Bucketlist trip corona edition

Finally i had some time to do something with the footage from the trip i made in September.
For a very long time i wanted to make a long motorcycle trip and two years ago it was put on the calender for this year.
The corona wasn’t enough apparently because my relationship also ended which left me with finding a new place to live. We parted on good terms so i could stay until i had something else.
That didn’t took long but due to the Covid situation getting a mortgage was taking a long time but i was not planning to postpone the bucketlist any longer.
I had to trips on that list, Norway and back over Finland and the Baltic states and the Balkan.
The Balkan was the first choice because that is an upcoming holiday destination and i want to be able to visit the real Balkan but that was not an option any-more. The north was also a problem with Sweden on code orange (only travel when necessary) so i was stuck to the south of Europe.
After looking around the new plan was to go to Gibraltar and back via Portugal but Spain was in trouble and parts went to code orange. Okay, let’s skip Andorra and go around but the orange region spread like a cancer and when a third change was needed it was not a viable plan any-more.

Time for drastic measures and check with the insurance company if i’m still covered when i get into an accident in a orange zone and finally something positive, everything not related to corona is still covered.
So i planned to take the risk to pass trough Sweden but that same evening Finland and the Baltic states went into lockdown for Dutch citizens (at the moment parts of the Netherlands weren’t doing well) so back to the drawing board again (Basecamp).
A friend who was coming along suggested Sicily so there was a new plan… The Etna.

In the meantime i still was buying a house and the transfer date was set even though i still had no mortgage to pay for it but i went on a trip for 3 weeks.
The only thing planned was the route. That was a necessary evil to get as far as possible in the 3 weeks vacation i had, spliced in sections per day but that was only to keep track of time.
Just past the halve way mark i finally got the approval for the mortgage. Quite funny to have it signed in Pompeii and at least something that was timed perfect because we planned a day off to see the ruïns from the eruption of the Vesuvius in the year 79.

After 2 weeks my friend had enough. I have the tendency of taking things to the extreme and i like to see the real country when i go abroad. So a camping at Lake Garda, the Etna, the Amalfi coast road and Pompeii where the touristic places and the rest was country roads in the mountains of Italy. That means narrow, steap and most of the time badly maintained.
That technical riding and the heat during the second week took too much energy. To prevent risking real exhaustion he decided to skip the third week and go home and i continued solo.
I will tell the rest of the story in the next blog, for now i leave you with part one of footage from the trip.