- 143850 km on the bike
My plan for today is to see Hans and have the bits
replaced that the ferry company wrecked. But when I arrive at his
workshop, I find that I have forgotten that the shop is closed on
Mondays. This is due to the crazy Swiss shop opening policy. Most
shops are open during standard office hours only. If the staff exerts
themselves to the extent of opening on Saturdays (Sunday opening is
forbidden by law), then they compensate this by being closed the following
Monday - imagine such archaic rules in England!
My next port of call is the Motorama
shop in Hinwil.
Of course they are also closed, but alas they open at 1.30 pm this
afternoon - the pinnacle of Swiss customer services.
Next I go for my job interview - it goes well and it looks like I
am returning to Switzerland after this voyage is over.
I am back at the Motorama at 3 pm and try the new helmet they have
specially ordered for me - my oversized skull needs size 64, and that
is one no dealer normally stocks. The helmet fits and I ask them to
kit it out with speakers so that I can hear Sally's voice from my
GPS unit. It will be ready for pick-up tomorrow.
The weather is hot and humid. In the evenings we always get thunderstorms
over the mountains. Against the sweltering heat there is one certain
cure: biking at high altitude. So in the evening I plot a GPS route
for tomorrow directly into the heart of the High Alps.
- 144000 km on the bike
The parts for my bike have all arrived and soon Hans is busy returning Kitty to her usual mint condition. I have by now sent two e-mails to the ferry company which they have blissfully ignored. So now I tighten the thumbscrews and send them a registered letter with the bill for the bits.
By 5 pm the bike is ready. This is too late for me to begin my journey into the mountains. Instead I stay at St. Gallenkappel at the "Krone" country guest house - which is quite nice and the food is excellent.
- 144100 km on the bike
At 10.30 am I finally set out this morning south towards lake Walen and Chur. I ride on the motorway, but at Chur I leave it as now the mountain passes begin. I first bike up the Julier pass (7000 feet high).
The pass is clear, but on the south side the cloud
thickens a bit. This is the canton of Graubünden,
and many roadsigns are in "Rumantsch".
That is the fourth official language in Switzerland, next to German,
French and Italian. For years this ancient Etruscan
dialect was widely ignored by the Swiss government. But in the 1930's
Mussolini
concluded that those Rumantsch people were really of Italian origin.
That set the alarm bells going off in Bern - and within months Rumantsch
was declared an official Swiss language.
At St.
Moritz I turn off towards the Bernina
pass. It starts to drizzle, so I put on the wetgear. But it never
starts to rain seriously and I can undo the condom on the far side
of the pass. This southern area of Graubünden speaks Italian.
At Poschiavo
I enter Italy. If you have read about my journeys in Italy last year,
then you may remember that my general opinion of Northern Italy was quite simple:
too expensive, too hectic and the service stinks.
But now I am heading for an area in Italy known to Italians as "Alto
Adige". But the inhabitants of that province never call it
Alto Adige. They call it "Southern Tyrol". It is another
piece of the bizarre history of that Euro-Pudding I like so much:
after the Great
War Italy (fighting for the Allies in that one) had to be compensated
by its enemy, the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. So it was decided to cut off the southern bit of the arch-austrian
province of Tyrol and hand it over to Italy. Please follow the link
to the Wiki if you want to know more about the results followed that
dumb decision.
From my point of view Alto Adige is the one province in Northern Italy
where I can have the best of Austria and Italy in a land as clean
and orderly as Switzerland - and all of that at a reasonable price.
After just a few miles ride into Italy I turn eastwards onto the SS39
road towards Edolo.
This is about time, as biking through the sweltering hot valley floor
at just 1200 feet AMSL is getting uncomfortable. Soon I am again well
over 3000 feet up in comfortably cool air. A lot of the local road
signs show the finest word in the Italian language: tornante,
which means 'hairpin curve' - this place is excellent biker country.
As usual you can download the entire route including my track upload
here.
