The day started with a beautiful sunrise from hotel window!
Hotel Ibis
And because my GPS had a function to make “Interesting adventure” I decided to choose this. And we started riding north…
Water tower in Kcynia
And even I had the marker “No gravelroads” in my GPS it gave us this:
Actually very nice part of this days ride!
We found very nice place to stay from the guesthouse just outside the centrum. We left the stuff there and took a ride to one of the most amazing beaches in Europe (or at least in Baltic sea).
Sandbeach between Gdansk and Gdynia
Then we spent quite a long time walking around the city. It was sunday afternoon and there was totally too much people!! But we survived…
(Click any of the pictures to make them bigger) The old town of Gdansk is very beautiful! The area is huge and you can easily get lost there… But the buildings are very nice and the river that goes through the city gives it a little bit more spirit! The 312km’s route for this day was like this:
Day 14 From Cesky Krumlov we were riding straight north to Bechyně village. And I didn’t read the roadsigns well enough… the road was closed! We had to turn back to the big road and from there turn to west and find this bridge:
Stádlecký Chain BridgeOnly small cars can drive over. And me…
On the northside of Praha it started raining but only for about 30 kilometers. Then we made a short stop at Želízy village and we were climbing to the sandstone hill where we found these:
The Devil’s Heads
Finally we reached the small town of Ceska Lipa and the old town was nice surprise!
Ceska Lipa
You can find some more pictures from here! The route for this day was like this:
Day 15 This day started very grey and it looked like it will rain very soon! Because of this risk of rain I skipped the famous motorcycle cave. Luckily the sandstone castle was on the way and stopped there to take the picture.
Sloup castle
Then we were riding about 60km’s in Germany (12th country in our trip!) and there it started raining. The route for this day was about 310km’s and from that we had the rainsuits on about 170km’s! But we saw at least two nice/ strange buldings on the way!
Chocianów abandoned PalaceThe black Church. St. Francis of Assisi
And when the entered to our destination city Poznan it didn’t rain anymore and we could go walking to the beautiful old town!
And because I had to pay 10€ of parking this hotel was the most expensive on our trip -about 82€. You can see more pictures from this day here. The route for this day was like this:
This guesthouse was one of the nicest places where we spent the night. Especially the breakfast was very nice!
Gasthaus Zum Post
But after breakfast we were riding again. First we took the road 311 down in the walley and then we turned north following the Dientenbach river. This road is very nice as the river runs deep in the walley but it’s not very long… and then we took the “Hochkönig Road” to east. This road was first climbing to Mühlbach am Hochkönig -skicenter & village and then going down with very nice sweeping corners! Then it was road 159 north following the Salzach river (and A10 Autobahn) and then Lammertal Straße to east towards Postalmstraße. This is a tollroad with 5€ payment. The speedlimit is 40 and it’s almost like going back to middle-age… The phone network wasn’t working and there was cows everywhere!
Postalmstraße Mautstelle
Right after this panoramic road we had Traunsee…
Lake Traunsee
And then the mountains were gone! I had little bit sad feelings even we had quite nice countryside roads after the mountains. I was thinking: “Ok, we will see Tatra mountains in the north part of Czech republic but that’s about all…” Luckily there was some nice places still to make a short stop…
Nice views (without mountains…)
I had made the route to go over Vltava river in a ferry (Frydava-Frymburk). This was 4€ (Euros were just fine to use as payment!)
Ferry in Czech
Then we arrived at Cesky Krumlov and I had made a booking in the middle of the old town!! It’s not very wice because you can’t ride there at all! But after few tricks we had our stuff in our room and the bike was parked outside the old town… Here’s few pictures of the beautiful old town (Click any of the pics to see them bigger!):
There is absolutely enough of restaurants in this city! We didn’t choose the best one but it wasn’t too bad either… This town I can easily recommend to anyone. You should visit there! Our 288km route for today was like this:
The most amazing riding day in our tour! We started by climbing to Passo di Giau From the west.
Fedare in 2000 meters
Passo di Giau is well known about the views at the top!
Giau southwestGiau northGiau east
From Giau we rode down to Cortina d’Ampezzo and from there straight up to Passo tre Croci (at 1809 meters) that doesn’t go down very fast on the east side! There you will have first beautiful Lago di Misurina at 1754 meters and then Lago di Landro at 1400 meters. Beside these lakes there are also many hotels and restaurants. We took a short pause at Misurina with some sweet roll and lemonade.
Lake Misurina
Then it was time to ride to the next country: Austria! Almost right after we crossed the border I took the left-turn to a “secret mountain road” that not too many know about! Usually everyone is riding straight from Toblach (Italy) to Lienz (Austria) and then choosing the Grossglockner. But we took this “Pustertaler” first.
Amazing views
Then after riding a quite long way from the city of Lienz to the south-end of Grossglockner -We were finally there! I’ve been here twice before… (almost). 2014 we took the road from south and it was raining until Hochtor tunnel. Luckily from there we made the northside in good weather. In 2017 we came from north and it was raining too much! We decided to turn back. But now the weather was perfect!! Maybe it was little bit cold (about +10 celsius near the Glacier) but it didn’t bother us at all!! We got many nice pictures there!!
