Epic trip to

the MotoGP Sachsenring 2017

Bike riders will know the feeling. The craving for long trips vs the limited amount of free days and money in combination with lots of other obligations throughout the year. But when you’re a bike owner, you just want to ride long distances to unknown places (at least for yourself).

So, owning a bike and being a motoGP lover it sounded like a pretty  good idea to ride to the MotoGP Sachsenring edition 2017. A total of approx. 1400km from Utrecht to Sachsenring and back. Pitching the idea with 2 friends it became a goal. Epicness in the making..

The route..

We’re Utrecht (The Netherlands), based, so obviously we started there in the morning of Saturday, the 30th of june. The rain was pooring and the forecast wasn’t great either. But still we wanted to go. Epicness doesn’t come easy you know. You gotta work hard 😉

Since I’d never visited Winterberg (small ski resort in Germany and the closest to home), we thought it was a good plan to have a lunch there. That way we could ride for 4 hours with a small stop in between, have a long break with lunch and ride on for another 4 hours with a short break. And so we did..

We arrived in Winterberg just sooking wet. We were all thinking whether this effort was worth the reward, since the forecast was bad. But we were to stubborn to go back home and after drying up for one hour it was clear it wouldn’t stop raining. We got back in our (still wet) clothes and continued our journey.

Just an hour from the Sachsenring the weather started to get better. During our last stop to fuel up our bikes we talked to the station manager who told us it hadn’t been raining there at all that day and that the forecast for the weekend was just fine. Our confidence was growing.. Could the weekend just got a turn for the better?

Around 7 o’clock we arrived at the D-Max Campsite..

D-Max Campsite

After a long ride we arrived at the D-Max Campsite. A warm welcome because we just had the time to park our bikes before our neighbors put a beer in our hands. The perfect way to make friends of course. The campsite was clean, large, quiet and just right for some guys like us (mid 40, like to go radical but also like to go to bed early in a quiet environment).

So for all you guys who value their sleep, clean toilets and warm water in the showers…the D-Max campsite is the place to be once you visit the Sachsenring. And you get a D-Max Cap for free!

They serve Cuba Libre!

You know the moment somebody comes up with the idea to do “just one drink”? Well, it was that kind of night.. We went of to the party area for some snacks and just one drink. One became two, two became three and once Jelle found out they served Cuba Libre we lost track.. We had a great time and met lots of new friends along the night. The way back to the D-Max campsite was somehow a lot longer then the other way around and waking up the next morning was a challenge. But it was all worth it.

We dragged ourselves to the circuit and enjoyed a terrific race, with Marquez on top at the end. A good result, since I’m in the Marquez corner.

After the race we returned to the campsite and discussed leaving the same night for the first half of our journey. We all agreed that 700km in one day is quite a lot, but driving off after such a night and day was also quite a challenge. In the end we left the ring and went for the first 400km. Around Kassel we stayed the night to continue the last 300km on monday. We arrived at home in nice sunny weather around noon.

All is well that ends well. Epic trip, epic race, epic weekend.

Some picas..