27/7 Wednesday

Late night, yesterday, starting the blog posts and late getting on the road today as uploading pics, etc., while we had wifi at the Patria. There were some much better Hungarian roads on this leg, bearing in mind that we kept to local and B categories. Unfortunately, ferries were not set to be avoided by the twatnav, so we had an unplanned ferry trip across the Danube. Weather was warm and dry, very nice for riding but a bit hot in towns. Saw lots of horse and cart combinations, in Hungary and Romania, and the Romanian B roads were good. It was nice to be riding through flat, 'boring' and warm countryside after a few days in the mountains. We got stopped, at the border, by Romanian Customs but they didn't really appear to know why they did it. The posted speed limits seem to be a totally notional restriction, i.e. 90 kmh limit on single carriageways equals 100mph in practice. Quite an uneventful day, really, just getting from A to B. Lots of police on the roads in both countries, but people are very good at flashing you warnings. Best moment today? Coming up behind a woman with bright blue hair, riding a bicycle, only to find out, when we got closer she was a young Romanian cop with  huge nightstick, lol! The Hotel Arizona is OK, free wifi and well cheap beer, but there was no water when we arrived, "Problem of city, not hotel!" but meaning we were unable to shower on arrival. The water came on at about 22.00, so we should be OK in the morning.

Today he has a knackered cooker in his cart, last night it was full of catalytic converters and cable from the railway.

The bikes on the ferry

Two bikes, miles and miles of sweetcorn!

Two bikes, miles and miles of sweetcorn!

You can see it's Simon's turn to pay for fuel, Rod has over filled his bike and let it over flow on to the floor while he has a smoke.

26/7 Tuesday

The B77 from Allersdorf to Krenhof

Leaving Hotel Wasserfall

Leaving Hotel Wasserfall

Today really made us aware of why Southern Austria is such a popular destination for bikers. On our route today, taking us from the Grossglocknerstrasse to Pecs in Hungary, we stuck to our rule of using motorways only when essential, apart from the first and last days of the tour when we need to really munch the miles. Today's ride, like all the others, was planned back in January using what looked like 'good' roads on maps. Whatever has gone before, we rode two roads today that eclipsed them all; the B99 from Radstadt to Mauterndorf and the B77 from Judenburg to Koflach. The B99 was brilliant because it had an excellent surface and loads of flowing, sweeping bends, but was a particularly great experience as we followed a very fast local in a car, reaching speeds of over a ton. He obviously knew the road like the back of his hand and, apart from some blind, tighter corners at the top of the mountain, we felt totally safe keeping up with him. Danke Sehr, Johanne! We stopped for a fag and a chat at Mauterndorf, both agreeing that this was probably the best ride we'd ever had, better even than the N260 from Le Seu to Sort, in Spain, which we both loved. Then we encountered the B77 and can't really express how fantastic it was - it really was the dog's danglies. Austria, we love you XXX. We rode through Slovenia to Hungary, sticking to small B or local roads. Hungary seemed like a very poor cousin compared to Austria and, to a great extent Slovenia, too. The roads in Hungary seemed very tired, with tar having leached through the surface on many roads, whilst others had appalling ruts and potholes. As we arrived in one fairly poor-looking village, it seemed obscene to find English hoardings advertising luxury houses and apartments for sale at a "Luxury Golf Resort Development." We also came across a very skinny stray dog in the road, lucky we didn't have a cage or we would have picked him up. Later on, we saw a little Dachsy, in really good condition, running along the road miles from anywhere. We'd have grabbed him, too. The highlight of our trip into Hungary was seeing a motorcyclist stopped by the police, one of whom was a six-foot blonde amazon who was nonchantly smoking a cigarette whilst writing out a ticket. Will Romanian roads be generally even worse than these? To be fair, the last 50 miles or so, approaching Pecs, had good surfaces and visibility so could be ridden at well over the legal speed limit. In contrast to the impoverished looking countryside we'd traversed earlier, Pecs seemed like a really wealthy town. It has a lot of churches and a lot of tourists but, at present, we don't know what it's attractions are. It may seem Philistine, but we were only there as a convenient place to eat, shit and sleep, on our way to the Transfaragasan Pass. Having said that, the Hotel Patria where we stayed, was much more opulent than anywhere else we've spent the night, or are likely to, on this tour. They let us park our bikes under the canopy at the front of the Hotel, adjacent to the reception desk, which was very nice of them. Final thought for today - the Transfagarasan will need to be as special as it's supposed to be, if it is to be a better road than those we rode today!!!!!

We have arrived! Parked under the canopy at the Hotel Patria.

