Introduction
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This page is about one of my dreams, riding from the North Cape in the
top of Scandinavia to Gibraltar, on the bottom of Spain.
My original plan was to start this trip in the summer of 2005 on my 1984
Honda GL1200 GoldWing. I owned that bike for ten years and it needed a
lot of maintenance so I tried to get sponsoring from Honda
Netherlands. No luck this time, so, instead of spending money on my old
bike, I sold the GoldWing and bought a hardly used
BMW to ride to the North Cape.
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How it started
It al started with my strong desire to see as much as possible of the
beautifull places in the world and I think the best way to do this is from
the sadle of a motorcycle.
After relatively short holiday trips in Europe, South Africa and the USA
the idea for this a little more adventurous and much longer trip was born
on October 24, 2003. It was in the train home from work. The next day I started
with the first version of this webpage on my computer.
Route
The plan was to go from my home town in the Netherlands, through Germany and
Scandinavia to the North Cape (Nordkapp) in the top of Scandinavia.
From that point I wanted to drive South to finish at Gibraltar,
the small English rock on the South of Spain and then back home again.
I have planned six to eight weeks for this trip but due to time and budget
restrictions, I will do this trip in two parts, the one part to the Nordkapp
I just made and another trip to Gibraltar the next time.
The Preparations
First I needed a bike, so I bought my BMW
so now I should have a reliable and comfortable bike to drive all the way
to the North Cape.
I have spend all my 2005 "biketrip-money" on the BMW so I have
just made a few short trips in 2005, to try out the bike and find out what I have to
modify before I will make THE trip. After these test trips, I was happy with the bike because
I didn't think I needed any real modifications. Just normal maintenance like
new tires and so on. I would love to add a Garmin Quest II GPS to the bike
for safety reasons (then I don't have to look on the map in my tank bag
while driving) I did not have one before I left to the North Cape. Maybe
I'll have one next year.
Since my return from the North Cape however, I think that maybe, I was to quick with
selling my old GoldWing. The BMW is a very good and reliable bike but it just
isn't a GoldWing, the ultimate touring bike so now I bought a GoldWing again to use
for the next part of my trip.
Update: July 2007:
I bought a Tomtom Rider 2 Europe GPS and put it on my bike for my
trip to Denmark. I am very happy with it. It is even
better then I expected.
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The tripreport (this site)
During the trip to the North Cape, I have updated this website with very short
trip reports and when I was back home again, I replaced the short notes with
the real trip report with a lot of pictures.
The start
As planned, I started my trip to the NorthCape on july 5th, the day after
my son Michiel his birthday and now I'm home again. Somewhere in
2009, I plan to do the Southern part of the trip, to Gibraltar.
Click here to go to the start of the Nordkapp
trip report.
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