Day 74
As you are all aware my travels, like those of many others, have been restricted by measures brought in by Governments around the world. Until now such measures have had little direct impact on my travels other than not being able to head East out of Europe. On this journey these measures directly impacted me and my ability to travel as I usually do. The reason that I am writing about this is that as a consequence I made certain choices about my journey that I would perhaps not otherwise have made. I want to make it clear that I am not writing about this to start a discussion about these matters as I do not think that this is an appropriate place to do so, but solely to tell my story about what happened on my trip and why I made certain choices about my travels.
So that having been said, I left the home of my friend in Galicia mid morning on Thursday 6 January 2022. I was about 14 degrees and the sun was making an occasional appearance. I took my usual route from here, the N120 East and heading for the city of Leon. As I got closer it got much colder and the fog settled in. I rode for about 60 miles in fog and it was not pleasant. As I past Leon and made my way to Burgos the fog lifted but it was overcast and still cold. Nothing much changed when I had arrived at my destination for the evening, a small hostel just east of the city that was very cheap at 14 Euros per night. It was about five in the evening and it would shortly be dark. There was another traveller, a pilgrim walking the Camino De Santiago, waiting for the owner to arrive and open up when I got there.
The hostel was very clean but a few minutes after checking in the owner informed both of us that she was unable to get the heating to work and as it was a public holiday there was no likelihood of getting an engineer to come out to look at it. This also meant that we had no hot water for showers. Neither of us were in the mood to try to find alternative accommodation at that late hour so we both reluctantly spent a cold night in our bunks wrapped up in the blankets provided augmented by our own sleeping bags.
Day 75
The next morning I decided not to have a freezing cold shower and headed off about 8 o’clock in the morning and it was -1 celsius. There was a dusting of overnight snow in the fields and rooftops but the roads were clear of it. As it got lighter unfortunately it was still overcast and it stayed very cold. I rode East on the N232 and after a few hours stopped for petrol between Burgos and Zaragoza. Beside it was a small cafe that served traditional Spanish tapas, so needing a bit of warmth I had a hot cup of coffee and some Chorizo sausage for breakfast.
By this time the skies had started to clear and although very sunny it remained cold. As I rode East from Zaragoza on the NII in I the direction of Lleida the road started climbing and the temperature started dropping, by early afternoon the roads were deserted, the skies were cloudless, and the temperature had struggled up to about 4 degrees celsius.
By late afternoon I had arrived at my destination for the evening, a hotel in a small town south of Girona. I had ridden over 400 miles (650 km) in very cold weather and I was in need of a hot shower and by that time it still sunny and a very pleasant 17 degrees. The hotel was very reasonable at 27 Euros for the night and it was nice to have a sound sleep in a warm hotel room.
Day 76
The next morning I was again up early and I found a light frost had formed on my bike cover overnight. Again it was around freezing or just below but the skies were clear and I hoped for a warmish sunny day. I headed off towards France and my destination for that day was the town of Menton on the French and Italian border. As I have ridden over the Spanish/French border many times I know that the roads here are heavily congested and it takes a few hours to do just 50 miles (80 km), therefore I decided to use the motorway. Along this part of the Mediterranean coast it is the only way to travel at any decent pace. So I rode North on the AP7 motorway to the border and then on to the A9, A54, and A8 motorways in France to my destination for that day. It was a reasonably pleasant but largely boring journey and the cost of the motorway tolls in France was about 20 Euros in total for about 375 miles (600 km). By late afternoon I had ridden nearly 400 miles (650 km) but I was off the motorway and sitting sipping a coffee by the Mediterranean sea.
I spent the night at a small hotel in the centre of town. It was a little overpriced at 40 Euros per night as most hotels in touristy locations are and I had to park my bike in the street opposite the hotel overnight, not something that I was comfortable doing but again, when needs must, I do it.
Days 77 and 78
Since my departure from Galicia the temperature had never gotten above 5 degrees celsius apart from my last evening in Spain where it reached a balmy 17 degrees. I had been warm enough but despite wearing inner gloves and fully padded Gortex winter/wet weather gloves, my hands have always been cold. As one of my objectives on my trip is to see how well my bike in standard trim performs over such a long distance I try not to accessorise it. Therefore I do not have heated grips nor handle bar protectors fitted to it. In the late 1970’s when I was much younger my friends and I all rode our bikes in the winter. There were no such things as heated grips in those times so we used to improvise with what we could to solve this problem. I decided to do the same thing. I bought a 3 litre plastic bottle of a soft drink, a couple of long bendable foam strips and some black tape. I cut the bottom from the empty bottle and I then cut this in half. I taped the neck part of each half of the bottle to the handlebar. I then twisted the foam strips around the bar ends and bent them to support the other end of the bottle. I taped the foam strips to the bottle and Voila! home made hand protectors all for less than 5 Euros.
So, with my bike sporting my new hand protectors I set off from Menton for Italy. Riding along the Mediterranean coast in Italy is much the same as that in France, the only way to get anywhere quickly is by motorway. However, in Italy the motorway tolls are much more expensive than in France. In France it works out about 30 kilometres per Euro but in Italy it is less than 10 kilometres per Euro. I got on to the Eastbound A8 motorway just outside of Menton and headed to Italy. My destination for that evening was a hotel in Parma that I had booked the previous evening so I took the E80 motorway in Italy and by mid day I had left it near to La Spezia but this time the tolls were over 30 Euros for 170 miles (270 km) Ouch! I was now heading away from the coast on the SS62 in the direction of Parma. As the twisty road rose up in to the mountains the amount of snow lying on the ground grew and the temperature fell. Although it was cold and overcast, the sun would occasionally break through and light up the snow covered landscapes.