For many miles I follow this road (the SS42) and the Noce river eastwards
through the Stelvio National Park. Just where that river flows into
the lake Santa Giustina I turn north on that road, and by 5 pm I reach
my destination; the Pfitscher
guest house near San Felice. They are known in the area for their
exquisite food. For € 34 per day I book myself in - that price
includes breakfast and diner. The place is about 4000 feet
above sea level, so it is nice and cool compared to the hot and humid
valley floor.
- 144450 km on the bike
The weather is a bit overcast, but certainly no chance for rain today. I have plotted a nice 200 km route into Sally, which as always you can get here. My first port of call is just a few miles down the road; the natural science museum in Bozen (Bolzano in Italian).
If you want to know more about the geological and
historical development of the eastern Alps, then this place is worth
seeing and the five Euros fee is money well spent. However, at present
the entire collection is presented only in German and Italian. The
receptionist is aware of this shortcoming, but it will probably take
a few more years before other languages will be available.
Should you consider visiting that place, then I strongly recommend
the use of a GPS unit; though there is a big bike parking lot in front
of the museum, finding it in that mayhem of one-way streets in downtown
Bozen without one would be a nightmare.
After three hours exploring the museum I jump on my bike - and nearly
burn some really important body parts, because the seat has heated
up in the scorching sun. Bozen is only about 900 feet above sea level,
and it being now 2 pm means that it is really hot down here. But the
SS508 quickly takes me out of town and up towards the Jaufen-Pass.
The road is crammed with German and Austrian motorbikes,
the ratio being about 10 bikes for each car. This is strange, but
a brief enquiry at the parking lot on top of the pass (7000 feet and
15 degrees centigrade) reveals that there is another one of those
sodded Christian bank holidays around in catholic areas of Austria
and Germany - which apparently the majority of those nearly six million
Austrian and German bikers have used to descend on this part of the
world.
If I had known this, I wouldn't have come here - which is another
way of saying that I did my journey preparation quite badly.
These Teutonic bikers come in three distinct flavours:
1. The experienced, careful and sober-minded biker who has a lot of respect
for these High Alps (I believe you and me to be one of those, feel
free to have a laugh at me).
2. The loose cannon suicidal hell-rider who has no respect for anything
and believes himself to be immortal.
3. And finally the flat-country-greenhorn who doesn't know anything
about biking in the high mountains and is a constant menace to himself
and everyone else.
Three times so far today I met some inexperienced oncoming biker
who clearly got it wrong and is carried over to my side of the road
due to his inept breaking or incorrect tackling of the hairpin bends.
While taking a break at the roadside, me and some other bikers watch
one of these underbrained amateurs on an overpowered crotch rocket
getting his knickers in a twist when breaking hard before a sharp
bent at an unsecured cliff side (they still have some of them here).
Realizing that his options are a 1000 feet free-fall without a parachute
or breaking harder than he ever dared before (ABS would have easily
saved him here) he starts a skidding lap-dance on his bike that makes
us all hold our breath. He gets on the other side of the road, but
just manages to avoid riding over the cliffs edge. If there had been
any kind of oncoming traffic in that moment on this busy road (I mean
any hiker, biker, car or van), then they'd probably both would have
bought it.
The biker I am talking to is my age and from the Saar
region in Germany. He is biking with his daughter on her first
trip into the high mountains, taking her step by step through the
right moves. We both agree that if confronted with such irresponsible
morons as the one who just proved his incompetence so impressively,
none of us stands a chance to walk away from that confrontation.
On days like these only the gods of chance decide who is going to
survive a days worth of fun on two wheels - experience or caution
can only get you so far.
The three of us bike the next thirty miles together towards Meran
('Merano' in Italian), always trying to give those weekend warriors
on bikes a wide berth. At Meran we depart. I have to cross the valley
to get to the western side of the mountains - not a quick thing as
it is after 5 pm and the rush hour is in full swing. Meran being only
1000 feet above sea means that is is fairly hot. Add to that that
just beyond town my GPS fails to inform me to turn left towards the
village of Postal (an oversight by the guys responsible for creating
the vector graphics of the maps), and you can imagine that I feel
hot and sticky in my armoured kit.
