Euro Tour Part 5

The day after our Nurburgring lap we made a decision to “pop” across to Luxembourg, just to put another country under our belts. But first we were determined to pick up some souvenirs of our ‘ring experience. We had noticed that there was a dedicated fan shop in the town of Adenau, the town where we had done all our eating and drinking, so we dropped in to have a peek. We all picked up souvenirs of various descriptions (polo shirts, key lanyards etc.) that is except for KG, he wasn’t too convinced they had what he wanted, so we agreed that on the way back from Luxembourg we would call in to the main shop at the Nordschlieffe entrance that we had visited the day before.
I had studied the map meticulously and was convinced I had the trip covered, nope, one little turn to bring us on to the “r257” proved elusive to us, a good 45 minutes was spent to-ing and fro-ing trying to find the little bastard. “Enough” said KG “ Sod it, we’ll hit the Autobahn and just do it in a oner”. The Autobahn was despatched with ease (our plan to hit a ton in each country was going well), we dropped of into a town called Kenn (appropriate?) and found a little bakery to have lunch (once again thanks to Grifter who used his linguistic skills to order our food, you old fox). Back on to the Autobahn and past Trier which is the last major town before the border, the scenery was already starting to change, not so much Gothic influence around here buildings had a definite French feel to them.
We finally crossed the border and pulled into a huge service station to fill up (Luxembourg had the cheapest fuel of the whole trip), after a bit of a break we decided that it was getting late and still had a date with the souvenir shop to fulfil, we agreed to turn around and head back on the back roads through Bitburg. The roads were much better, smooth fast and flowing, although H-Boss was getting pissed off at been left behind all the time, he said that we were riding too fast but we weren’t its just that we (me, KG and Zippy) were getting the breaks when it came to overtakes. As the roads got more rural we had less problems and things settled into a nice rhythm again, the rural roads were fantastic, best roads of the trip for me.
It was a lovely sunny day and this showed us just how fortunate we were the day before because when we arrived back at the ‘ring the place was absolutely jam packed, all the car parks and surrounding roads were full of cars and bikes, our lap would have been far more scary if we had chosen to do it on this day.
KG picked his souvenirs and walked back to his bike, it was a hot sweaty day and we had spent 3 and a half long days in the saddle, we were all a little achy, this goes someway to explaining what happened next. As KG threw his leg over his bike, there was a loud snap noise and a scream, KG and his bike toppled over onto the floor. KG felt his leg go as he stretched over the bike, and his now knackered leg could do nothing to stop his bike from hitting the deck with him on board. It looked bad, he couldn’t move his leg at all, luckily for us all an English guy in a Mini saw what went on and gave KG a lift back to the digs, Zippy got his bike back to the digs.
KG phoned the owner of our digs who kindly volunteered to take him to the local A+E. We all got ready and went into town for a meal where we agreed to meet KG later. We found a real nice Pizza restaurant in town called Pinocchio’s (really cheap and fantastic huge pizza’s) . KG turned up shortly after us, the docs told him that he had a 1 inch tear in the muscle at the back of his thigh, it was a bad one and he was told not to ride his bike for a couple of weeks at least (KG has since been told that more like a year would be required to fully recover). He had phoned the insurance company and they had agreed to fly him home and ship his bike back, it was a blow, none of us thought our trip would turn out like this but at least he was ok and well covered by insurance.
Bungle