THE ROUGH ROUTE BACK TO CAPE TOWN MAY 2024 to MARCH 2025

The plan is to go to Augsburg, Germany and collect my bike, leaving Cape Town around the 1st of May.

 Then will head over to England and visit a friend or two and ride up to Wales and get a ferry to Ireland. Tour around Ireland and Northern Ireland and have a ferry booked on 2nd June to Isle of Man for the TT races till the 9th June. I can't find any accommodation during that period, so that will be interesting.

Will then ferry over Liverpool and then go up to Scotland and see what they have to offer.

After Scotland will head back to Europe and zip up to Stockholm where I will store my bike while I nip over to Montana for a friend's birthday.

Should only be there two week's unfortunately as I need to get back before it gets to cold to go to Iceland and then up to the Nordkap at the Arctic Circle. Will then proceed south through Finland to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and then boogie down to Spain somehow. Only having 90 days on a Schengen visa is going to be a huge hurdle and will have to monitor my days carefully as to not overstay as the penalties could be harsh and I'm not the type of guy that likes to stay there illegally.

After much research I have come to discover that the US has a number of bilateral agreements with Schengen  countries which allows you to stay there for 90 days after your first 90 days have expired, but you have to stay in that country the entire time and have to depart from there after your 90 days and can't  go to another Schengen country for 180 days. So just need to get to Spain in 90 days and then all is good. Would like to hang in Spain for awhile before I cross to Morocco to head to Cape Town.

The major timing issue is the rainy season in West Africa, need to avoid that as I won't  be able to ride in those conditions, so need to be in Senegal around Xmas time and I should be fine.

Iceland is a wild card and hope it works out, main issue is the ferry but am so looking forward to that, on the way back I can hop off at the Faroe Islands for three days and then get the ferry again to Denmark and that will take almost three weeks in total. 

MILAGE  SUMMARY OF EACH COUNTRY OF THE FIRST LEG OF MY TRIP FROM CAPE TOWN TO GERMANY.

HAD TO MAKE SOME BOOKINGS

Finally got serious about my trip and asked on some site whether I could just rock up at the port and get a ferry to Iceland, which was a resounding NO WAYS, SLIM TO NONE !

So was fortunate enough to get a booking and with a stop at the Feroe Islands for two nights for a mere € 1546.00. But that is with a cabin and breakfast and dinner for four nights, so will take three weeks in all so gets me late going up Norway but so be it. 

Also have my ferry ticket from Ireland to Isle of Man (IOM) £ 320, so have to tour Scotland to take a ferry to Ireland to take a ferry to IOM. Still been unable to find a place to camp on the IOM but can't worry about that, there must be empty pastures or parking lots, hopefully the constabulary will understand my situation.

Resolved my issue with only 90 days in Schengen, getting another US passport so can switch them out and boom I have 180 days and the US has a bilateral agreement with Spain and a few other EU countries which I can use aswell, like I mentioned before, so that's quite a relief not having to stay somewhere illegally, and I would know. 

Lastly I got my airne ticket to Munich for the 3rd May 2024 ($ 372)