Trip round the Alps.

 

A leisurely tour for a change, not a there and back AFAP. 2/3 weeks with Antony, an old friend on a newish Kawasaki Versys and me on my trusty SZR round the Alps and back camping and rooming. I did prep the bike honest but in retrospect I didn’t do a very good job so it’s no thanks to me that she didn’t miss a beat again.
So Friday evening, July 17th we set off for Hull in shite weather and stationary traffic getting into the M18.
The ‘all you can eat’ buffet on the boat was welcome, especially for a very large guy who had 3 mains, 2 slabs of chocolate cakes and god knows what else besides.
Rotterdam and south. Same shite weather which made the 300 miles to the first stop a slog. Antony got a wet crutch and my boots were, if anything, leaking- outwards. A lonely hotel deep in the woods run by a rather choice grandmother. It’s my age. Good food, which will later become a theme for this trip. We dry. We set out again in the rain then dry. In the middle of a plain, having taken our wet gear off, we get caught in a downpour, the only protection being a field of 6’ corn. I suggest it’s better the second row in and we pretend the corn is sheltering us for half an hour then head out in the 60mph hair drier to get dry again. We’re well short of our second night stop so cast around for rooms in Ellingen, apparently a famous baroque town. A far too posh for us place has rooms so we give in to paying the extra. The young chef gets two 8” heavy iron keys circa 1800 and leads us up a grand carved wooden staircase to equally grand pairs of double doors. It was like being on a stately home tour and being ushered to stay in the king’s bedroom. Far better than the Ritz. Assuming an interest in motorcycles and ceilings don’t go together I won’t dwell on the magnificent plasterwork, an amazing piece of restoration. The more my mouth drops open the more the chef shows us. The attic with an amazing bathroom in a cupboard, the banqueting hall with ornate painted ceiling, even down to a hole in the floor through to the cellar where Jewish women would ceremoniously cleanse themselves. (and I suspect have a good time without the men)

Then off to a camp site in Austria for a couple of days. The weather is now hot and my SZR even hotter, it didn’t feel happy. It had steamed a bit in miles of traffic just outside Sheffield so maybe the coolant’s low, especially as the fan wasn’t cutting in. Plus the oil level was very confusing being a dry sump. So changed coolant and topped up oil. Plus the footrest hanger had cracked from the tie down on the ferry. Antony’s reference to her being a ‘nail’ didn’t go down well. Got a heavy duty jubilee clip and fashioned a support which, as time went on, seems to have caused the back brake master cylinder to pull in air which then required periodic bleeding for the rest of the trip.

Antony is convinced we are now in the region of very nice people who are also secret Nazi sympathisers. Lederhosen and Mercedes seemed to be the give away. 

Yet another enjoyable meal. 

Now into the Alps and a late evening search for a guest ‘hof’. Luck found us one half way up a mountain side overlooking the valley. 20 euros and lovely clean rooms.

And three delightful girls 2, 8 and 10 who would entertain us with German lessons for the next two days. Kids make great teachers. They found our lack of their language huge fun and just carried on regardless until we understood.

Sandra showed me round the barn. 8 cows, 2 pigs, 1 goat, one rabbit with pups and a cat with kittens. Which did I like best? I said the pigs. She was aghast, “nine nine, de shwine da shtinken!” In some curious way I found I could understand what she was saying.

The hillside opposite was a bit like the Lake District except for the houses being ridiculously small.

Humanity was dwarfed and I found it strangely relaxing to look at it time and time again. I wasn’t too well so Antony did daily trips to the valley for rolls and cigs. After a thunderous evening storm we bled my brake and were off again for the high passes into Italy. First the Brenner, then the Jauafen and then the Stelvio. Antony insisted on the Stelvio as it’s the highest in the Alps, 1.7 miles high. I thought nah, that was just about bragging rights. Well I was wrong; riding over it is something to brag about. It had me scared with its hairpins and drops.
It took all the little skill I have to negotiate it.

You have to go right to the opposite edge of the road to come out anywhere near on your side of the road, so oncoming traffic is problematic. Do I hit it going in or coming out? Half way up we chat to a German couple. The man says “We come 6 times. Each time we see dead biker in road.” Thanks for that. And at the top, Buxton on a Sunday afternoon or Douglas prom during TT week. God knows how they get all the sausages up there, probably helicopter. For sure nothing bigger than a small campervan could make it. 

By the end of coming back down my back brake is only effective by the pedal dragging on the ground. Into Italy and a campsite somewhere with a disco playing till 3 in the morning.
In the midst of some Italian traffic jam my fan kicks in! Jubilation.

And I thought it wasn’t working.