But finally I am roaring up the SS238 back towards the guest house
on top of the mountains where it is nice and cool again. The place
is fully booked tonight by a bunch of German bikers. But I leave after
diner, as I had quite enough of them for a day.
- 144700 km on the bike
Due to the invasion of those teutonic bikers I have decided to leave
the mountains. If all Bavarian bikers are in Italy this week, then
I suppose that Bavaria must be empty of bikes. I have plotted a course
into Bavaria, which you can download here.
The weather is fine, but again the forecast predicts thunderstorms
in the afternoon.
I have to traverse the Meran valley again - and even at 10.30 am it
is already pretty warm down there. But crossing over the Jaufen-Pass
once more is nice and cool.
Just after noon I am on the far side of the pass. Overhead the convection
is boiling in the sky.
My next stage is the Brenner
Pass, which marks my entry into Austria. Of course I do not take
the motorway. Instead I take the country road.
This proves to be a good idea: the above picture shows the country
lane I am biking on. On the left you see the motorway on the west
side of the valley - complete with a massive traffic jam many miles
long.
South of Innsbruck
I have made an error in plotting the route: for 3 miles it uses the
motorway (for which a vignette
is required). But I manage to find my way around the Austrian motorway cops undetected.
On the other side of the Inn
river the road moves upwards into the mountains and over 3000
ft. AMSL. At Seefeld
I find an Internet café and stop over for an hour to check
my mail. When I come out again at 4 pm the sky is pitch black and
it starts to drizzle. Biking on is obviously useless, so I check into
a guest house at the other side of the road. I take a stroll into
town. It is a typical tourist town with hotels, souvenir shops and
restaurants, but still has kept some rural charme.
- 144850 km on the bike
The weather today should be a repeat of yesterdays scenario, with
rain and thunderstorms in the evening, so I do not expect to get very
far today.
Ten miles after starting my trip I enter Germany.
I am out of the High Alps now, but this countryside called Allgäu
here in Swabia
is a kind of high plateau, so temperatures are quite comfortable.
Fat meadows and dark forests surround the small agricultural villages. Biking is great, but like yesterday black clouds are looming ahead. Again I decide to stop early. A look at the GPS reveals that the nearest town is Bad Wurzach. I stop there and check into a hotel.
- 145050 km on the bike
The forecast for today is the same as yesterday, except that the
far southwest of Germany becomes more stable in the afternoon, i.
e. the chance of those thunderstorms reappearing is less over there.
That sounds good, so I set off from Bad Wurzach at 10 am this morning.
It is Sunday, but as the majority of German bikers has apparently
descended on Italy I have those backwater roads I plotted into my
GPS nearly for myself.
I am again very pleased with the route I picked; remote lakes, dense
forests and small villages, and all virtually free of traffic.
By noon those massive thunderstorm clouds are growing all around me
again, but it appears to be getting better ahead, even though I am
now entering the mountains of the Black
Forest at the Wutach river valley at Epfenhofen.
Soon I am above 2000 ft. AMSL again, where the air is fairly cool.
There are lots of bikers on the roads around the Schluchsee,
a popular meeting points for bikers in the Black Forest.
It has been dry all day today, but towards Basel
and the Rhine valley again there is a big black wall ahead. Well,
250 kilometres today isn't much and it is just 3.30 pm, but once again
I call it a day. I book myself into a guest house in Badenweiler,
an ancient Roman spa town just 10 miles away from the Rhine valley.
There is plenty of time to view the ancient Roman Bath (see picture
above) - this one is just as ingenious as the one I saw last year
at Hadrian's
Wall in Northumberland.
Badenweiler became once more popular for its thermal springs in the
19th century. Many fancy buildings can be found throughout the town,
most of which are now converted into hotels or restaurants. If you
have the extra cash, then you can lodge and dine in style here - I
myself prefer the rather simple Hotel Ochsen down in the valley. At
28 Euros per night it has all I need, which is mainly a garage for
the bike, a shady beer garden and a comfy pillow to put down my head.
