The recent Club tour to Germany had two groups of members, one based at the Warblick Hotel in the Black Forest and the other more nomad like ending up in Berlin for the BMW Motorrad Days event on Saturday 2nd July.

This report contains the stars of the tour as seen by one of the Berlin group (see the Warblick adventure to read what they got up to). In our group we had Zenon and June Krafft, Steve and Catherine Moxey, David Tomlinson and Carl Flint. 

Star 1

The Bellevue Hotel Boppard and the run down the Rhine.

On the night of 26th June we stayed in the lovely Bellevue Hotel at Boppard. On the Sunday morning we got up to a bright sunny morning with a local German Umpah band playing in the streets behind the hotel.

From Boppard we traveled south along the Rhine. This was spectacular for on every bend on the Rhine there was a beautiful castle perched on a prominent peak giving it a majestic view of the approaching ‘hoardes’. Being on one of the river cruisers must have been great fun and something to be done on another day. We left the Rhine at Bingenam Rhine and continued south to Sasbachwalden.

Star 2

The Spinnerhof Hotel, Sasbachwalden.

We spent three delightful nights at this hotel perched in mountains near the Black Forest, in a rich vineyard area at Sasbachwalden, not far from Baden Baden, with a magnificent view across the Rhine Valley and towards Strasbourg and the Vosges Mountains. This hotel is highly recommended for the rooms are very comfortable, the staff very pleasant, a good choice of beers and a varied menu.

The Spinnerhof is very near to the northern section of the B500 and on the Monday morning  we started to ride it and I for one found it was rather underwhelming. Too many speed restrictions either conventional speed signs or average speed cameras. One imagines there have been too many accidents on sections of the B500 and paramedics have said enough is enough (by contrast, the roads in the Harz mountains were much more interesting (see Star 4)). We arrived at Lake Titisee, a charming small town, packed with tourists. We had a lovely lunch, with a very good alcohol free wheat beer, just the job after our ride.

The Spinnerhof had a very good puddings menu and we tried their Black Forest Gateau and a rather rich but yummy ice cream with a cherry on top. Cherries are widely grown in this area and pop up in many puddings.

On our final night we had a most magnificent sunset.

Star 3

The Technology Museum at Sinsheim

A great deal to see at this museum but the highlights for me were the walk up into an Air France Concorde and then a walk up into a Tupolev

 

Other interesting exhibits were reconditioned mechanical organs that had an amazing accompaniment of other instruments. This was great fun to listen to an the workmanship to get it restored was very impressive.

Star 4

Harz Mountains – Harz National Park

We stayed at a lovely hotel called the Vital Resort Muhl at Bad Lauterberg. The food here was excellent and in the morning they had a traditional Bircher Muesli to die for! I was very greedy and had several yummy portions each morning.

We were in the heart of the Harz Mountains and the roads were great, very well maintained, much more fun than in the Black Forest and the B500. Far fewer speed restrictions and average speed cameras.

The further we got into the Harz we began to see a great tragedy playing out in front of our eyes, namely the devastation to the Harz National Park forest by a bark beetle. Thousands of hectares of forest have been decimated over time by the beetle.

Apparently a change in temperature and droughts have resulted in the specific Spruce tree species producing less resin therefore allowing the bark beetle to invade the trees and cause eventual death. It is heart breaking to see the extent of the destruction but over time the forests will be replanted with other species that are resistant to the beetle.

Goslar

Rather by accident in the centre of the Harz, we came across a magnificent old town called Goslar. It is very much a town that tourists are attracted to because of the beauty of the buildings and the way they have been wonderfully preserved and restored.

According to Wikipedia ‘Goslar is a historic town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the administrative centre of the district of Goslar and located on the northwestern slopes of the Harz mountain range. The Old Town of Goslar and the Mines of Rammelsberg are UNESCO World Heritage Sites for their millenium-long testimony to the history of ore mining and their political importance for the Holy Roman Empire and Hanseatic League.

The ancestral home of the Siemens family, who can count toward their more famous offspring, the Prussian-British-Russian industrial pioneers Werner von Siemens, Sir William Siemens and Carl von Siemens, is in Goslar’.

Star 5

Berlin Motorrad Days

An exceptionally well attended major event at the Messe Berlin.

It is going to be the 100th anniversary of BMW Motorrad next year and I understand they will use the same venue in July 2023.

Below are a series of images taken in the Messe Halls

Some interesting combinations of fixtures were shown like this example of a TomTom mounted above the 10.25’ screen of an RT. Mounting brackets similar to this are now available from Nippy Normans!

Click the link below to see some complete nutters at work! Great fun.

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Originally posted 2022-08-21 14:17:16.