Helsinki-Tallinn
We woke up the morning of our cruise docking in Helsinki worried about making our connecting ferry to Tallinn. We had experienced such nightmares disembarking in Russia that the two hour connection time just didn’t seem enough. We were assured by our tour company that the Finish customs people were very efficient, so we would have no problem. ‘Efficient’ isn’t the half of it.
When Heidi stepped up to the customs counter, she was informed by a very nice border agent that we were very shortly about to become illegal aliens by overstaying the EU (Schengen) visa exemption allowance of 90 days within 180 days. We were shocked and still don’t know how we were so foolish to have missed this. We remember researching this Schengen visa issue about a year ago and must have read somewhere in a blog or forum that the 90 days would reset upon our exit to Russia but obviously we know now that that was wrong.
So there we were in Helsinki with 30 minutes to make our connection to Tallinn, our motorcycle at an airport in Stockholm and our itinerary exploding all around us. Still in shock, we decided to catch the Tallinn ferry and figure things out over there. On the 2.5 hour crossing we ran all the scenarios:
1) Ignore the threat of an EU fine and possible 5 year ban, change our flight from Barcelona home to Morocco home, walk the Camino and slink out the backdoor of the EU by ferry from Spain to Morocco and hope not to get an EU stamp on the way out, (guess who’s idea that was?);
2) Head home three months early, (we discounted that one in a New York minute);
3) Get out of the EU by August 25th to stay inside the 90 day limit, ergo legally and re-plan our last three months. This ultimately became our choice.
Tallinn – Paris
No matter which of the choices we made, we still needed to get the motorcycle out of the EU on or before the 25th of August, (we are in Tallinn, the motorcycle is in Stockholm and there are 2,200 kms between Stockholm and Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris). So we shifted to Plan B: Heidi flew from Tallinn, Estonia to Berlin to stay with family, and I did an about face and boarded the overnight ferry from Tallinn to Stockholm to pick up and ride the bike to Paris.
I had to get the bike out of the EU no later than 25th, which was a Sunday and Air Canada Cargo was closed, so I had to ride 2,200 kms over 5 countries in 3 days to make it by the 23rd. This type of riding is NOT the type we had been doing for the last 6 months, (we typically average 200 kms a day on back roads) so it became clear this journey was better accomplished without Heidi on the back, so I could ride longer days and take advantage of the higher EU speed limits along the way.
I arrived in Stockholm early the morning of the 21st and just to make things more interesting, when I arrived at the secure airport parking spot I found someone had stolen both the helmets from the helmet locks on the bike. Thinking fast I ran across the street to a mall and bought a bicycle helmet to get to the first motorcycle store on route, where I replaced it with a proper helmet before the Swedish police could nab me.
Once on the road by 1:00 pm I rode 7 hours (until I began to lose the light) and stayed in a little hostel in the countryside on the outskirts of Malmo, Sweden. Rising early the next day and with good forecasts along route, I decided to make it as far as I could that day and leave a short 3rd day remaining, minimizing the risk of missing our deadline. I rode from Sweden through Denmark and Germany to the border of Belgium and ate up huge chunks of kms due to the non-existent speed limits on the autobahns. I completed my ride day 3 and settled into a traveller’s hotel to repack the bike for shipping.
While completing the ride I also had to: 1) Arrange with friends back home to collect the bike and provide all the relevant documentation to clear customs in Vancouver, THANK YOU, GEORGE AND DONNA STEENSMA, 2) Secure a booking with Air Canada cargo and provide the myriad paperwork required to ship it home, 3) Negotiate, browbeat, charm and cajole French customs to let me send the bike home. Apparently, just because Germany and France are both EU countries following EU rules, they don’t use the same paperwork.
So because the Germans didn’t use the same form as the French, they weren’t going to release the bike. Luckily I was dealing with two young women and turned on the charm (many references to his two lovely daughters) and finally AFTER TWO HOURS convinced them to escalate the issue. They did and 10 minutes later I was skipping my way back to Air Canada cargo with the required customs clearance. Heidi arrived the afternoon of the 23rd and next day we made a run for the EU boarder by bus destined for Jolly Old England.