Click any of the pictures to see them bigger! We found a place to stay from Taxenbach village. The guesthouse was nice but we didn’t find a good restaurant from this small village. Our 240km route for this day was like this:
Luckily in the morning when we woke up it didn’t rain anymore. In the evening and during the night the rain was very heavy. So when we started to ride the road was wet and air was fresh…
Val Raccolana
The road in Raccolana valley starts from about 1300 meters in the east and it goes all the way down to Chiusaforte village (or town) in 391 meters! From there I wanted to ride north and check Passo del Cason di Lanza. But when I turned to that road there was a sign that it was closed. The alternative road SP112 from Pontebba to Moggio di Sotto was very nice too!
One of the many bridges over Torrente Aupa river
Then we were riding little bit north again. The route was about to climb to Monte Zoncolan from east. But I didn’t have routepoints in my GPS so it chose “the shortest possible” road to the top. This shortcut is not even a full road in google maps! But I did the whole road… with many rocks, fallen trees and lots of stuff and holes in the pavement! XR was totally ok with this road too. The actual road that climbs up to the mountain is not much wider. It makes the curves and corners in the middle of the skiing hill and it’s very steep in many places. At the top we had still cloudy weather and even few drops of rain fallin so we didn’t get nice pictures.
Monte Zoncolan
We made a short break in Ampezzo village. Found very small local shop and bought something to drink.
Ampezzo
Took a small mountain Pass called Cibiana. It climbs “only” to 1530 meters and there are restaurants and trees on the top so not much about nice views there. Then finally started the climb to Passo Staulanza. This I did back in 2017 but it was raining like hell then. Now the weather was nice and I could nicely enjoy the road and the power of S1000XR! I didn’t have any booking made for the night because I knew how it is around here. You can easily find guesthouses from every village! I made my first stop in Santa Fosca village in a small guesthouse called ” Albergo La Rondine” and they had a room for us. Plus there was a nice car parked outside -never seen it before!
And day 9 when we didn’t ride at all. After breakfast we took a walk to the local cross-hill. It was about 2 kilometers walk to this place and the air was already very hot! After few hundred meters I fell… Just took a wrong step and I was on my knees in the pavement. Luckily I was able to take the hit to the pavement mostly with my hands but I got this anyway to my knee:
Oops!
Here’s the cross that we saw on the hill. It’s about 10-12 meters high!
Crocifisso Fumak
We planned to visit one cave but there was a risk of thunder… So we went only to the beach to enjoy the clear water of Adriatic sea!
Day 10 we started the ride back home (kind of)… First we took the curvy road up to the mountains and closer to Slovenia. This road has long history as the Lousiana -one of the most significant roads in Austria-Hungary already back in 19th century. The highest point was near Mrzle Vodice village at 928 meters.
Mountain Pass? Ravno Podolje
Then we were in Slovenia! The temperature was much cooler since we were quite high -maybe about 500 meters above sea level. The road was quite nice ride until we rode under the Highway that goes southwest from Ljublana. After that the road was totally amazing!! Our route reached the road 102 and after Godovič there was totally crazy part where the road was following the canyon river and the walls were climbing high on both sides.
Viaduct Bača pri Modreju
Under this Viaduct we took few pictures but mostly we were totally amazed by the views (and didn’t take any pictures!) Then our route turned to the northeast and we were following the Soca river until we turned to Mangart.
Mangart
After this rainy experience we’re again in Italy and we stayed in
skiresort hotel in Sella Nevea village. The views were totally amazing
and luckily we just took a short walk after the dinner before it started
raining.
It was going to be very hot day. We were about to ride little bit to Slovenia and then to Croatia. One friend of mine had invited us to visit Zagreb but I was thinkin that it’s not very good idea to go to a big city when it’s very warm weather. We were riding in Slovenia only about 10km! And when we entered the border at Mursko village there was a line… luckily only about 10 minutes of waiting. They wanted to check all documents and when they saw my wife’s Russian passport they started to look very closely! They were not interested about Residence Permit at all… The were checking all the stamps in the passport and finally they put the stamp there!
Short stop near Varaždin
After ice cream and drinking break we chose the highway. It was damn hot and in the highway the heat wouldn’t matter too much. Except they have tollgates in the middle of the highway!! The que was at least 15-20 minutes but I was riding on the verge of the road and I rode past quite many cars! Even the local police saw me and they didn’t do anything! Finally after highway we got at least a little bit of mountain road. It was from Fuzine village to Hreljin village and when we saw the Adriatic sea first time and it was quite nice view! We still had to pay the roadtoll to Krk-island and ride over very nice bridge an then we had only few kilometers to our guesthouse in Porat village!
3 minutes after 4pm I took this picture! My wife is swimming…
I have instagram account called “OneworldOneXR“. I started the account 29th of January 2018 and I have shared one picture every day since then. Now I have 6411 followers! This blog will also share the best pictures from this account here!
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