Met four guys from London who were putting their bikes on a train in Calais and travelling overnight to the South of France and then riding back Saturday & Sunday. I had thought about the train for our trip but £250 per bike put me off.
Got off the train and straight onto the motorway, more or less non stop to our first hotel, an Etap just south of Reims, the zumo was great, would have taken a bit of finding without it. Booked in, luggage taken to the room and across to the pub for dinner. Bit noisy in the pub as they had a live band playing (not bad for a French group), couple of beers and off to bed. Not much sleep due to the French gipsies playing the bongo’s till six in the morning.
Day two started a bit cold, we started early as this was the longest day, planned on 475 miles to the next hotel. Wouldn’t normally want to ride so far in a day, but really wanted three nights in the next hotel to make the most of the Alps before having to head north. Got to the German border and it just got hotter and hotter, had to stop and strip off. It was incredible to see the speed some of the cars were doing on the Autobahns. You had to really study the mirror before you pulled out as some cars seemed to be doing twice our speed. Have to say that even though the traffic was so fast, the driving manners seem to be a lot better than home. There were also times in France on two lane motorways that we were sat in a lane each for 20-30 minutes before you had to pull over for other traffic. Also noticed that where there are speed limits, most people were sticking to them, had read some reports of heavy speeding fines before we left (guess they are working). We didn’t really have any need or desire to exceed the speed limits, 130 KPH felt fast enough and I was getting annoyed that my mpg figures were dropping, went down to 42.7 at one stage.
Passed through the Swiss border with no problems, bit strange though as they use the inside and middle lanes to park lorries up for custom inspection, there were miles of trucks just parked, drivers having barbecues etc on the motorway. We managed to filter through the traffic, the drivers there were much more aware of our presence and moved over for us (unlike the woman driving a 4X4 in the fourth lane of four at 60 mph on the M25 between 12 & 11 blissfully unaware of the huge queue behind).
Got through Zurich, riding alongside a massive lake, the sky went black, I mean really, really black, so bad that we stopped and put all cold/wet weather gear on, I even took my goggles off my helmet and used my clear visor (first time since a particularly dark tunnel in Norway three years ago). Turned out to be a good decision as the heavens opened and down it came for hours, can’t remember how long it was until we turned off the main road and onto the Fluela Pass but at last the rain had turned to drizzle. I had checked the forecast before we left and I knew it was going to be wet (just not that wet), but it was supposed to be warmish. You could tell that if it was dry and bright, the Fluela Pass would have been amazing, unfortunately, being wet, tired and starting to get cold, we didn’t pay that much attention to the scenery. We started to climb higher and higher, I checked the zumo (hoping we were nearing the end), 40kms from destination, just then it started to snow, wasn’t that bothered for the first couple of minutes as it wasn’t settling, just a bit annoying having to wipe it of the visor every few seconds as I really wanted both hands on the bars to cope with the hairpins and ever increasing gradient. Then it happened, the snow got really thick, within five minutes there was a two inch covering, had just come round a hairpin and made the decision to stop as the back wheel was starting to move around. Jamie pulled up behind me, put his feet down and the brakes on and started sliding backwards, only for a few inches or so, but enough to poop himself. Got off the bikes and found rocks to chock the wheels. Didn’t really know what to do, luckily a local guy stopped on his way down and said there was a hotel 500 metres up the road. We decided to abandon the bikes and head off to the hotel. We had thought about trying to get them off the road but the road was too steep and too slippery so we had to leave them where they were. As we started walking, two English Porsches came past and stopped, they shouldn’t have stopped as they then lost traction and were also stuck. We told them about the hotel and carried on walking, it was hard work, very steep, and the snow was still very heavy, kept our helmets on and were still having to wipe the visor every few seconds. It was a white out, very difficult to make anything out, eventually after what seemed hours, we arrived at the hotel. The hotel owners were not happy with us dripping snow everywhere and kicked us out to clean ourselves off, they did let us back in and we stripped off and started to thaw out.
