Tuesday, June 24th, 2025
Bad Fallingbostel, Germany to Prague, Czech Republic
Distance travelled 572 kilometres

I woke up early – I suppose that, in my mind, I knew that the only thing in front of us then was to simply ride home.

It was a sunny morning, birds were singing and, when I looked out of the open window, there were three sheep in a paddock nearby. It might have been me, but sheep always seem to look at you with disdain. I wondered if they had received an email about me from their cousins in Norway.

It was still over an hour before I needed to wake Lucie, so I thought I might go for a walk. The hotel was on the fringes of the town, so I walked towards the countryside. I love places that have been there a long time. There was Fox Street, Wolf Street and Bear Street between me and the real greenery, perhaps indicating how near to the residents those beasts had got in days long gone. The last road in town was called Final Field Street, the country boy inside me liked that.

The town sign still bore an “older”, possibly Danish, name as well.

Oddly, for Germany, some of the houses and gardens were a bit unkempt and neglected. One lawn even had a rusty old fridge standing on it !! That would not go down very well in Bavaria.

I walked out into the countryside along a quiet road that was little more than a lane. The crops were well on their way and the potatoes looked well advanced for the end of June. I resisted the urge to pull one up and see just how advanced ……

As I stood on the verge, a small movement caught my eye and a fox walked out of the undergrowth and sat in the road about thirty metres away. I did not move but, after a minute or two it saw (I would hate to think smelled) me. It got up and casually ambled back into the hedge. At least I knew where it lived.

I went back, roused Lucie and she packed up before breakfast. The Germans too, know how to set you up for the day ahead and the selection was fairly comprehensive although totally fish free. I was in “let us get home” mode though and could not really be bothered to stuff myself ……

We left for the long drag along the motorways to home. In expectation of the tedium, Lucie even put the camera in the pannier and we did not regret that at any point.

We just rode along, stopping every so often for coffees or coffees and petrol and ate up the kilometres. It was easy riding but, on a German autobahn, there is very little to grab your attention – a high point was a “thumbs-up” from a fellow biker on a Harley …….. with a side-car …….

The slightly more southern route we were using to return took us around Hanover, Baunschweig (Brunswick) and south of Magdeburg towards Leipzig. We both smiled when we passed the sign for Quedlinburg, allegedly the most beautiful little town in Europe, but we had already been there. At Dresden we took the road to Prague, it appeared, in the nick of time. Two days later that route shut totally for some lengthy repairs ….

The further east we got, the hotter the weather became. Even moving at the slightly elevated speeds that are inevitable as home draws near, we were both hot in the saddle. When we came to Prague, crossing the city in the mid-afternoon congestion made me as hot as I can remember and I was really glad when we finally pulled up outside of our house

It had been a journey of 5,066 kilometres.

The Softail had performed immaculately. It had been smooth, economical with fuel and did not seem to have used a single teaspoon full of oil.

=

The only sad thing was an omission that I made.
I had been approaching having ridden 2,000,000 kilometres on two wheels for quite some time and had wanted to stop and record where I was when I came to that landmark. Somehow, I had miscalculated where I had got to and, somewhere in northern Denmark, probably as we were leaving Hirtschals in the rainstorm, the big moment had come and gone in the deluge …….

Ah well !