Sauerland trip

[Guest Marcel]

Hi y'all,

 

since this seems to be the place to register the V11 traveling experience I'll try.

Some piccies of the trip can be found at Bike trip pictures. I'm not a great photographer and like to be on the bike better than of, so not too many were taken. My goal of the trip was to get acquainted with my Guzzi again since I had the clip-ons replaced with a bar, and the first year of having it was sort of disastrous, without a lot of riding.

 

I booked a room over the weekend, coming in on Friday and leaving on Sunday, in a village called 'Altastenberg' Hotel Kirchmeier. This is quite close to the winter resort Winterberg. Actually, I was lucky since two weeks before it was still snowing. The price was 49 euro for half-board per night, and the food was quite good. Unfortunately, the hote had only about 4 guests in this weekend. Good thing was that a sauna and swimming pool were all for me

 

From where I live, the Sauerland (starting just after Dortmund) is 250 km away. I decided to take all of Friday for the outward leg. By motorway I went to Nijmegen and from there on I wanted to skip the motorways. This turned out to be a mistake. The Ruhr-area required a lot of trough-city driving so I feel I'd better had jumped on the motorway and fly past that area before enjoying the twisties of the Sauerland. I tend to like the twisties , so hence the first picture .

 

Driving through the Sauerland was a mixed blessing that day, and it would stay that way throughout the weekend. On the roads with a proper surface, it was a dream. Quite a lot of nice curves the bike really liked. But also lots of damaged road surface, so bad it makes off-road driving smooth. From Altastenberg I had 6 GPS routes. I drove them all. Unfortunately, the more scenic ones had the worst road surface. The Sauerland has a number of lakes that are worth driving around. I've visited the Mohnesee, Edersee, Biegesee. They tend to have scenic routes around the lake that are filled with tourists, unless you're out-of-seasons like I was. Then it's great

 

Anybody interested in the routes - I can send them if you're interested.

 

One of the most challenging roads was the L735 from Bache to Oeventrop. It was packed with bikes. Police seem to be very tense about speeding and dangerous driving as the area takes about 10 biker lives annually due to the challenges, and 75% of the accidents occur in the weekends.

 

Near Winterberg is an Aral gasstation at a roundabout. This seems to be a bikers gathering place. Actually, on Saturday I pulled up and there was this group of bikers standing there. Coming around again, 4 hours later they were in the exact same position . The countryside is what I'd call 'Märklin' countryside. Märklin is a German manufacturer of toy trainsets and quite often you see these in a mountaineous setting. And that's what it looked like to me, with the 'fachwerk' houses and rolling countryside. See pic 3 and 4.

 

On the return trip I rode without a GPS route and just chose the roads that looked smooth. Should have done that before instead of sticking to the routes. From 9:00 to 14:00 it was just great . At 14:00 I hit the Autobahn near Arnsberg and was home 3 hours later.

 

All in all I really enjoyed it and can recommend it to anybody! Sad thing is I lost my Bucklite II pocketknive (is any of the USA guys able to get me one on the cheap?). But then, the trip was worth it. I did about 1300 km of twistie roads and really got going on the V11. The bar made it possible to ride for 4 days (total including boring bits was 1800km)

 

No problems were experienced with the bike, except it refused to start at the end of the day when I was leaving the pub. Turned out the battery of my alarm was broken. What to do? A fellow Dutch guy helped me with the alarm of his car. Thanks guy!

[Orson]

Nice looking roads

 

Thanks for the ride report!