Update: Mon 23:15

Monday, 10 October

Stuffed my gut at breakfast, pumped the tyre up, oiled the chain and set off down the 94. It's a good road -- though busy with lorries -- and well sign-posted for the most part. I was watching a car turn off on the road to Poznan wondering if it was a name I should know when I saw the little red 94 sign with and arrow pointing in the same direction. The were a couple of those but otherwise it was all well labelled including looping around Wroclaw which I was expecting to have to traverse.

I stopped for a coffee just after it crosses the A4 (E40) and consulted my atlas which didn't have the new bit of the A4 and was of the opinion that the 94 was the E40 for the next wee while. In fact it still had the 94 labelled as the 4. Things have changed!

As did the weather. Another day, another drenching in the cold!

On the German side the road becomes the 6 and eventually makes it way into Dresden via, in my case, a loop through the backend of some large town with roadworks right in the middle. It's very annoying when the diversion sign people don't include all the road numbers. Pick a road, any road.

This (back) way into Dresden has some big old gothic and what looked like military buildings in need of a bit of TLC. It was gone five by now and the next section is up the A4 itself -- there's no (easy) parallel road. This isn't good as the A4 doesn't have much in the way of sleeping arrangements. I whizzed up the road (dull motorway) fighting the crosswind and turbulence and had to come off the road for fuel. I asked in the petrol station about local hotels but the directions she gave didn't quite add up. Not to worry, I jumped back on the A4 and aimed to come off at the next big town. I saw the "right sort of lights" for this place from the road. This is Germany, it's not cheap. And the heating was off in the room. Grumble grumble.

Currently at lat/long: n50 50.748 e12 32.387

Hotel Dolce Vita, somewhere on the E40!

PS. I neither have a detailed map nor a working GPS. Everything is by ear from now on. The easy option is (obviously) to actually follow the E40 all the way to Calais.