On 16th April 2019 I left the home of my friend in Galicia for Poland where I intended to keep myself busy for a few months doing some coaching. Usually, when going from A to B I would take the fastest route, however, on this trip I wanted to try some alternatives to the fast but expensive toll motorways that are the norm in most of Europe now and see if I could still maintain some sort of schedule. Therefore, I started off by crossing Spain, passing the cites of Leon, Burgos and Soria using the extensive network of N class roads that exist as an alternative to the motorways.
As a result I was rewarded with some very empty but well surfaced roads that wound their way through some very picturesque scenery eventually landing me in Zaragoza late that afternoon.
Zaragoza was a Spanish city that I had passed by a number of times but one that I had never gotten around to see so that is why I decided to stop there for the evening. Again, the city lived up to my expectations and the architecture of the main Cathedral is quite something to behold up close.
The next morning I set off for France, again with the intention of keeping off the toll paying motorways and having a more leisurely time of if. I managed to do this until I reached the French border but once in France, the level of traffic on the non motorway roads in France quickly put a stop to this idea. Unlike Spain where the older N class routes still run largely parallel to the newer A class motorways, France has largely converted their older N class routes in to toll motorways, especially on the popular routes around the Mediterranean, meaning that there is no longer an N class parallel route and to get anywhere at a reasonable pace and there is no alternative but to use the motorways.
So, with a heavy heart I hit the motorways and by the end of the day I was in Marseilles looking for somewhere to stay. I was last in this city about 30 years ago and I have to say that it has changed a lot since then.
In my opinion, this city is pleasant enough in the touristy areas such as the harbour pictured above, but the rest of the place was very run down and during the night as my bike was parked on the pavement directly outside the front door of my hotel, three immigrants tried to steal it only to b chased off by the nighshift hotel staff. Unfortunately Marseilles has become a crime ridden dump of a city and personally I will never go back.
However, the road out of the city and in to the hills above was very much to my liking and near the top of a pass I managed to get some very good views of the city, which from a distance, looked very inviting and looked much better than when seen up close.
Again, determined to stay off the motorways I took the coast road to the Italian border but making any kind of progress was slow. I stopped in the town of Menton, just short of the Italian border for a coffee break.
I had been to this town a few times before and although it had grown since my last visit around 10 years ago, the sea views were still remarkably pleasant.
I entered Italy suitably refreshed and again continued off the motorways along the coast. This route is obviously very popular with tourists as every few miles there is a small coastal resort town full of hotels and restaurants. This, while very picturesque, again slowed my progress quite considerably due to the urban environment and the associated heavy and slow moving traffic. The only upside was the large number of locals who were zooming about on scooters carving up the traffic like wasps flying around a fresh ice cream.
My usual good sense left me at this point and I joined in the with the scooters in shooting gaps in traffic, filtering stationary traffic at speed against oncoming traffic, overtaking cars on any side I that was able to and joining throngs of two wheeled vehicles well over the stop line at every set of traffic lights. Slicing in and out of traffic on a 250 kilogram bike with luggage pretending that it is a 50 kilogram scooter was fun but on a couple of occasions trying to stop it quickly when one of the aforementioned scooters decided to either stop suddenly for no apparent reason or chicken out of an overtake half way through it, was just a little more than entertaining.
Not really one of my better ideas but fun nonetheless.
Late that afternoon I stopped in a small town just outside of Genoa where I found a small hotel on the beach which was very clean and modestly priced for the area at around 30 Euros. I was given a room with a very pleasant sea view and after a short stroll along the sea front and a long peaceful sit watching the sun set over the Mediterranean, I headed for some well needed sleep.
The following day after opening the French doors on the balcony of my hotel room to see the sun rise over a sparkling bright blue sea, I quickly packed the bike, had a coffee and cigar for breakfast, and set off for Genoa. I rode through Genoa, a quite unremarkable sea port city and headed on to the SS45 road to find some better bike roads among the pine clad Appenine hills that rise above it. After a few hours of ridding on this road which at times was very narrow and very twisty which I loved, absolutely knackered by throwing such a heavy bike around on twisty roads for hours, I stopped somewhere near the town of Bobbio for a well earned coffee break.
Unfortunately, my love of twisty, scenic, rural roads had severely eaten in to my time and I had only covered about 125 miles in 4 hours, so to make some decent progress I was forced to use motorways again. So I joined the motorway at Placenza and headed East towards Venice. Now at this point it is worth mentioning that the toll motorways in Italy are in my experience, the most expensive in all of Europe and for this 250 mile journey it cost me over 30 Euros in toll charges. Thankfully I then entered Slovenia and by the end of the day I had reached the city of Ljubliana and I found a small hotel just North of the city in which to spend the night.
The hotel was very moderately priced at around 30 Euros, clean, and run by an exceptionally nice couple who were most welcoming. I decided to take a trip in to the city as I needed some provisions and in the centre I found a large square full of stalls selling freshly cooked local foods, wines and beers. Naturally, I joined in with the throngs of people indulging themselves as it would have been rude of me not to.
After a restful night in Ljubliana, I headed off for Poland. I was on a bit of a schedule and I had promised to be in Krakow by the end of that day, therefore I had no choice but to again hit the motorways. I don’t particularly like using motorways but there is no denying that to cover anything like 500 miles in a day they are the only way to travel and on the way I passed through both Hungary and Slovakia. That days riding was long and not particularly enjoyable as I passed by lots of interesting places that I could see from the motorways and that I wanted to stop at. However, I did make some mental notes and I am certain that during my travels I will come back for a closer look.
By late afternoon I had arrived at my destination in Krakow and for the time being my travels were over.