Other links

My "retro-blog" of a tour I did in 1991 is here: Vespa World(?) Tour 1991-1992 . I have just started this and will be updating it bit by bit (using the actual dates)

My main page is here: www.internetscooter.com. From there you can see what else I am up to scooterwise.

Hindsight - after trip info

The tour is over and I guess this blog will stay here a while and may be of benefit to future two wheel tourers. To finish off, here is some wisedom that only hindsight brings. I will give general information first and then follow it with country specific. If there is something that I have missed fell free to email me.


Vespa Touring Tip 1: Paperwork is the hardest thing about Vespa touring

We had real problems registering our scooters because no one in the UK will insure non-residents (no insurance = no registration). The only way to get around the problem is to get a UK residient to register the scooters and have an insurance policy that allows non-residents as named riders.

Related Links (so you can find out the latest info):

Friendly advice available from fellow two-wheeled travellers www.horizonsunlimited.com

Maria Alessie will do her best to provide insurance (which is possible if you are exporting a vehicle)
Www.alessie.com

Knop Tours can provide greencard insurance www.knopftours.com

The UK Licensing people (DVLA) offer helpful advice via email www.dvla.gov.uk

British Insurance Brokers Association can attempt to point you at an insurer (note that this is different to the Association of British Insurers who will not) www.BIBA.org.uk

Norwich Union Direct may not insure you but they did inform me that they do allow non-residents to be named drivers www.norwichunion.com/nud.

In summary for this tip, sort it out before you leave. Even bank transfers are a headache from the UK (and the greencard insurance companies don't take credit cards).


Vespa Touring Tip 2: Take a GPS! Mine cost AUS$150 off ebay and it has been the best money that I have spent.

Vespa Touring Tip 3: Philip's Multiscale Europe 2005 Map was another great purchase. It has Lat + Lon, which allows you to enter points into the GPS straight off the map (take a ruler to help get accuracy down to a few km). The map also indicates scenic roads with green, almost every green road we went on was a fantastic motorcycle/scooter road.

Vespa Touring Tip 4: Use hard case luggage, so that you can park your scooter and not have to lug everything around (of course never leave anything too valuable). Niall gave us brilliant lock which we could lock our scooters, helmets and stinky fuel can in all sorts of ways.

Vespa Touring Tip 5: Our hard case luggage were Samsonite cases. These were great because we could unbolt them and wheel them with us to the hotel/campsite etc. In hindsight, 80% of the stuff is not used each night. Next time I would have two boxes, one permanent on the scooter and one carry away (but which is still secure when fitted). When you need 100% of the stuff is only when you are camping, then the scooter is beside you anyway. I am in the process of implementing the better luggage system, so check out the Internetscooter Project site for details.

Vespa Touring Tip 6: Big tent! We didn't do much camping but when we did my big 4 man tent was a blessing. All our gear fitted in the tent, without use having to try and sleep with our legs banging against helmets. I could stand up to get dressed, it was luxury. It was only 8.5Kg, so the main sacrifice was space.

Vespa Touring Tip 7: The Lonely Planet guides are good but be aware that they are backpacker centric. A backpacker arrives by train in the centre of the city and walks about. We have to drive through peak hour traffic, through shitty looking suburbs in choking smog. That small town just before the big one, that Lonely Planet doesn't know about, may be a better bet, because it hasn't cost you 2 hours of frustration to pay twice the price for a hotel.

Vespa Touring Tip 8: More power! When I toured over 10 years ago, 100Km/hr was not too bad a speed. However, now you need to go at least 110Km/hr (if not 120Km/hr) to keep the groove on motorways (i.e. to not be the slowest). Also Vespa speedo’s lie by about +10Km/hr. Vespa have done nothing to the Vespa PX 200 over the past 25 years to improve speed (if anything they are slower). So I am experimenting with reliable but fast engine modifications with a 213cc Pinasco Kit, Sito Plus exhaust and Vortex Carb (along with some engine temp gauges). Again check out the internetscooter project to see if I get a Vespa doing 110-120Km/hr reliably. Also don’t think about touring on a 50cc Vespa (I’ve had a few questions on this), I’d rather ride a bicycle and use the train to get to locations.


Country specific bullets points:


UK
- note the insurance problems above
- watch out for traffic cameras, they are everywhere and not just for speed, so learn the rules of where you can get caught (e.g. Bus lanes are one)
- you can’t park on the footpath

France
- fill up when you see a petrol station with staff in it and have a fuel can. Their automatic machines don't take foreign credits cards (have cash, an alternative is to give a local money to buy you petrol)
- a motorcyclist passing and swinging his foot in your direction is not threating to kick you off, they are just waving with their foot (because their right hand is on the throttle).