As I reached the highest point on this road, the Cisa pass, the snow covered everything, including the trees. In places, the snow had fallen from the trees on to previously cleared roads making it quite challenging to negotiate with a fully laden bike.
By about 3 o’clock in the afternoon I had reached my hotel in Parma and was looking forward to a hot shower after a cold day of riding nearly 300 miles (500 km). As I was in the process of checking in the receptionist asked for my “Green Pass” which was apparently some vaccination card system employed in Italy. I told him that I did not have such a thing and he told me that I would not be able to stay in the hotel. We had a short discussion about there being no mention of this requirement when I booked but it made no difference, I was not allowed to stay in the hotel. I had researched for my trip and I knew that such restrictions were in place in Austria and Slovakia but there had been no mention of this in the Italian Government information that I looked at.
I made my way to a nearby McDonald’s to get a coffee and try and come up with a plan as to what to do next. I entered and bought a coffee but when I wanted to sit down inside I was told that in order to sit inside I would have to show my “Green Pass”. Not having such an item, I was ushered outside of the building as this was the only place that a person without a “Green Pass” was allowed to consume anything that they had just bought from inside the premises without having a “Green Pass”. However, the insanity of that contradiction did not appear to register with anyone except me.
As I sat outside in the cold and drank my coffee I realised that in this country doing anything that required to be indoors without a “Green Pass” was not going to be an option for me. I knew that similar dystopian measures were already in place in Austria and Slovakia but I had made allowances for this in my travel plans as I had intended to cross both countries in one day. My options at this point were to return to France or to find somewhere to camp for the evening and for reasons that will be obvious to any rational and or sane person reading this story, neither was a viable option for me. It was now 4 o’clock in the afternoon and I decided that I had no alternative but to get back on the bike and ride overnight to Krakow, my final destination. The distance from Parma to Krakow was about 800 miles (1600 km) 1and if I wanted to get there as soon as possible, I would need to ride on the motorways for the entire journey. I used the motorways all the way and I knew that it was going to be very expensive but fortunately, when I reached the toll booth just South of Tarvisio on the A23 one of the gates was open, so not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I rode through without having to pay.
So I set off for Northern Italy and the Austrian border which I reached at 10 o’clock at night. As I was using the motorways I knew to expect a very hefty bill at the exit toll just before the Austrian border. However, on reaching it there was a toll gate with no barrier so I drove through and saved myself about 60 or more Euros. Then the insanity struck again. My journey through Austria in the early hours of the morning was identical to riding through Italy, very dystopian. Although I was allowed to enter the petrol stations to pay for my fuel, use the toilet, buy my motorway vignette, and coffees I still had to stand (as there were no seats outside) to drink my coffees. I rode on past Vienna and towards Bratislava in Slovakia. Just as I got in to Bratislava at about four in the morning it started to snow. As the roads became more slippery I slowed. At one point my front tyre became a little squirrelly and began sliding about but it stopped after about 20 seconds. About 5 o’clock in the morning some 50 miles (80 km) East of Bratislava I saw a petrol station and decided to stop to refuel. I braked on the slip road and as I entered the main petrol station my front end was all over the place. I got off the bike and found that the front tyre was flat.
I checked the tyre for any obvious things like nails etc but I could see nothing. I tried putting air in it but it was not inflating. I had no choice but to take off the wheel to see what the problem was. So, there I am at 5 o’clock in the morning in sub zero temperatures pulling the tube out of my tyre in the forecourt of a petrol station on the D1 in Slovakia. Not exactly like I thought my day would have gone but that’s the joys of being a biker.
Once I got the tube out I saw the problem. The valve had ripped out of the inner tube and the rim tape had also snapped.
Not my best photograph but reasonable considering that I had been riding for about twenty two hours and seven hundred miles in near freezing temperatures. At that time in the morning I was at a loss to work out what had happened so I just got out my spare inner tube, put in in the tyre and inflated it. Success! Then with the wheel back on, I refuelled, and I was back on the road by 6 o’clock in the morning. As I headed east towards Zilina it started to get light but the temperature never rose above freezing and it was overcast. I pressed on to the Slovakian/Polish border which I reached at about 9 o’clcok in the morning and from there it was about another 2 hours to Krakow where I had planned to spend the next few months.
From Menton to Krakow by the route I just described took me 27 hours and I covered 1,100 miles (1,800 km) in that time. Needless to say I was glad to arrive in one piece, get a hot shower, and get some well needed sleep. With the exception of the front tyre deflation I had no issues with the bike and the rebuilt engine performed well. Having had some tme to think about it, I think that I now know what happened with the front tyre. I used Putoline trye sealant inside the tubes and when the front tyre initially went a bit squirrelly I think that the tube had been punctured and lost some air before the sealant worked to close the hole. I think the tyre also lost some pressure and thereafter I was unwittingly riding it for a distance on a low enough pressure to break the bead. So when I braked on the petrol station slip road, because the bead was broken, the tyre slipped on the rim. Now because the sealant had come out of the tube, the tube was coated with it, making it stick to the inside of the tyre. Thus, as the tyre rotated on the rim under braking, the tube went with it ripping the vale out. Anyway, bike needed a good clean to get the road salt and dried tyre sealant off of the previously clean engine.
