London-Paris-Olomouc-Warsaw on a Kanguro

Two hours later near Karlovy Vary - the pain had already set in. Only another 700 miles to go!

Just read your Sahara RR from the link you've inserted here....WOW!!! Just brilliant!

Thanks - I did a lot of motorbiking in the 80's but the Sahara trip was the first one with a camera. Every trip by bike is an adventure but the Sahara was the best. My last trip was to Morocco in 2019. Just a quick 6-day excursion that I wrote up in the Day Trippin' RR section. Here's a link if you are interested: https://advrider.com/f/threads/morocco-atlas-mountains-6-day-trip.1418280/

Thanks for posting this RR,you forget how Europe has changed over the past 30 years.It reminds me of the time I got the bus from Istanbul to Cologne then hitching back to England.Those Soviet era Bulgarian border guards were an eye opener!! I never got to ride a Morini,but if I ever get the space & funds for a 'dream garage' a 350 or 500 Morini would be a priority.

Thanks - those border guards looked scary. Bulgaria and the other Balkan countries would be a great trip whenever that's going to be possible... The 350 Morini Kanguro was never meant for two-up touring but it did the job. Just a bit underpowered but a great bike all the same.

Karlovy Vary (formerly Carlsbad) is an elegant spa town. The Grandhotel Pupp was featured in the Bond film 'Casino Royale'. I stayed there in 2003 - $250 for the Emperor Franz Joseph Suite but it was worth it!

We rolled on through and stayed at a village inn near the German border. This is the less glamorous garage at the Hotel Bílý kůň in Loket - but they did have a cute kitten.

By the end of the second day we were in the German Rhineland. Dinner was a packet of peanuts from a vending machine as we only had 2 Deutsche Marks left after paying for the B&B - we really looked forward to the breakfast!

I am happy to see you back with more tales from the past. How did we survive those days… no gps, no credit, no cash, no spot tracker, no internet, no nothing. Just freedom, but who cares these days, right?

My first trip to the Czech Republic was also in 1991, a short 4 day ride there and back again in the spring. As @Mark.F posted above, you tend to forget how much things have changed over the past 30 years. Good memories though…

Thanks for this post...

Thanks - I'm glad to have done a lot of travelling in the 70's through to the 90's. Bikes had to multi-task then. I raced my Moto Morini 3 1/2 Sport in club racing. Crashed it at Brands Hatch on the Saturday, patched it up and rode it down to the South of France the week after! I rode an LC350 across France and Germany - totally not a touring bike but fun!

So after a good German breakfast, we headed for France (via Luxemburg) where we could use the French Francs I still had. We stopped in Trier which has one of the most northerly Roman sites in Europe - the Porta Nigra - an impressive, fortified gateway into the Roman Empire designed to scare off the Germanic tribes and a place that I had wanted to visit. Trier is said to be the oldest German city and was also the birthplace of Karl Marx.

We couldn't stop for long because we wouldn't be able to eat until we got into France.

The other mirror had disappeared somewhere in Poland and now we had lost the rear light reflector. The mufflers weren't doing much muffling either.

Still, the bike hung together well enough and we got to France - and lunch! A panaché and a baguette. We were so lucky that the weather was fine and dry all the way from Prague to London.

Our route took us through the battlefields of Sedan, The Ardennes, Cambrai, Arras, Boulogne, Calais

Smiling with relief when we got to Boulogne after 13 hours on the road - but then we found out that we'd missed the last ferry and had to continue another 50km to Calais

We got off the ferry in Dover at 1am. We hoped for a swift exit on to the A2 up to London but were held up by a full-on interrogation by an immigration official. With Anna squeezed on the pillion behind me - and a queue of cars behind us - she asked us questions such as "do you share the same room?" and an awkward one: "are you planning to get married?". She wrote down all our answers - slowly.

It wasn't safe without the red reflector and the rear bulb was wedged in place with a match-stick. The mufflers had given up so we roared up the A2 towards South London. This was the only night riding of the whole trip. Hitting the South Circular and getting closer to home, I was concerned about attracting the attention of the traffic police due to the noise we were making. We certainly got noticed, but every time we passed police cars, they were dealing with other drivers they'd already pulled over.

Finally, in the early hours, we arrived outside my flat in Clapham Junction. Anna laid down on the pavement and said she didn't want to get on a motorbike ever again but she didn't mean it really...

Nice report.
I first went to Poland in '95 to work at Oswiecim (Auschwitz). At the time I lived in Spain.
Met my wife while I was there and we moved full time to Krakow 10 years ago.
A lot has changed since the mid nineties. Its a pretty decent place to live these days.
The location here is brilliant for a biker, such easy easy access to North, South or West Europe.

Thanks - I lived to Poland from '92 to '97. Got married in '93 in Warsaw when life was still very much post-communist. I had a business running trips from Russia to Slovenia and saw the 'Wild East' as it gradually transformed and rebuilt. I've travelled to Poland every year since '97 as I have a business importing Polish pottery from Boleslawiec. Great place to be now like you said - always on the up (in spite of the current government).

Selling the Kanguro at the end of this trip was the start of a 12 year interruption to my motorbiking days - marriage, mortgage, business, kids...
I've got three bikes in the shed now including this KLX250R which I'm hoping to take on a trip somewhere (anywhere!) when Covid lockdowns permit. No chance of picking up a passenger on this one!