I get by with a little Alps from my Friends
by Gary Theron
It’s a very special feeling as you realise that your back & front wheels are both locked, and that you’re sliding inexorably across the ice towards a sheer drop, blocked only by a two foot high piece of Armco. It’s the sort of feeling that has you waking up in the night for weeks to come, and that could be marketed as a highly effective constipation cure. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Alp me Rhonda
So it’s no good living in the UK if you don’t avail yourself of the advantages. One of these is the relative proximity of the Alps, and that’s something too good to pass up. So the Internet was duly scoured for recommendations for The Best Biking Roads In The World. Predictably there’s a lot of nonsense to be found, but after sifting through it, a clear number of championship contenders emerged. Tony (my father) agreed to join the trip on the back of the BMW R1200GS, and tickets were summarily booked. Departure day finally arrived, to be greeted by the news that the channel tunnel was closed due to a fire. Not to be dissuaded, we booked a place on a SeaFrance ferry, and set off for Dover harbour, managing to scrape the pegs before we’d even hit Wrotham, 10km down the road. After the expected wait caused by the resulting passenger overflow we finally boarded, and quick as a flash rewarded ourselves with a Stella Artois or two. There’s a special sort of banter reserved for bikers, perhaps fuelled by the secret realisation that theirs is a passion like no other, and by this stage we’d chalked up five new mates already. It’s a generally undisclosed fact that the actual biking is secondary to the immense value of a few beers with new mates in foreign circumstances. The ferry spat us out onto French soil, and we were OFF. It was my first experience of driving on the wrong side of the road, and Tony was charged with continually remind me of the fact via our fancy new Bluetooth intercoms. Due to the delay with the ferry, it was getting dark and we still had about 200km of riding to get to the first night’s stop in Belgium. This was despatched with no real fuss until about 10km from our destination, when we were forced to stop for petrol. After passing an apparently deserted petrol station or two, we stopped at one where a car was parked. It drove off as we stopped, leaving us wondering how to go about refuelling. Lesson One: Self-Service Petrol Stations. No, I’m not talking about the UK variety, I’m talking about the sort where you insert a credit card into the pump, after which it allows you to refuel, and subsequently debits you the relevant amount. This seemed very clever indeed to two chaps from the Free State. Our spirits (and the fuel tank) replenished, we set off for Christo’s place. Christo is the brother of my old mate Corné, and he & his wife run a B&B in the town of Geraardsbergen. Unfazed by the late hour he insisted on taking Tony & I out into town for a beer. We requested something Belgian, and between Christo & the bartender they sorted us out properly. Sitting at the bar, listening to Christo’s (in his own words) Afri-Vlaams accent, we seemed a world away from the earlier ferry mayhem in Dover. After a tour of Geraardsbergen by night we returned home and went straight to bed. Rather rudely as it turns out, because Christo’s wife Annick was in the lounge, waiting up to meet us. Profuse apologies abounded the following morning. After a breakfast including the traditional Geraardsbergen treat of mattetart, we were back on the GS, and on our way to Germany.
Around Liege the sky grew weary of its surplus billion
gallons of water, and promptly unleashed them on eastern Belgium. We sought refuge at a motorway
service station, only to see one motley group of bikers after another
arrive, absolutely drenched.
At this point I discovered that my riding pants had a large tear in
the crotch, just waiting to welcome in the freezing rain. Fortified with coffee we set off
once again, across the border into Germany, on the highway towards
Cologne. Then we hit The
Roadblock. The polizei had closed off the
motorway, so there we sat on the bike, cold rain pouring down on us, and
unable to go anywhere. At
least we were dry inside the biking kit, save for a certain, highly-valued
part of my anatomy getting steadily colder in its puddle of freezing
rain. The traffic eventually
opened up, and a while later we arrived in Dollendorf at Sliders Guest
House, to a few of the nicest beers in history. If you ever see Oettinger Lager in
the shops, buy a case. Trust
me.
Grüne
Hölle
The Germans can be accused of many things, but building poor
roads is not one of them. We
now found ourselves a few hours behind schedule with 700 km to do, and
mostly unrestricted autobahns
ahead of us. Tony took the
helm, and promptly had us singing along at around 200 km/h. Even at that pace, you’ve got to
stay aware of what’s in your mirrors, because every now and again Fritz
arrives in the fast lane in his AMG, and he’s doing significantly more
than 200. At a fuel stop in
Pforzheim the GPS showed Tony’s speed to have been 197 km/h, which
frustrated him no end. I took
over, and managed to pip him by the requisite 3 km/h to register a round
200. We (predictably) made
good progress, and had to stop near Ulm for fuel again. Lesson 2: How to pay for a
pee. My very basic German
extends to ordering cold beer and specifying milk with my coffee. As a result it does not cover the
instructions for the eventuality (and crime against humanity in my
opinion) that one may actually have to pay for a leak. A friendly passer-by saw our
desperation and translated the instructions on the turnstiles. Bladders empty, the tank full, and
the tear in my pants now stretching from crotch to knee, we headed out of
Germany and into Austria. The
picture postcards of the Tyrol were nothing like the reality that greeted
us. We had the mercury hovering around 1 degree, the rain had returned,
and darkness was falling. The
last 100km through the foothills of the Alps felt like an eternity. We arrived at the Sölderhof in
Sölden cold and miserable, despite the high-speed joys of earlier in the
day. The hotel pub soon
sorted things out, and the senses of humour were fairly quickly
restored. More importantly,
the concierge provided me with industrial-strength thread with which to
repair my pants, and thus restore some sense of equilibrium to the
world. The result was highly
effective, if a little inelegant.
