Paul G .... The Winner !!
Well, all you had to do was look at the co-ordinates anyway!
So, yes, I was there, mostly where Paul said. After a reasonably steady drive ( yes, I confess, I had the bike in the back of the van, but I knew I'd only have one, maybe 2 days there, and I had a shitload of other gear to carry, so that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it..)
I'd set the GPS to
'avoid toll roads' cos I'm a tightwad, and ended up winding my way from Calais via Belgium Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy... yes, I wondered why too! Next time, I'll look at the map instead of investing all my blind faith in the routing abilities of Mr. Garmin (you'll laugh later!) After a brief overnight in a lorry park somewhere, I ended day 2 on the Italian side of the Tende road tunnel at midnightish after a long dismal drive in the rain. The tunnel was shut.
. No notice, no explanation, nobody else, no nothing, just shut. Bollocks. After I'd sat there cogitating for a few minutes I saw lights coming up the hill, and an Armenian guy called Miska and his 12 year old daughter
arrived as well... As best we could we decided that there was nowt to do until the morning so I unrolled the Thermarest. God bless the van!
I slept like a log and was woken by a godawful rumbling and roaring from outside, as the herd of HGVs that had been coralled somewhere were racing for the entrance of the tunnel ... I guessed it was time to get up! I emerged, blinking in the daylight to see the tail end of Miska's beaten-up old Opel disappearing into the tunnel along with a wave and a cheeky eastern european grin. I tried sorting my stuff out, looked for my GPS that I'd put somewhere safe ... couldn't find it .... thought that the Armenian gent had somehow reached though the window and nicked it. 5 minutes later I found it in one of my boots and mentally apologised to Miska for my bad thoughts...
The tunnel was interesting, especially given that I was still half asleep as I was driving. 5km of dark, old grey stone walls, one-way traffic thankfully! At the other end there was bright sunshine and blue sky - Bonus! After the first turn out of the tunnel there was a lay-by, I needed a p!ss so pulled in and was greeted by Miska's cheeky grin again. As we shared a few broken words of encouragement and a couple of currant buns, I realised that the lay-by was actually the entry to the upper part of the pass. Ha - it didn't look so bad! After the buns were dispatched, I started off down the 9km of tarmac to the town of Tende proper. What a road, beautifully surfaced, sweeping curves, no traffic ...Tende itself is a lovely little town, I found a quiet road behind the hospital to park the van. As I started to unload the van I realised it was getting quite hot - by 8am it was already 28C and very humid, I was glad I'd taken my thinner HG trahziz. Finally I was ready to go, bike loaded so up the hill I went. On a bike the road is just stunning, predictable bends, grippy tarmac, an absolute joy to ride. With the cobwebs blown away I was rally looking forward to getting onto this track, and as the last turn opened up in front of me I was already grinning like a loon.
The first couple of legs of the pass were fine, the turns a bit steep but nothing too serious - I was beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about, until at turns 5 and 6 everything started to tighten up. Hairpin is about right! The tarmac had been worn smooth in places and looked a bit crumbly, but taking the outer line gave the best result. There were numbers painted on each turn - sequentially from the bottom - at turn 18 the tarmac just stopped, and the fun began.
For the first few turns it was pebbly and sandy, then the harder rock strata started coming through and the rocks got bigger. I passed one or two residences that 'Grand Designs' would have been proud to have a go at
By turn 40 something I'd started to run into cloud and mist and was glad of the cooling effect it had.
Finally after some 60 odd turns I got to the top - at that time of the morning I was the only one there which was quite an eerie feeling. I had a wander through the some of the buildings of the Fort Centrale, again a strange feeling wondering what life must have been like there when it was inhabited.
The mist was an oddity - cloudy and dank on one side yet clear blue skies on the other - all to do with airflow and humidity and dewpoints n'stuff.. I decided to follow the old military trail to the french side, and ventured into the mist
And on the other side was greeted by this ...
.
I had a poke round this place, even more spooky than Centrale as it was quite complete, most of the rooms were intact, even steps upto the second and third floors, but the walls were cracking and the place was slowly falling down as earth spilled through into the rooms and was pushing the walls apart. There were many completely enclosed rooms, and a crawl tunnel at the back, doubtless an escape route of some sort. Again, you can only imagine what these rooms were used for.
I set up my kit and got the pics I needed and spent the afternoon sweating like a pig in the sun and cool humidity of the mountainside - I was I think at about 6500' at that stage. I'd forgotten my suncreen and gave myself that unhealthy pink glow normally only seen on Mancunians at a Marbellan Saturday night disco.
When the 'work' was finished, I got back on the bike and had a little explore a bit further down the track and found an old colonial style hotel, again completely gutted and decrepit but an amazing spectacle nontheless - I didn't take a picture for some reason, but here's the track that got me there!
When I got back to the fort I decided it would be quite cool to spend the night up there, but I'd drunk my 4 litres of water during the day, and had no more for the night. Thankfully the little refuge on the Italian side had a tap, so I was able to fill my bottle and camelbak, sorted! I pitched my tent on the lowest level on the site - you can see it just on the leftmost part of the building - and settled down for the night. I'd packed a couple of compo meals, but had no cooker so it was cold spicy beef stew and dumplings followed by cold chicken and pasta with mushrooms. I'd checked the packets beforehand, they were still squidgy so despite the
use by date of October 2008, I tucked into my gourmet meal. It was interesting, and by definition it was edible.
