Our stay in Lucca was much too short. Today’s drive will take us to Massa Marina, just 80km from Lucca. My family will enjoy the town for another few hours whilst I start bright and early. My plan for today is to drive from the coast inland up some hills and back to the sea again. Off we go! Temperatures soar and I’m happy to climb continuously. Every 100m up means about 1°C less temperature. A first pass at 1300m brings me to a plateau at around 1000m, complete with mountain lake and many, many people escaping the heat. For […]
TDI2020 – Northwards along the Ligurian Sea
Time has flown by in Terni & Rome. We’ve had a great time as a family with all our friends and we’re very grateful for their friendship. Today I will drive to Lucca on my own – my family wants to spend less time on the road – rather a long and relaxing lunch at the sea somewhere en-route. Me, however, am looking forward to the trip. Today will be a very hot day and I’ve planned to take TW560 up some hills to get a reprieve from the heat. TW560 was charged slowly at 0.02C to allow the […]
TDI2020 – Terni & Rome
After arriving in Terni, we’re ready for a week of time-off, Italian-style! We live with our friends whilst our kids live distributed across town with their grown-up children or stay with the extended family. Most of our days consist of sitting at long tables and eating fabulous food or visiting other parts of the family – very relaxing. With Covid Lockdown1 over, most of public services are back – with the hot weather we’re loving the fact that we have a swimming pool just around the corner from where we live! We spent a few afternoons here. Our kids, however, […]
TDI2020 – Southwards along the Adriatic Sea
After our two days with our friends, it’s time for us as a family to spend some time at the sea on our own. We’re all looking forward to 3 days in Lido di Dante – it’s a trip down memory lane: as a young family we came here a few times when the kids were all in their single digits and it was just perfect – kid-friendly Italian restaurants – pizza and pasta universally loved by our children, beach fronts with playgrounds and shallow water…and tons of other kids. Our new vacation setup sees us parents getting up and […]
TDI2020 – Two Days On My Own
A new TWIKE adventure! Post-Lockdown1 relaxation of travel restrictions to Italy meant that we – at short notice – arranged to visit various of our Italian friends and stay a few days at the sea, both on the Adriatic and Tyrrheanean side of the Italian peninsula. The first two days will see me driving on my own to Brescia and staying there with friends and their family before my own family joins me on late Sunday. I really need the time-off and two days on my own as I’ve been extremely busy lately. As always, it doesn’t take me long […]
Pre-TDI2020 battery spa
As always, the time until a major trip seems endless until…the trip is just 2 weeks away and the agenda is still full with calls and meetings and weekends are chock-full with other stuff. Equally important is balancing a pack before setting out on 3 weeks of full-cycle discharges during long-distance daily trips. Thanks to the fact that I have multiple battery workstations, balancing the 42 strings takes only about one day in total and – as mentioned previously – this exercise is also a very good indicator for cell ageing and cell health in general. TW560’s pack is nearing […]
Hello 2020
At the end of 2019, I look back at a very nice and fun-packed year with my favourite of all vehicles: TWIKE 560. 2019 was a very busy year. It saw me travelling around 80% and being away for weeks at a time. Most notable was November where I enjoyed full two weeks in warm Singapore instead of grey and cold Switzerland before flying to Spain for another 9 days. 2019 was also notable as I went on two longer TWIKE adventures TDI2019 to Italy My first long-distance solo TWIKE adventure driving to Austria and onward to central Italy and […]
TDE2019 – Day 11: Last leg back home
After a gloriously refreshing night of undisturbed sleep thanks to super-fresh air and no noise, I wake super-refreshed even after a boozy night smoking multiple cigars. Seb and I meet downstairs for breakfast with fresh Zopf and home-made jam and honey which we eat enjoying the same incredible view on his balcony. Life could definitely be worse. Enjoying the honey, I was unaware that he had started beekeeping and asked him about his experience and what it took to have a few hives. He offered me to have a look! Very interesting to see the bee colonies and […]
TDE2019 – Day 10: Hello Italy, Hello Switzerland
Given that I slept in a communal space, it was surprising that I woke up refreshed when the rays of the early morning sun filtered into the room. Grabbing my overnight bag I head upstairs to the upper desk passing still-closed bars to get a glimpse of what’s going on around the ferry and find out where we are. Another brilliant and blue-skied day greets me. The last hour of our trip takes us along the northern Italian coast along which TW560 and I drove earlier this year during TDI2019 and before that during TDAF2016. Should I ever have the […]
TDE2019 – Day 9: Barcelona, frustration, ferry
My last day in Spain has come. I have to get to Barcelona early, as I need to get a full charge to be able to get to Seb’s on one charge. Seb is a long-time friend and reader of this blog who lives in lower Valais. There are only a few commercial charging options in Barcelona and I have a selection of charging cards and apps to choose from. Given my experience with commercial charging in a southern European country earlier this year, I’m expecting the worst. At 5 AM I load my stuff into the TWIKE which is […]