Next to the ancient bath house there is the modern public outdoor swimming pool, fed from the very same thermal spring nearby. There are at least three French-plated vehicles parked outside for any German one. I inquire at a nearby pub about this; apparently the French living just across the border are suckers for thermal springs, and every weekend with decent weather drives them into Badenweiler in their hundreds. The locals have even coined a phrase for this: the French come here to "wash their feet". They don't mean this as a negative, it is just their way of quietly enjoying those French Euros being spent in town.
- 145300 km on the bike
Last night there was a thunderstorm, but this morning it is nice
and sunny. But just 20 minutes after I set out at 9 am it starts raining
and continues so more or less the entire 100 miles I have to ride
to Neuchâtel.
My shipping documents have arrived, but I see immediately that Gail
got the port of departure wrong; she wants me to drop off my bike
in Glasgow
instead of Gatwick.
I call her at 3 pm (that's 9 am in New York), and she faxes me a corrected
copy.
It is again too late to go anywhere by the time all is sorted, so
I just drive to the other side of the big divide called Röstigraben
and stay over night in Gampelen.
- 145450 km on the bike
The humidity next morning is 70% and it is raining. It feels like
a sauna and by the time I have squeezed myself into my wetgear I am
as sweaty on the inside as wet on the outside from the rain.
As expected the rain stops on the north side of the Jura
mountain range.
I get rid of the wetgear, but now the the convection
starts to boil up in this extremely unstable air, which is lingering
around this part of the world for several weeks now. By 11 am the
first thunderstorms unload their rage - and I am back in the wetgear.
When I reach the rolling hills of the Champagne region it even gets
creepy at times; the bare hilltops are virtually touching the bottom
side of the storm clouds, and frequent lightning is striking the ground.
Realizing that I am the highest elevation all around in these conditions
is not a really comforting thought considering the lightning striking
around me. But as I am writing this down here, you probably realize
that I made it out of this melee in one piece. That I have to stop
and re-grease the drivechain every time the rain stops does not really
improve my average speed, either.
Beyond the Marne
river the air stabilizes and the storms cease. Soon the biking
here turns into great fun. There are many bends in the roads, but
with enough straight stretches to easily overtake all the slower traffic.
I really like it when the tame rumbling of my three cylinders turns
into that Tiger-typical screaming roar when accelerating to overtake
some slow truck or car. My bike is one of the last made with the large-diameter
exhaust pipe, which means that closing the throttle before the next
curve produces the most excellent engine sound of any production bike
ever. Owners of younger Cats (with the smaller diameter plumbing)
will have to do with a much reduced sound effects system.
At Langres
I get a great view of the fortifications built on to of the mountain
above the town. I thoroughly enjoy
biking this part of the world. About 6 pm I reach Valenciennes.
I have done about 550 kilometres by now, so I decide to call it a
day. I stop at a hotel and ask for a room. The guy behind the reception
desk looks at me like I am an alien from outer space; "Il
est Mardi" is his sole comment. I know that it is Tuesday,
but what on earth has that to do with my demand for a room. The geezer
explains: Valenciennes is an industrial town, and during the week
all hotel rooms are occupied by people visiting the town on business.
At the weekend all hotel rooms are empty, because nobody comes here
voluntarily. That's why it is important for him to point out to me
that it is Tuesday today.
Well I couldn't care less. A few more enquiries at nearby hotels confirms
the geezers point. I just ride on a few miles until I am in Lille.
But in this giant urban area the same applies; no rooms on weekdays.
This is nuts - and it is after 9 pm by now. I ride on, and finally
manage to get a room at a Formule
1 in Dunkerque,
after 750 kilometres on the bike. Dear fellow biker, if you ever need
to stay overnight in this ugly part of France, then I recommend that
you book something in advance.