Alp me if you can I’m falling
down
Monday’s
weather was more of the same, and not seeing any point in belting over
high-altitude Alpine passes in the rain, we decided to have a quiet
day. We decided to take the
GS for a gentle ride up to the Rettenbach glacier, and it turned out to be
quite amazing. After many
slow twists and turns (and about a kilometre of altitude) we popped out
above the cloudline, and straight into the snowline. It’s an obscure feeling, sitting
on a bike at the edge of a glacier at 2836m above sea level as the
snowflakes begin to fall.
Tony’s hands started freezing, and we noticed the temperature had
dropped to -2.5⁰. Then onwards through the highest
road tunnel in Europe to have a look at the Tiefenbach glacier, complete
with working ski-lifts and no customers. We returned to Sölden, and then
took an experimental ride up the northern side of the Timmelsjoch Pass,
but satisfied ourselves that the peg-scraping would best be postponed by a
day.
Sunday
dawned bringing more of the same miserable weather, so we decided to clear
the pass and see if Italy had any better weather to offer. We crawled up the Timmelsjoch,
getting ever colder as we climbed higher. At the 2000m mark it began
snowing, and the temperature fell back to -2.5⁰. We persevered, albeit slowly,
until the toll gate at the top.
By the time we got there it was snowing heavily, and the attendant
was extremely reluctant to take our money. His firm assertion that motorrad was sehr gefährlich in these
conditions was understood loud and clear. After a short argument between the
brain and the ego, the brain triumphed and we decided to retreat down the
pass. We made about 10 metres
before it became abundantly clear that this had been the right
decision. Visibility was down
to 20 metres, and the only other vehicle we saw was a truck sporting snow
chains. We slowed to just
above walking pace, using the whole road to avoid the ice that had settled
everywhere. We realised the
8km down the steep pass would take us at least an hour. Just outside the village of
Obergurgl some sheep wandered into the road ahead of us, and I gingerly
tried to bring us to a stop using the back brake only. It locked on the ice, and the ABS
went into a highly-ineffective cycle of lock/unlock/lock/unlock, and we
just kept moving down the pass.
Some judicious terrified
use of front brake eventually halted us, but my heart rate remained
sky-high. Five minutes later
we were edging across a bridge when both the front and back brakes locked
completely, and the bike just kept sliding. We slid to a slow, if panicky stop
against the Armco, only too aware of the sheer drop beyond. By this point our Maslowian
requirements had dropped five full levels to pure Survival. We continued tiptoeing down the
pass, Tony having to get off the bike around some of the hairpins to allow
me to negotiate the ice on my own.
A snowplough came charging up the pass, clearing the other side of
the road. A good while later
we made it back down into Sölden safely, with a huge helping of
humility. We realised that
Rossi himself couldn’t make it over that pass successfully, so we set off
northwards through the Ötztal valley, out of the Alps towards Imst, to
return back southwards via the Reschen Pass into northern Italy. We passed through the cobblestone
streets of Malles Venosta, and came to a stop at the northern foot of the
famous Stelvio
Pass for a recuperative coffee.
The road from Stelvio to Davos was claimed, in an episode of
Top Gear, to be The Best Driving Road In The World. A big claim to live up to. Finally blessed with perfect
conditions, Tony and I began the assault on the 48 northern hairpins,
climbing above the snow line to the 2757m summit. Tony’s voice came over load and
clear on the intercom: “You just watch the road! Leave the scenery to
me.”
What
a brilliant road, with the southern descent being even better. A day that had started with such a
scare was turning into one of the finest. The sky was an icy pale blue,
there was no wind to speak of, and the BT-020 tyres were sticking to the
tarmac like Bob Mugabe to power.
We pushed on through Bormio, and decided to make for the little
tax-free
ski resort of Livigno, right on the Swiss border. On arrival in Livigno we settled
in at what would be an aprčs-ski watering hole in winter, and ordered two
large beers. Our man returned
with a pair of one litre behemoths.
I think I like Livigno.
