower deck came in at £390, where as the Nutt Travel quote was £336 for a 2 berth cabin inside upper deck, a considerable saving compared to the company running the ferry route.
UK to Vienna
So on the 24th June we set off on the 0740hrs sailing on the Stenna Voyager to Stranraer, then a leisurely bimble the 150 miles to Newcastle for 1730hrs sailing to Amsterdam.
The ship we were sailing on was the King of Scandinavia, loading of the bikes was very slow because they were loading all the bikes onto the port side adjustable car deck and were letting so many on at a time then waiting until the bike owners had tied down their bikes. Plenty of tie down ratchet straps and lengths of rope were supplied, although the crossing was so smooth one strap would have sufficed.
I’ve always found that this crossing have good entertainment during the voyage and we were not disappointed by the cabaret that evening in the nightclub, the group “Peter & The Jets” and the “Frontline Dancers” were excellent and put on a very good show.
Next morning up bright and early full of anticipation to get on with the trip, we waited 45 minutes on the car deck to get off the ship to wait in another line for 30 minutes at the passport control as the police breathalysed every biker, (no car drivers were tested although I had spoke to other bikers later in the trip who came through Amsterdam port on different dates and they said that car drivers were being tested ) 5 were pulled to the side and arrested for being over the limit from the previous nights drinking.
My original plan for this trip was to ride through northern Germany and into Poland via Dresden but checking out other biking sites I was informed that the roads in Poland were crap and a lot of road works was being carried out, so going back to Muppets thread I decided to take the train to Vienna / Wien.
I telephoned the Deutsche Bahn booking centre in Surbiton, 08702 43 53 63 and booked the overnight train from Dusseldorf to Vienna, cost for the one way journey for the bike on the train was £32-04 and the 3 bed sleeper compartment was £201-46.
Or you can BOOK ONLINE HERE.
So a total of £233-50, for this you get a choice of 6 items of the breakfast menu and complimentary Bottle of fizzy water, apple and choccy biscuit, a small bag containing a hand towel, sealed cup of water for rinsing after brushing your teeth and a small bar of soap each. And you cover 600 miles (mostly motorway on bike, direct route ) overnight, which if you take in say 3 nights hotel, fuel, squaring your tyres off etc doesn’t seem so expensive.
So a leisurely ride the 150 miles or so through Holland to Dusseldorf , I found Holland to be the most expensive place for petrol of the whole trip at €1-42 per litre, and this wasn’t even a motorway filling station.
I learned from last years trip to write out a route card because my GPS system (Co- Pilot ) would take me on some strange routes, and sure enough it wanted to detour off the route that I had plotted on my computer, but it got me to the train station in Dusseldorf without too many wrong turns.
We had a really hot day, but when I was waiting to get loaded on to the train, the sky turned dark and a warm wind picked up, then within minutes a torrential downpour with thunder and lightening, the likes I’ve never seen before started, the bikes were abandoned as the riders ran for shelter, even the railway staff stopped loading the vehicles onto the carriages, 20 minutes later the rain stopped and we were loaded on to the train.
Be aware that when riding the bike onto the train you will be loaded onto the lower deck which means you will have lie on the tank to get low enough to avoid bashing your helmet. The railway staff will tie down your bike but make sure you disarm your alarm and don’t leave anything on the bike that may blow away.
The 3 person sleeping compartment is compact, I measured it to be 5’6’’ wide x 8’ long, with a small wash basin & mirror and a small wardrobe, toilets are at the end of the carriage, so don’t bring a lot of kit on with you. Smoking is not permitted whilst the train is in Germany but you can smoke when it is in Austria (from about 5am )
The carriage attendant will come around and make up the beds for you, we found it hard to get a decent sleep, with the noise of the train (even with earplugs in ), the rocking from side to side and the stopping and starting at various stations and uncoupling carriages.
At 9am the next morning you are in Vienna ready to start the next leg of the trip, unless like me you’re the last vehicle to be put on the train and the BMW driver in front hasn’t disarmed his car alarm, which has been sounding all night and drained the battery, so we have to wait until the railway staff get an electric truck and try to jump start the car, with lots of sparks and smoke.