- 146200 km on the bike
Having arrived at 10.30 pm last night I have a lay-in until 10.30
am this morning. By 11 am I am back on the road. It is just a few
miles to reach Calais,
so I take the opportunity to shop for some beers for Martin at the
Cité
Europe supermarket outside of the town. The sight of the giant
Tesco
booze store is still something one has to get used to. I notice that
they have added a product range that does not contain alcohol: bottle
openers and corkscrews.
By 1 pm I am at the ferry terminal. I am booked on the 2 pm P
& O boat (because Speedferries currently refuse to ship motorbikes
for obscure reasons), but when I have checked in and arrive at the
parking lot they are just in the final stages of boarding the 1.15
pm boat. The loading hands just think that I am a late arrival and
guide me straight onto the ship. Ten minutes later the boat is under
way.
On the car deck in the designated motorbike parking lot I find the
following note:
Well, I just do as instructed and tie Kitty down. But the recommended method of tying down the bike with the ratchets provided is simply not working; I can still push the bike easily over to the other side - exactly what happened last time I crossed the channel. I take some time to think what needs to be done. The solution is to take another strap and fit this to the frame of the bike and so prevent it from being moved over the far side by any high seas. This is how it now looks:
I can lean my full weight against the bike - it won't move at all.
If the ferry companies would also hand out a few sensible tools like
cable
ties for locking the brakes, they would prevent a lot of damage.
As it is I have to conclude that currently no ferry operator has the
experience or equipment to properly secure motorbikes on stormy crossings.
90 minutes later I am in Dover. I take the motorway to cover the last
160 miles to West
Overton. By 7 pm I am there and Martin and myself are soon enjoying
a real
ale at the Bell Inn.
- 146500 km on the bike
On Friday I ride out to Gatwick
airport. It is a while since I last was here, and since then the
airport has been turned into a fortress; the underpass road that went
beneath the terminal buildings has been closed off - Islamic nutcases
might blow the terminal up with a car full of explosives. And it is
no longer possible to view the runways from the road - a 30 feet high
concrete wall prevents the very same Islamic crackpots from firing
at aircrafts with guns or rockets.
The cargo facilities are at the north side of the airport. There is
a jet wash right nearby. I dose the bike with an insect dissolving
agent and wash her down very thoroughly. This is necessary, as the
environment
agency in Canada will inspect the bike on arrival. Any insects
or their remnants will have them call out some specialist who does
the same as I just did - only he'll charge 100 dollars for it.
At the freight counter all goes smoothly. The guys are aware that
my airline, Air
Transat, does ship uncrated motorbikes and they have shipped many
before. They also confirmed one weird fact I suspected for a long
time; though many European bikers ship out their bikes to North America,
no bike from the other side of the Atlantic ocean was ever shipped
into Gatwick. I can only conclude that American bikers are afraid
of biking on European roads - a not entirely unreasonable fear given
the vastly more complex road system and varying traffic rules from
country to country.
By 1 pm all the paperwork and air
waybills are sorted out. The friendly guys from Servisair
even offer me a free ride to the South
Terminal where the railway station is located. The charge for
a return rail ticket from Gatwick to Newbury
is an unbelievable £44. That is approximately 30 pence per mile
- I know many countries where a taxi would cost significantly less
per mile.
If you now expect any decent service or nice railway carriages, then
think again. The absence of electrification means that underneath
the vintage carriages some filthy ancient diesel engine is ensuring
that the noise level always remains high. The shoddy tracks shake
the carriages that I often think the train derailed. The trees and
bushes along the track have not been cut back in ages and they frequently
scratch along the outside of the carriages. And there are not enough
carriages on the train; though it is just early afternoon, the carriages
are overcrowded. That is the price for decades of neglect, political
incompetence and privatization chaos.
By 3 pm I am back in Newbury and spend the rest of the afternoon strolling
through that pleasant country town.
At 6pm Martin finishes work and we drive back to a well deserved pint at the Bell Inn, a typical ancient coaching Inn on the A4 trunk road just outside the village.
- 146650 km on the bike
Below is the usual map with my GPS tracklog and some trip markers.
The next page shows a summary map of the entire journey through Europe.