Sitting on the edge of the lake with a
beer, the magnificent Jungfrau and the Eiger looming over our right
shoulders, the world was a good place.
The Vosges and the
Battlefields
We
bade farewell to the Alps and headed north through Bern and
Basel. At one point we passed through a
long tunnel, entering the tunnel in cloudy, misty weather. On the other side of the tunnel
(and presumably a mountain), the weather was brilliant. Amazing how two minutes can make
such a difference. On
re-entering France I was all ready to brandish my hard-earned Schengen
visa, the stamp that had cost me hours of pain and £105 to procure. Nope, just a drive-through and
that was it. No stop, no
formality, and me feeling a little resentful towards the French Embassy in
London.
Each trip yields a surprise. That one thing that ends up being far better than expected. As we left the Alps we resigned ourselves to the exciting riding being over, but we couldn’t have been further from the truth. On the advice of my French mate Serge, we headed for the Vosges mountains, right on the German border. These wooded hills straddle Alsace & Lorraine, just southwest of Strasbourg, and what a fantastic find! Mr Clarkson & friends may revise their opinion if they pay this place a visit. We climbed up out of Belfort, through the forests up to the Col du Ballon, and down into the village of Saint-Maurice-sur-Moselle. The closest South African parallel I can draw is Sabie-Graskop-Hazyview. Mile after mile of magnificent forest mountain roads, up above the forests, down into the forests again, and through tight hairpin after fast sweeper. A proper peg-scraper’s delight. One of the bends caught Tony by surprise. He was looking at the forests as I flipped from a hard left to a hard right sweeper, and I mean hard right. With the GS right over on its ear his comments were ringing in my ears. The roads were so good that we abandoned the GPS and just arbitrarily followed our noses, completing pass after pass. The Col de la Schlucht officially wins the award of Best Biking Road Of The Trip. With only the helmets preventing the smiles from falling right off our faces, we eventually headed off away from the mountains, through St. Dié, and onwards to Verdun for the night.
The Battle of Verdun (1916) resulted in the deaths of a quarter of a million people, with more than a million wounded. We rode out to the battlefields the next morning to have a look. These numbers transcend our ability to quantify them intuitively, but to see the cratered soil and the row after row of anonymous gravestones is very humbling indeed. The Douaumont ossuary holds the remains of 130 000 unidentified French & German soldiers, and together with the memorial forms a very moving site. It beggars belief that less than 25 years later these memories were forgotten and the nonsense was allowed to start again. The sheer joy we’d just experienced over the last few days contrasted starkly with the abject horror that these poor souls must have endured. We still had miles to do, so off we headed onto the péage (toll road), and headed northwest for Calais.
On Friday morning, 15 July 1916, as part of the Battle of
the Somme, 3153 men of the South African Brigade entered a small wood,
nearly 1 km square (Bois Delville) near the village of
Longueval. They were ordered
to hold the wood “at all costs”.
For 6 days and 5 nights they were shelled continuously from three
sides by a much larger force.
Six days later 143 men walked out of that wood. There were no prisoners. After the battle, one lone oak
tree remained of the wood.
Delville Wood represents to
South African military history what Gallipoli represents to the Aussies,
and given how close we were to the site, we decided to pay it a
visit. The wood has been
purchased from France by the SA government. The memorial includes a small
replica of the fort started in Cape Town in 1652, and the French and South
African flags fly side by side.
Standing in the quiet, cool autumn morning amidst the beautiful
trees, we could just make out the remnants of trenches and shell
holes. It was almost
inconceivable that this had been the scene of mustard gas, shrapnel, and
blood-rusted barbed wire.
Madness. The SA
Military History Journal says “As a feat
of human daring and fortitude the fight is worthy of eternal remembrance
by South Africa and Britain, but no historian's pen can give that memory
the sharp outline and the glowing colour which it
deserves.”
We left Longueval, riding past the New Zealand Memorial, and
armed with the belief that speeding fines wouldn’t follow us to the UK,
gave the GS a bit of welly.
Given the speed, Calais appeared in short
order.
Another sociable ferry ride followed with some more new
friends, and before long the magnificent white cliffs of Dover hove into
view, representing a wonderfully symbolic defiant barrier to the rest of
Europe. We made short work of
the remaining 80km to Sevenoaks in Kent, and were joyfully reunited with
my wife & daughters.
So what did we learn? That bikers are universally friendly. That the only country in western Europe with no toll roads sometimes charges for a wee. That Schengen visas are probably unnecessary. That life with a frozen crotch is unpleasant. That ice is slippery and dangerous. That there’s nothing that compares to the feeling of a bike leaned right over, sweeping through forests or Alpine passes. That the Nurburgring is often closed, and that I’ll have to go back to do it properly. And that touring with a good mate on a good bike is one of the best ways you can spend a week. Guaranteed.
