Date: 02-04/06/2017
From/To: Verdun – Eppelborn
Distance: 168Km
Total Distance: 1996Km
Road: High Way,

We took our time to pack up, said goodbye to our host and off we went to Hackenberg. To get there we used Sigrid’s mobile as guide since the Garmin map didn’t include France. We arrived a bit earlier and used the time to have a picknic lunch before this Fort was opened for visitors.

 

What a fantastic tour! The technology of the time was impressive. You could see that the design was based on the Forts from the First World War, but the shortcomings of the previous forts were removed. It was fully equipped to facilitate 1000 man, including kitchen, dentist, hospital, air condition, water recycling station, 54000L tanks for water …. There was as well a train net of a couple of km in the fort which was used to bring the ammunition from the storage to the gun positions. Everything was electrical, the train, lights…..

Dieselgenerator, kitchen and the side of a huge water tank.

 

Dentist and Theatre

And the train system

And the tarot, very similar to the one in Fort de Vaux, only bigger and with improved technology.

 

 

 

 

From here we continued to Eppelborn where the European Ulysses club gathering was.

As part of our registration we had a hotel room book but had difficulty to find it! Actually, we’ll blame the GPSJ. The Ulysses club meeting was at another side and a bus service was organized to get us there. On the way we meet Ian, a Switzer member who accommodated and accompanied Lance and Lesly, the other couple from Australia, Queensland. It was a nice evening and we were talking to a lot of people and even got some German Ulysses club T-Shirts.

 

We meet as well Arvid and Arne, members from Norway. We had great fun to discuss our planned route and got some additional ideas for our trip.

 

The next day there was a ride organized. Divided into groups with a maximum of ten people, including the ride leader and the Tailend Charli we set off. We haven’t been in Saarland before and were impressed with the beautiful landscape and sweep roads. Our first stop was the Saar loop, which had a whooping totally amazing view point. The next stop was the ‘Talsperre Nonnweiler’, which had a nice restaurant where we had

some coffee and cake. When the other groups came in, I saw a beauty of a motorcycleJ. I was talking to the lady owner, and she agreed with me, the bike is beautiful. Finally, I’m not aloneJ.
To be honest, I’m writing this blog at the end of our Iceland trip (I know, I have to hurry up to catch up with the blogs), this bike, as nice as it looks, would be completely inappropriate for our trip. Still I like the look of it.


After I got over the excitement, we continued to the ‘Schaumber Alm’, the highest point in Saarland. From here it was only a couple of km to our hotel.
At the evening were meeting again at the same place as yesterday and we meet again amazing people I get the feeling there is not enough time to talk to most of the people .

The next day we took it easy. It was drizzling in the morning, so we chickened out and gave the organized ride a miss. Instead we checked out the Kirmiss and ended up on a large Ferris Wheel. The view was quite nice.

 

At night we meet again at the same place. This time we meet Volker, he has a bike with a sidecar. We started to talk about how it handle, why he put it onto his motorcycle and started to exchange email addresses, he noticed the name Henning in Sigrid address book. As it turns out, he is one of Henning’s good friends. We meet Henning two years ago on a HU meeting and celebrated New Year ‘s Eve with him in Sydney and stayed in contact with him since. It’s a small world.

 

 

 

 

Now the meeting is over and we make our way back to Berlin. Here we will finish the bike setup and collect all the things we had ordered, but sent and delivered to Klaus.