25/7 Monday

Whatever happened, this was going to be a long day in the saddle, as it involved Italian 'Nationales' and lots of small, mountain roads.The main road through Sondrio to the start of the Via Stelvio was very busy, so progress was slow. The Stelvio Pass itself was really spectular and exceeded our expectations. On the way up, we noticed the Gavia Pass going off to the right, which one of the old Italian bikers, at the hotel, hadb said was his favourite road. It was nice to do the Stelvio in dry weather although it was very cold around the summit, with lots of snow around. The descent was really good fun, although we did get overtaken by two English guys on ZZR 1400s who were really going for it. We were heading for the Grossglocknerstrasse, in the Hohe Tauern Austria, which was the third of our four target passes for this year's tour. En route, howrever, having cocked-up around Bolzano, we accidently found two additional passes which we felt matched the Stelvio and bettered the Splugenpass. These were the Passo di Sella and the Passo di Campolongo, between Bolzano and Cortina d'Ampezzo. Nearly the whole ride from Cortina to Lienz was on good, twisty roads, as was the remaining route to the Grossglocknerstrasse pay-station. We had dropped a bollock, though, as we had thought our hotel - the Wasserfall in Fusch an der Grossglocknerstrasse - would have been within the toll section of the road, but we were to discover that it wasn't.Once you've paid your toll, you can ride between the toll stations all day, if you wish.Unfortunately, the hotel was north of the pay-to-ride section, so we bought our tickets at about 20.00 and only got to ride the Grossglockner once, from South to North, and ended up riding in the dark.As we ascended, it got very cold with a bitter wind. We took a couple of photos of some nearby snow-clad peaks, little realising that, as we reached the higher points of the road, we would find the mountain covered in quite fresh snow. The ploughed banks having begun to melt earlier in the day, the road surface was covered in water, in many places, with temperatures now around freezing. As dusk turned to night, this made our ride demanding.

During our descent, we caught up with two Swedish bikes which later turned up at our hotel. The guys, riding a ZX12 and a Blackbird, were on their first big tour. They'd ridden up from Vienna, that day, and they were on there way to the Czech Republic.

The last rays of sun on one of the peaks.

24/7 Sunday

In theory, Sunday should have been a comparatively easy day, apart from the strenuous nature of the Splugenpass. We travelled on minor roads from Germany, through a bit of Austria into Liechtenstein and then on to Switzerland and Splugen. We had intermittent rain on the way to the Pass, but reached it via an excellent bit of twisty Alpine road, which in many ways was more fun than the Splugen Pass itself, particularly in view of the high volume of traffic up there that day. We approached it in quite persistent rain showers and were delighted to be confronted with heavy sleet as we neared the summit. The traffic was really irritating, with cagers, of various nationalities, having no regard for bikers. However, once we were on the descent into Italy, the sun came out and by the time we reached the lower slopes it was really warm. The Hotel Trieste, in Morbegno, was charming and they garaged our bikes. Unfortunately, because we arrived there fairly early (for us), we had too long for beer!

It was encouraging to see a group of 'senior' Italian bikers on there own tour. We had a proper Italian menu for dinner.






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Splugen pass, this is what we were here for!









Hotel Trieste Morbegno

The street outside the hotel. Proper olde Italian.



23/7 Saturday







We both started the day with a Looza!



 We awoke to horrendously heavy rain, with no hint of let-up. After a most ungenerous breakfast, we loaded the bikes and set-off across the wet cobbles for Friedrichshafen, on the north shore of the Bodensee (Lake Constance).At nearly 450 miles, it was going to be a long trip, so the wet weather didn't exactly fill us with joy.



Another Looza



We rode down to Luxembourg on motorways, crossing into Germany on some of it's excellently surfaced A and B roads. As we entered Luxembourg on the motorway, we made the mistake of stopping for petrol at the first services south of Belgium. It was absolutely manic, with marshals controlling the queues to the pumps, which werte taking 20 minutes from entering the service area to clearing the cash kiosks. We did come on some excellent roads through the Vosges National Park, which somehow we missed on our last visit to the area.We stayed at the Hotel Schoellhorn, where again the food and service were great but, surprisingly, the card reader was broken, as it was 2 years ago, so they could only accept payments in cash!




Two wet bikes ready for the long drag to Germany.

 

22/7 Friday Evening

The bikes in the entrance hall!

The Chunnel was very busy, probably because it was the start of most schools' summer holiday. Loaded onto a train half an hour later than planned, on arrival in France we had our obligatory fag and coffee at the services. Caffeine and nicotine supplemented and the bikes full of fuel, we set off for our first stop, the Hotel Etna, at Mons.We found it OK, as it's opposite the station, but were unsure where to leave the bikes safely. The hotel provided a very pleasant reception for us, in the form of Virginie, an attractive and buxom young French woman who, thankfully, spoke excellent English - our communication skills being rusty after a year without use. She told us where there was secure bike-parking, just up the road near the Police Station and with 24 hour attendance, but we couldn't find it. In the end, the Patron offered to let us put our bikes in the narrow entrance hall, once the bar and restaurant were shut for the night. They specialised in Greek food, so Simon had a lamb kebab with grilled Mediterranean veg and I had 'hunter's' rabbit. The food and beer were good, if a bit pricey for our budget, but WTF?