Italy
- Have cash, some of their automatic petrol stations take Euros (note - some stations shut for lunch).
- in tourist traps, public toilets are a good place to get water. The W/C’s have vending machines, which will sell water for half a euro (where in a shop might sell it for 2 euros and a restaurant 6 euros)

Switzerland
- even in Spring the mountain passes are snowy and some are not open. Try and check before you go to see if a pass is open (we missed Interlaken because we couldn’t get through).
- Swiss auto petrol stations take foreign credit cards

London, England

As promised here is the last diary entries on our trip. I am in the process of creating a "debrief" for those interested in the technical details (e.g. Insurance, tips, etc). I am also in the process of making my Vespa in Australia a custom tourer, ready for the Dubbo scooter run (812Km away). I will add details to the Internetscooter Project page, so keep an eye on that if you are interested in making your scooter a super tourer :)

London, England, Wednesday (1/06/05)

We are now back at our starting point, back with our friends in London. The scooters made it fine, the damage report below...

- 7,000+ Km added to clock (Vespa speedo error taken into account)
- Laura's left wing mirror feel off (looks like it was damaged before we left)
- Scratches to Laura's front guard and side panel (from falling off stand twice)
- Scratches added to in Laura's scooter by Brighton wankers
- Loads of dead bugs
- Luggage system a bit wobbley but still secure and intact (better brackets required next time)
- One flat tyre

To fill in the rest of the details between Paris and London, here is the poop...


Rouen, Monday

We left from Paris after doing some scooter shopping at Department Scooter. Hmmm, probably the least friendly service that we had in France, maybe we should have turned up on the packed up scooters or maybe they weren't bothering to rip us off like the hotel did. Anyway Laura got her Paris Vespa legwarmer for her scooter, a very good souvenir.

We then headed to Rouen via a Versailles and a green road. Versailles was mostly closed but we got to do a turn around the gardens (or at least a portion of them). Very impressive even with the fountains turned off and the maintainence trucks driving around.



The green road that we took this time was a bad one. Loads of small villages, one after the other and no road signs as to how to get to the next. What should have been a short pleasant trip took about 6 hours. We got to Rouen and did not do much after but eat and go to bed.


Brighton, Tuesday

Checkout time was 11:30, so we did a quick 1 hour tour of Rouen in the morning. We packed up and then headed for Dieppe, worried about not being able to get on the 4:30PM ferry to Newhaven. We got there by 12:30PM and with some ummming and erring by the ticket person we were booked.

We did another 1 houir tour and had one last quatre fromage pizza in France. We were on the ferry by 3:45PM and found that it was a pretty shitty ferry compared to the one over.



We go into Brighton late and the first places we tried were booked out. After following some suggests from the hostel, we got a room around 9:30pm.


London, Last leg

We parked the scooters in a motorcycle parking spot a few streets away. The next day we found that both Laura and my scooter had been kicked over!!! The scooters either side were left alone (or their owners had also found the kicked and righted them). Needless to say Brighton is not on my favourite list, we had travelled 7,000Km+ without incident but less than 12 hours in Brighton we had vandals attack our scooters for no reason. Fortunately, my scooter which had no damage to start with, was saved by the back box and Laura's was only scratched on top of.the previous scraps.

We righted the scooters and then did a quick tour of Brighton. We saw the mesuem where the local Vespa club had a display to try and show that Vespa's were not evil (i.e. There were Vespa's before Mod riots). The museum was good but the vandals left a bad taste in my mouth (no sticker bought to advertise that I had been there).

Next we took the short road back to London, with the long treck across London to Niall's... Our journey over!

Paris, France

Paris, France, Sunday (29/05/05)

Getting close to the end of our journey, tomorrow we leave Paris to head for the coast and soon we will be back in London. We think that 2 months is been the right amount of time, enough to see a lot but not too much so that we are overwhelmed with data.

Here is what has happened up till now...

Troyes, France (Thursday)

From Dijon we ride to Troyes. The interesting thing about Troyes are the half wood houses. Half wood houses look like they have been built by Dr. Seuss, they lean at all manner of weird angles and the tops are wider than the bottoms. Most are 3 stories high and they are built together without nails. It is amazing that they stand up at all.

We enjoyed Troyes and spent the day walking around checking out all the old buildings. We finished off the day with an African meal (nice to have something without cheese for a change).

I must point out that the weather now has started to get hot. I think that the temperature was around 31 (and this continued till Sunday in Paris)

Paris, France (Friday, Satruday, Sunday)

We managed to book a hotel from Troyes in Paris. Luckily we phoned around first because the first 5 we tried were booked out. We ended up having to up our price and managed to find somewhere in the Latin Quarter. The hotel has no air-conditioning and is on a busy road, I hate to think what the cheaper places were like! We spend the night weighing off heat Vs noise in the desire to sleep.

We had got into Paris by around 12PM, so we donned our walking shoes and headed straight for the Eiffel (via the Siene). We climbed our way up to the second level, which had pretty good views and didn't bother goin further because there was about a 2 hour queue for the lift (people were giving their tickets away). We had a rest and then headed back via the Batobus (boat bus).



Saturday we did a big walking day (with some help again from the boat) and saw most of the sites of central Paris (from the outside at least).

Sunday, Laura was buggered from all the walking the day before, so we decided to have an easy day and see the Catacombes, which were nearby to where we were staying. Unfortunately, when we got there they were shut for reconstruction.

