Second day : going across four countries

 

Second day, a nice Sunday morning. The kids were leaving for two weeks, I drove my son to my mother's with the Caterham. The girls joined us with the family car. All that to say we were free to have a first proper drive.

Without any clear plan, we hopped North to the Flemish region then to the Netherlands. All pleasant and nice, we did remove the roof just before crossing the border.

From Maastricht we moved East to Aachen in Germany. We had to put the roof back up just after Aachen, we only drove topless for one hour and a half... 

I managed to get a speed ticket at 59kph instead of 50, missing the end of the 70kph segment; nothing expensive. As I got the picture, I see it as a souvenir - it wouldn't be the last.

And from there we drove South to Luxemburg. We got a first souvenir with an automatic camera on the side of the road. I really didn't see the change of speed limit, and had no feel of the speed anyway. I was not accustomed to the speedometer position or its reliability either. It was just a matter a few km/h too high, the bill was not expensive. 

At the border with Luxembourg is mall that is open on Sunday, we opted to eat some wok there.

The road was damp, temperature was just 1°C. We got our first and only tailspin, in a virtually straight line after getting out of a roundabout. Quite the experience.

After that, we thought that we could visit the big motorcycle shop not far from there, they are also open on Sunday and quite a popular destination for bikers. We got us a pair of Alpinestars motocross gloves each - they are very light, rip-proof but offer no other protection.

We then headed back further South to visit a friend, actually not that far from France. We just stayed for about an hour and a half there, not over-stretching our welcome, having been there unannounced.

Then finally back to Liège through quite a deviation around Bastogne due to local festivities. We missed the opportunity to check out France and visit every neighboring country because it would get dark soon.

The total drive added up to 8 hours on the road. On top of that one hour at the mall, a half hour at the motorcycle shop and one and a half hour at my friend's.

We learned how to pop the roof up and down, manage the heating, keep the rear window open and all the most basic stuff like not thinking too much about the fear of theft or vandalism - which is a true lesson in letting it go.

A good day !

(Below : the dashcam snapshot shows where I was coming from, that's close to a full 180°)