I'd had this somewhat naieve idea that I'd see a wonderful alpine sunset, followed by a crystal clear starlit night and a sunrise to match. I actually got this...
It was dull and misty from about 7pm onwards, and as it was unplanned I'd not taken any entertainment with me, so it was an evening of peaceful reflection and solitude, in thIs age it Was actually a bit of a luxury! The birds eventually stopped and the flies went to bed and I was left in peace.
I woke in the morning and poked my head out expecting to see something at least, but all I saw was ...well, not much actually. The cloudbase had dropped and it was silly thick, in fact the visibility was about 10 yards or so. Then I started to realise I was feeling a little unwell, my stomach as definitely queasy and I had the starting of a nasty dull headache. Still, I had to leave as I needed to get home, so everything got packed up, and the 'climb' out of the depression I'd camped in was successfully negotiated. It only left the track back down to do which was going to be very interesting given the conditions - mountain on the left and certain death on the right.. lovely!
Loaded and kitted I started off, my helmet was feeling horrendously tight too ... I realised I wasn't feeling at all well. This was all compounded by the fact that the previous trips up and down and around had seen off my rear brake pads
toungincheek yes I know I know I should have changed them before I left but I didn;t so I'll have to live with that ...) and using the rear brake too much would have completely uckfayed the disk so I was kinda forced to rely on the front brake on the way down - ABS is bloody great innit !! Anyway, I''m thinking you know what's coming .... all those bends, a bit stressed, headached and sunstroked ... yup, I got halfway down the hill and hurled like one of those Marbellan Mancunians on a Sunday morning. I was fukking fukked... Nobody likes vomiting, I'm no exception, but am somewhat grateful that there was no one else to see me letting the side down. I'm a southern softie see, not Mancunian. 10 minutes or so later I felt well enough to carry on. It was not a pleasant experience, the fear of chucking it away had me on eggshells all the way down, and getting back onto the tarmac made me nauseous all over again. What didn't help much either was the temperature differential from top to bottom, which went from a damp 15C to a humid 28C.
I felt like shit when I got back to the van, the last thing I wanted to do was load up ... but it had to be done. I managed to get it all in, it wasn't tidy, but frankly at that point I didn't care too much. I punched 'home' on the GPS and went into autopilot. I managed to drive for 30 minutes or so, then had to stop and get my head down to settle myself again, this happened three more times until I got to a service station in Italy I vaguely remember the tunnel at Tende being a little more challenging with two-way traffic this time, but that was about all I can recall of the first couple of hours driving. So, stopped for fuel and bought a bottle of ice cold Coke which helped a lot with starting me feel better - the day started to improve from that point on.
I got onto the first section of Italian motorway which turned out to be Peage .. bollocks, GPS probably didn't have a choice with the route so I paid my 3 euros and continued ... to the next peage! Bollocks again - €5 this time ... ok, last chance - I carried on driving for another 40k or so and ended up at... yup, another peage! Only this time it was at Frejus and in front of another tunnel. Ah fukkit, I checked the GPS and hadn't changed back to 'no-tolls'. I stolled over to the pay window with a €10 euro note and the woman looked at me as though I was Mancunian. She pointed to a bad photocopy of a VW transporter and nodded her head, I had to agree, yes, that was my vehicle. Classe B she said and pressed her button ... €49.00 ... FORTYNINEFUKKINGEUROS! I was pissed off but had no choice - yes, they know this too - and grudgingly I coughed up, but resisted the temptation to lob my Zumo out of the window. I reset it instead. As I drove into the tunnel, resenting my zumo and mourning the loss of my money I realised the temperature was going up - my old T4 doesn't have a thermometer, but it had to be 40+ down there - I'd be happy to guess 43C. There was 15km of this before I popped out the other side, sweaty and skint.
After that the trip back was fairly uneventful, the Zumo gave me another crazy route back via Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium and finally France, but I filled up in Luxembourg for €1.00/litre which made me feel a little better. I had to stop about 4 hours from calais for a sleep, but figured I could be there still for 9am and be home just after lunch. What I hadn't banked on was Eurotunnel being such a bunch of @rseholes. I'd booked a cheap (£44.00) 24hr return, and had planned to only use the return leg, having got the outward trip for £20.00 with LD lines. Eurotunnel twigged this and wouldn't let me use the return because I hadn't arrived with them in the first place. Bollocks! They wanted to cancel my cheap round trip ticket and replace it with an 'on arrival' single, for €265.00 - TWOHUNDRENDANDSIXTYFIVEFUKKINGEUROS! I went back to LD and got out from Dunkerque on the 12:00 for £60.00. I'm asking Eurotunnel for a refund.
So, there you have it, 2250 round trip miles, plenty of photos, one long alpine yodelling session with Ralph and Hughie and a night in a McDo's carpark somewhere in northern France. A brilliant trip, and one I'd do again tomorrow...
Here are a few other gratuitous photos, just because I can!
Greg