Side note: Almost every city that we went to had at least some portion of some famous building covered in scaffolding. It became a joke that we should just take the photo's anyway because it will be one of our memories of travelling.

So we had a lazy day, Laura hung out on the hotel and I went for jaunts around Paris finding info for the ferry and food. We did manage to get a market in and buy some stuff we wanted (e.g. Groovy french steak knives that we had admired in restaurants - they look like hunting knives but don't fold up). I also tracked down the local Vespa dealer, which we will check out tomorrow when we leave (Laura is thinking about getting a scooter blanket)



Here are some other interestign Paris photo's...


Franken-scooter


Bigscreen fun

Paris, France

Hi all,

We are almost at the end of our trip. We will be back in London Wednesday and then back in Australia the following Monday. I doubt that I will get a chance to post again before we get back. So I will leave the blog for now and finish the last leg when we get back...


Us in front of the Effel Tower

Dijon, France

Dijon, France, Wednesday (25/05/05)

We have spent the past two nights in Dijon, the home of the mustard and fine food, apres then...


Montreaux, Switzerland, Monday

There is nothing much to Montreaux, I spent the morning hunting for a camping store as we decided that we need a different cooker for making coffee (we have a fuel cooker which is not good for indoors). There are no camping stores in Montreaux, also the Piaggio dealer did not seem to have any Piaggio's.

To fill in the day we went to the Chateau de Chillon, which is a castle built on the lake side. That was pretty impressive and looks a lot bigger on the inside than the outside (thanks to crypts, cellars and prisons below ground).



Of course we could not leave Switzerland without having a Fondue. However, by now, I felt my blood was flowing with cheese after many quatre fromage pizza's, bagets and cheese etc. So the fondue was good but a bit of an effort.

Also of note, if you want a Swiss Army knife buy it in Australia, they are cheaper there.


Dijon, Tuesday

We left Switzerland via Vallorbe. No more high Swiss mountains, but from Montreaux to Dijon, we followed the lake, gazing up at terraced vineyards. Then into France we travelled through the greenist fields and had a very pleasant ride.

The only thing that went wrong was that we got caught out by the French lack of petrol facilities for foreigners (i.e. We had to back track because the town we went to only had French credit card automatic petrol machines). We just made it back to the previous town, my scooter cut out a few times and I free-wheeled as much as I could. On the bright side, we found a camping store in the process and got our cooker.

In Dijon everything was booked out, so we ended up in a hostel a few km's from town. We are booked here for 2 days. We walked into town and had some food there and a quick look around.


Dijon, Today

Breakfast at the hostel was from 7 to 8AM, so we missed that :) Had our own breakfast and I got a coupe (hair cut) and then headed into Dijon on the scooter. We stumbled across a walking trail around Dijon,with arrows to follow. So we did the walking tour seeing some pretty interesting sights. Dijon seems like a really nice place to live, a combination of French class and student crustiness (refer to photo of ferals swimming in the fountain).




Dijon is also fqmous for gargoyles

One of our wedding presents was money for a gourmet meal from Neil and Daphne. Guys, your money was well spent, it got us a 7 course degustation meal at the best resturant in Dijon, Hostellerie du Chapeau Rouge . Since our meal was paid for, we washed it down with a AUS$160 bottle of wine and a couple of champagnes. To say the least the night was tres fantastic. Also, the service was great (i.e. Not snobby).

Montreaux, Switzterland

Montreaux, Switzterland, Sunday (22/05/05)

"We all went down to Montreaux... Dah, dah, daah. dah, dah dah-dah... Two-stroke smoke on the water, fire in the sky..."

Yes, we are in the Montreaux from the Deep Purple song, here is the story to date...


Desenti, Switzerland (Saturday)

What can I say about Switzerland but roads, roads, roads. I will put some pictures but they can never do the scenery justice! We enter Switzerland via Tirano, buy our highway toll sticker (about $30 each) and then start the roller coaster drive through the mountains (which is 75% of Switzerland).

Although it is winding, the towns rarely have a traffic light so it is fairly quick. Unfortunately though, it does not seem that we have the same "scooter" priveledges that we had in Italy - so we obey the road rules like everyone else (drive at 50 when the sign says 50).

We stay the night in Disenti, in awe of the mountains around use. The next day though we look back at those mountains as pretty ordniary as we go increasingly higher through mountain passes.

I cannot describe how beautiful it all is in words or pictures. The drive to Montreaux, through the Farka pass (which now has a Melbourne SC sticker at the top) was amazing. The forecast was for thunderstorms, the thunder never came but the scenery changed with every blink of an eye, one minute dense fog, next we are above the fog, through green fields and snow at the sides of the road up to 3 metres high. Every turn I wanted to take a picture but felt no regrets not doing so as the next turn was more impressive than the first... I resign myself just to taking mental snapshots...

To give you an idea of how wintery it was, we were going to go to Interlaken, but the Grimsel pass was shut. Judging by the mini avalanches across the road that we were driving on, I guessed that closed really meant closed!

Here are some of the pictures we did take...


Green Roads


Mountain tops


Mountain passes


Cold but fun


Montreaux scooter