London – Brighton – St Bees
So we had successfully avoided becoming illegal immigrants, but now what? Since we started out planning a bike and hike trip, we decided to shift gears and look for the next best hike after the Camino, (which unfortunately will have to wait). We decided to do Wainwright’s Coast to Coast walk across England, a self-guided 300 KM walk from St Bees on the Irish Sea on the west coast to Robin Hoods Bay on the North Sea on the east, crossing The Lake District, The Dales and The Moors, the three most beautiful national parks in England.
Given this monumental shift in direction, we felt we needed a week to adjust and re-plan. We spent the first two nights in London near Hyde Park, and as our luck would have it, arrived just in time for:
- 33 degree weather (and the top floor room at an abominable hostel). When we checked into our sauna of a room, there was a bag left behind by the previous occupant. The staff collected the bag and we thought that was that. NOT SO: at 4:00 in the morning our door swings open and the fella says, “Hey mate, I left my bag under your bed”, to which I replied, “Not so, good sir, they took it downstairs earlier”. The staff had no good explanation for how his key still worked in our door, assuring us that, “security is our number one priority”. “Bollocks”, I say.
- Notting Hill Festival, (international festival with a Caribbean theme, very carnival like). Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for fun and frivolity, but we witnessed the aftermath to the carnage and I have got to say, the rubbish was 10 feet deep in the streets and our hostel was smack dab in the middle of it.
We were glad to board our train and head for the southern shores of Brighton. Here we stayed in a charming quiet little flat and re-jigged our itinerary. Brighton is a cool little seaside town, one hour from London by train, so jam packed with tourists. The pier is like Coney Island as it has an amusement park on it overrun with people most times. The seaside seawall runs the full length of the beach so is always busy with walkers and bicycler.
The south coast of England has marvellous chalk cliffs that are stunning and we rode the local transit our to one of the nearby towns to go to the beach alongside these white giants. Another day we rode transit out to “South Downs” which is the rolling hills west and north of the city. We took all our hike gear to do some training for our upcoming walk and we had a great couple of hours exploring the small towns and surrounding hills and trails.
We left Brighton destined for St Bees on the west coast to begin the Coast to Coast walk. A 6 hour train ride was mostly boring until we began to see the changes that signaled our arrival on the west coast and the start of our trek. St Bees is a quaint town perched on the furthest west point in England on the edge of the Lake District. It is home to one of the oldest and most prestigious boarding schools in England, dating back to the 1100’s. One of the famous alumni is my favourite, Mr. Bean, Rowan Atkinson.
After securing the dates for our walk we started to brainstorm on what to do after that: our original plan after the finish of the Camino had been to head to Portugal and its beaches to heal up from the walk. Since all EU beaches were out, we discussed where to go for beaches that would replace Portugal. We thought, “what the heck, how about South East Asia, we hear its nice there!” So after finishing the Coast to Coast Walk, next stop Thailand!
Fun Facts
Not really a fact but a funny story about my experience with a German policeman in northern Germany. I had pulled over for one of my many rest-stretching stops when a police officer pulled over a hundred meters back of me. After he dismounted, he began to pay attention to me and the bike and made his way over to me. He said “why do you not have a proper license plate” to which I answered, “They are from Canada and so is the bike”. He was fascinated and told me he rode a 1200 BMW and began asking me a bunch of questions about the bike and the tour we were on. I asked if he wanted to take it for a ride and he said no, but he did sit on it, remarking how much heavier it was than his.
As I was getting ready to head on my way he asked me, “where are you going?” I told him Paris and he said, “oh then you should make good time, you can set it on cruise control at 200 kms per hour between here and Dortmund, you will need to slow between Dortmund and Essen, but you could then set the cruise at 160 kms and hour until the Belgian border” Got to love the autobahn and German bike cops.
Bellissimo Travels 