Vienna to Horny Smokovec, High Tatras, Slovakia
When we eventually got out of the train station in Vienna, I wasn’t paying attention to the GPS when the bastid thing decided to go a different route and took me through the city centre of Vienna which was almost at a stand still with traffic, after an hour we eventually escaped the clutches of the city heading towards Bratislava in Slovakia, I had planned to use mostly A & B roads and stay off motorways as much as possible heading towards Banska Bystrica and on towards Poprad to Starry Smokovec.
The road surfaces were mostly good but the direction signs were very small and easy to miss especially if your coming near to a town they were lost in the sea of advertising crap, similar to parts of France, traffic on the minor roads was very light.
For this part of my trip I had to rely on the old fashioned reading a map and route card because I didn’t have mapping on the GPS for Slovakia and Poland, which took a bit of getting used to again, but we found our way to Hotel Panda in Horny Smokovec.
I used the Hotel Panda as a base for a few days, it was clean, comfortable and served a varied buffet breakfast, the hotel also has a sauna, solarium and snooker table, the reception staff were very helpful and spoke good English. Secure bike parking can be arranged in an attached garage for the princely sum of 100SK which is less than £2 per night
The hotels décor looked a bit dated on the exterior but the owner told me he was redecorating the hotel later in the year.
The cost for this hotel per night for 2 people B&B worked out at £32.
The area of Smokovec is basically a tourist village, mainly winter tourism, with hotels, guest houses and restaurants the full length of the 3 villages that join together.
We found a small restaurant 200m from the hotel, Café Santal, which had its menu also in English with a varied selection of food at very reasonable prices. A pint of lager and 5cl measure of vodka and a coke came to less than £1.
The surrounding area had at one time been dense coniferous forest but with large scale logging operations recently mile upon mile of forest has been cut down making it look like a wasteland. But the roads around here are very good with very little traffic.
I booked the hotel Panda through THIS COMPANY
Horny Smokovec to Oswiecim, Poland
We left the hotel and took the 537 & 57 through the mountains towards Nowy Targ in Poland. These are nice roads with some nice fast bends and the surface is good until you come to the border crossing.
We stopped showed the passports, removed our helmets to the Slovakian guard and were waved through only to be stopped at the next window of the building to remove the helmets and show the passports again to the Polish guard.
As soon as you left the border crossing point you were immediately aware you were in a different country, the roads were crap, patches on patches very uneven road.
I thought once I got onto the main E77 road to Krakow it would get better but this road has miles of road works and the bits that didn't had deep ruts. So drive with care
I had planned to visit the Wieliczka Salt Mine near Krakow because the Polish people who work with the wife said it was a must see, and we weren’t disappointed.
If you go to the mine don’t be fooled by parking attendants trying to get you into their car park, drive right to the mine and use the car park beside it, the attendant will even let you leave your helmets and coats in the boot of his car. Allow about 3 hours for this tour. 90minutes for the tour and another 90 minutes to get to the surface again, the lifts to the surface are original mine lifts which takes 32 people in very cramped conditions, not advised for someone who may be claustrophobic.
Here’s a LINK short video I made.
And here’s a LINK to the mines website.
We then made our way to our hotel in Oswiecim, the Hotel Galicja, a fine choice of hotel by Clive.
A very comfortable hotel with an attached Italian restaurant and a Polish restaurant.
The reception staff were excellent and would go out of their way to sort out things for you.
We used the Italian restaurant ( which was very popular with the locals )during our stay, which did very good meals, the ice-cream deserts were :lick: and 2 people could have a 2-course meal and 5 drinks for around £20.
I would have liked to have tried some genuine Polish cuisine but on the occasions that we used the Italian restaurant the Polish one was always empty, and I always work on the theory if the locals don’t eat in it there must be a reason
This hotel is like an oasis in the middle of a council estate, it is in a residential area but they are like council flats ( or if they’re privately owned, Apartments ) with a lot of graffiti on the walls, which seems to be a national past time, but I was told the gates are locked and security patrol the grounds, but I didn’t see it, anyhow just secure your bike as you would in Belfast or Derry.
The cost for this hotel per night for 2 people including breakfast was around £40.
Here's a LINK to the company I used to book the hotel.
