Grand Prix Rejects

pasta_maldonado wrote:
For the third leg, we'll aim to further our advantage over This' team.

Thomas De Bock wrote:Edinburgh-Beijing Challenge - day 2: Somain to Trebon

We woke up in the morning and checked the map that was sent to us by the organisers of where the other teams were staying. Unsurprisingly, we were all close to each other, with some in Belgium and some in France. Only a couple of others were interestingly in Ireland and Wales. The real fun would start today. Everyone had followed the same route through the UK, but the sheer number of open motorways in Western Europe guaranteed some different strategies.

This morning, before leaving at the planned time of 10am, we planned out a general route that we would stick to all the way to Beijing, starting today. Using our knowledge of the traffic in Belgium, we hoped to gain a slight advantage, both in countries visited and in time, hoping to get a good placing in both tables. Our travels today would take us through at least four new countries. With the route planned out, as well as a shortlist of possible end stops towards the end, we headed out towards the Volkswagen and got ready to leave the hotel.

At 10am precisely, we left the hotel parking lot and turned onto the A21 autoroute, on the way to Belgium. A few minutes later, we reached the end of the A21 and turned East on the E19, towards Valenciennes and Namur. We crossed the border at 10:15am. We had already planned ahead to avoid Brussels and Liège, which are usually surrounded by traffic jams, and instead headed towards the Walloon capital of Namur, where we turned off what was now the E42 and onto the E411 towards Luxembourg. It turned into an easy ride through the Belgian countryside elong the E411, then the E25 after Neuchâteau, before we entered Luxembourg. It was just after noon.

Like every other major city, we avoided Luxembourg, then turned briefly South, still on the E25, until we reached Bettembourg, where we turned off the motorway and onto the Luxembourgish A13 towards Germany, which we entered around 1pm. The A13 became the A8, then the E29, which we followed until we reached Saarbrücken, where we turned back East onto the A8, around Saarbrücken, and onto the E50 towards Mannheim. This was where we lost major time which would prevent us from reaching our ideal destination of Vitis, Austria.

We briefly left the E50 to pass Mannheim on the E31, taking us past the Hockenheimring and on the way to Nürnberg. Despite some roadworks, almost no time was lost, and by 5:15pm, we were in the Czech Republic with about two-and-a-half hours remaining. Unable to reach Austria, we didn't regret our decision to get some Czech koruna, just in case. The motorways in the Czech Republic were surprisingly well maintained, and we could ride smoothly towards the East. We reached Plzen at 6pm, and with two hours remaining, we turned off the E50 onto the E49, South-East towards the Austrian border, which we knew we wouldn't reach today.

There was absolutely zero traffic on the E49, which was a two-lane road more than it was a motorway, and we could start to prepare our arrival. We reached Ceske Budejovice at around 7:40pm, and we could now cruise to our final destination of Trebon. At 7:55, we turned off the main road onto Taboritska and reached our chosen destination of Penzion Maxim, parking across the road and signing in at 7:57pm, with three minutes to spare. This time, there was no need for Yaël to rush inside.

I'm interested to see where everyone will be tomorrow morning.

andrew wrote:I have been planning my route and there does not seem to be any route into china...

pasta_maldonado wrote:

andrew wrote:I have been planning my route and there does not seem to be any route into china...

Due to a Google employee once complaining about the quality of rice he received in China, Google have been forbidden from collecting data within China. This means that you'll have to plan the route up until the border of China, record the time, then skip across the border and start from China to your destination.