Day 13
Sometimes you just know that your plans will not work out and despite your best efforts everything turns to shit. In most cases, the reason for your plans going sideways is usually the actions of another person, and in my case things were no different.
An asshole is an asshole and there is just no other way to say it.
Due to the actions of an asshole, my time in Krakow was obviously at an end and it was decision time. Either to leave or to assault the asshole. So early one February morning I packed the bike and got ready to leave.
Don’t get me wrong, leaving was not my first choice but the thought of possibly doing some time in a Polish prison because of an asshole who would probably eventually mess his own life up unassisted by me, tempered my proclivities towards violence. I had considered heading to Ukraine but my friend in Galicia talked me in to going back there to await the warmer weather before continuing with my trip.
As I stood finishing my cigar and coffee breakfast, watching the early morning drivers scrape the frost from their car windscreens, I was not relishing travelling from Krakow to Spain in -8 degree weather. However once riding South in the early morning sunshine, I soon forgot about the cold and concentrated on looking for black ice patches in the shaded parts of the road and before I knew it I had reached the Slovakian border where there was still some snow lying on the fields and grass verges but thankfully not on the road.
From there I rode South on the non motorway roads, 12, 11, 64 and 62 all the way to just outside the city of Bratislava where I spent the night at a cheap and cheerful motel in a small town just off the 62 about 15 miles from the city. The hotel cost me under 25 Euros. The road from the Polish border to Bratislava was pretty non-descript, passing through numerous unremarkable towns and villages. I must admit to having been a little disappointed in that part of the journey as I had expected it to have been more scenic that it actually turned out to be.
Day 14
The next day I ventured in to the city of Bratislava but as with most big cities, the historic older part was difficult to reach by road and the one way system there had me going in circles. Two circuits of the one way system were enough for me and not wanting to leave the bike and all my possessions unattended, I headed off along the banks of the Danube river towards Austria.
On the way out of Bratislave I stopped and took a few very poor photos, then I decided to head for Devin castle on the banks of the Danube between Bratislava and Vienna but after an hour of following the signs only to have them disappear at a crucial junction, I gave up and took the 61 South to the Austrian border where the road became the number 9, and before I knew it I had crossed in to Austria..
It was still bitterly cold but this road ran along the very picturesque South bank of the Danube and led to the city of Vienna, a city that I had always wanted to visit but somehow on all of my previous trips in Europe, I had never manged to get to. On arriving in Vienna, once again I found that accessing anything worth seeing would be problematic without walking, so again just like when I was in Bratislava earlier that morning, I stopped, took a couple of mediocre photos and moved on.
I rode South out of Vienna on the number 17. This was a very frustrating road to ride on as every few miles there was a major junction controlled by traffic lights and the road between these junctions was speed restricted to about 70 kph. This combination led to pretty slow progress for me as it lasted for about 20 or 25 kilometres. Once this cleared the road was slightly better and eventually I got on to the 54 and headed for Gratz and this part of the road was scenic and very suited to riding a bike.
Again, staying off the motorways slowed my progress but that choice rewarded me with empty roads and great scenery and as I approached Gratz I stopped for petrol and coffee. By this time it was mid afternoon, however, the skies had been clouding over and by now it was getting darker. On checking the weather forecast I saw that the area that I was panning to stop in overnight, near Klagenfurt, would receive heavy rain the following day. So decided to bite the bullet and hit the motorway and push on in to Northern Italy to avoid the worst of the weather. The petrol station I had stopped at sold the Austrian Motorway vignette, so 7 Euros later I turned on to the motorway just outside Gratz and headed for Italy as the rain started to fall. As I rode over the border from Austria in to Italy a few hours later, it was becoming very dark and cloudy. This road would have been absolutely stunning in bright sunshine but I only caught the occasional glimpse of the surrounding mountains as the light faded and as I descended the pass in to the flat plain of Northern Italy. I eventually arrived in the city of Udine in the dark and in light rain. more than a little cold and tired.
Day 15
Northern Italy is a pretty congested place and the following morning heading East from Udine towards Milan, my progress was severely hampered by the unending stream of Heavy Goods Vehicles that used the smaller roads to avoid the exorbitant motorway tolls. I took the S13 West to Treviso and then as the rain stopped, the SR53 passing North of Venice. This route was also heavily populated by large lorries that were obviously avoiding the expensive motorway toll roads, thus making the journey a little slower that it should have been. Passing the Southern edge of Lake Garda on the SR11 the weather improved from overcast to partly sunny, lifting both the temperature and my mood. However, the road did not improve much and the number of large lorries using it did not diminish. The plan was to head South after Lake Garda and pass through Cremoa and Piacenza to skirt around Milan to the South however, I missed the road sign and before I knew it I was well on the way to the North of Milan. Eventually, I reached the centre of Milan where I stopped for a coffee break and like Vienna the previous day, I found it to be a lovely city but unfortunately I just had no free time to explore it.
I then rode through the centre of Milan and I eventually found my way out of the city by taking the SS494 to Abbiategrasso and then on to Alessandria where I decided to try and find somewhere to stay for the evening. As I was riding along one of the main thoroughfares of the town looking for a hotel I got sideswiped by a blue Fiat that whizzed past my offside between me and the central reserve. How the driver managed to pass between me and the central reserve without mounting it I do not know. Fortunately, as I use soft panniers, they absorbed most of the impact and I managed to keep the bike upright, however the bike got got shunted about 30cm to the right, almost in to the side of the car to my nearside. I managed to keep going and the elderly gentleman who was driving the car had by this time stopped some 50 yards ahead partly on the grass verge and was standing looking at his car, the front wing of which had a sizeable dent in it and a large scrape on the passenger door from the impact with my pannier. However I was unable to stop at the time due to the flow of traffic and when I had circled back around he was gone.
I stopped nearby and examined the bike but he did not return. As there appeared to be no damage to the bike I decided not to push my luck so I left Alessandria heading East and after another hour of riding I found a very quiet farmhouse near Asti to spend the night. On taking the bags from the bike at the farmhouse I saw that the left rear indicator body had been broken where it joins the mounting stem, where the pannier had obviously pushed against it when impacted by the car. A bit of tape was applied as a temporary repair and I sat watching the sun go down thinking how much worse the day could have been.
Day 16
It was sunny and but cold when I set off but the roads were getting twistier and the area less urbanised as I headed South towards Cueno and the Maratime Alps. En route I stopped to take a photo of a small fort or castle that sat on a hilltop near to the road.
Heading on the SS231 to Bra it warmed up a lot and the snow capped mountains of the Maritime Alps appeared in the distance to the South. As I approached Cuneo the mountains dominated the landscape.
On the outskirts of the town, before heading for the Coll De Tende, I stopped for a coffee break.
Unfortunately the Coll De Tende pass was closed and I had to use the tunnel however, the decent on the other side was spectacular. The D6204 is a great road for the bike with lots or hairpin bends cutting through narrow gorges
and scenic towns clinging to the hillsides, as it winds it’s way from the mountains down to the coast.
Riding the smooth twisty roads from the tunnel to the sea and after crossing the Italian and French borders on a couple of occasions I found myself at the Mediterranean Italian seaside town of Ventimigilia. A short ride West along the twisty coast road and I was once again in France and in the town of Menton.
After a quick coffee and cigar break I made an unremarkable motorway jaunt from there to Aix En Provence where I had arranged to meet and spend the evening with a friend. However, what I did find in the city was a beautiful Laverda Jota 180 in the window of a local bike shop.
I was lucky enough to get to ride one of these in 1978, what a monster of a bike!