Around this time Antony and I encounter small differences of opinion. Well nobody’s perfect. I am cheap, Antony likes comfort. I ride slow, Antony is faster. I am a  rudimentary camper, Antony has a hundred little containers of everything you could possibly need. I am mature and all knowing and Antony is a twat. How he can think I am one too is beyond me. In Switzerland we end up with a room for Antony next to a campsite for me and get pissed together, mates again.  The Simplon pass is easy and sweeping, Lusern and a campsite in the Jura south of Dijon for two nights. I’m reminded how the smallest slope can slide one into a heap in a corner of the tent. A fine Nuevo cuisine meal of chicken which for all the world looks like sections of tastefully arranged bull’s todger in the middle of a large square plate. The next night it’s chicken and chips for £35 less. Two nights and 450 miles to Zeebrugge as we set off north again. The next night in Joinville and we’re in what was probably Edith Piaf’s favourite hotel, the one before she got famous.

Around eight men sit outside in the warm evening visited by a series of bikers on a Ducatti and a Harley, each newcomer shaking hands with everyone, including us. A nice custom.

Inside is a delicate arrangement of rooms, plumbing and stairs. I watch euro porn in bed and am reminded of the tastefully arranged chicken on the square plate. We breakfast, set out and stop. We ‘discuss’ filling both Scott oilers and how to ride apart whilst staying together. In our middle class gentile way it becomes a heated conversation. Without the benefit of our considerable education we would have been free to say, “Well fuck you, asshole!” but we didn’t. I did say OK then I’ll see you in Zeebrugge tomorrow, and Antony by way of disagreement said, “Yeh OK right, fine” and we go our separate ways.

Now I haven’t told Antony this but about one in the afternoon I run out of petrol, stranded at the side of a fast French country road in the middle of nowhere. Shit! This is some hole, and the ferry’s booked for tomorrow evening. I wave haphazardly at the passing traffic. Almost immediately a small French guy with no English stops and I point to the tank. After nearly two weeks of struggling with German and Italian I couldn't give a toss about trying French. For a start the boarders are all in the wrong place. They speak German in Austria and Italy, Italian and French in Switzerland and French in Belgium. It all needs a jolly good sort out. Anyway I have a water bottle and we set off for petrol around 3 miles away. Petrol station, pump, bottle, no petrol. They wouldn’t serve it into an old drinks bottle. By now Julian is on my case. We drive around to a garage and ask for a proper container. Fat guy behind the desk says no on account his fat arse is stuck to his fat chair, but a thin guy is off like a whippet. Container, petrol, 3 miles back and I’m left thanking and clapping St Julian as he drives away. I think we both feel very good.

That evening after a lorry driver gives me a map of Ronse the local town with a campsite marked in biro I camp in the grounds of a school come summer school.

There is a serve yourself bar and with two 8.5% Belgian beers and only one sandwich all day I’m as happy as a newt. Next morning I go into town for breakfast. Belgium by the way looks permanently closed. Shops, rather than attracting attention seem to hide hoping no one will notice them. A role and coffee in an amazing bar all big and period blousy; a sort of 1910 Wetherspoons. 

Back to the campsite and another thing I haven’t told Antony. I left the ignition on and flattened the battery. Well he told me earlier that lying was a necessary art. Shit again! A 660cc single is not the easiest thing to bump start. I pack up and ask a young guy to give me a push. We plan our attack on the small slope, I select third and we role. Immediately a group steps out with a pushchair. Shit, but seeing our predicament I now have three big guys pushing. Brum! Yes! And I’m off. What I haven’t said is that maybe something left in the makeshift petrol container was making the engine die at low revs so I couldn’t let them fall below 2-3,000rpm which made the next hours very nervous, Belgium being mostly flat. But after an hour and a half I made it to the small queue waiting for the ferry in Zeebrugge docks.

The engine stopped. I pressed the button and it started. Few! Relieved and hungry there was time to get lunch back in the town. I parked on the sea front and Antony appeared. So all was well and we’d both got there safe and in time. On the boat I had a plate of Lamb Balti and rice followed by another of Vegetable Tanduri and a big slab of Bakewell tart and cream to finish off. Antony tells three different waiters to alert the captain that another boat is overtaking us. They appear to find this hugely funny but I doubt that indicates what they’re actually thinking. On deck for a smoke. One biker tells of his solo trip to Cape Town and another of doing 280kph on his R1 down the motorway. I am daunted. In the bar it is apparent someone has shit themselves and being very low key about it. Two guys have the dance floor to themselves making strange surreal movements to a singer with backing tracks. I’m guessing the singer has seen it all as he manages to adjust his sound system, play guitar, turn his music over, sing and usher drunks off the stage with complete composure.

Breakfast of everything going and 60 miles to Sheffield. We stop for a parting coffee and agree it was a good trip; a good mix of luck, skill, anxiety and angst. A big manly hug and home, where Barbara had opened the back gate for my arrival. A small but heartwarming gesture. The next hug wasn’t manly.