david badcock - feature item

Jono and I are planning on doing Faak am See, European Bike Week, we leave at 03:00 on Wednesday 9th September and we are attempting a SS1000 on the way down. You can follow on SPOT.

Distance in Km

Speed, Max was on an unrestricted German Autobhan

Time taken (Zumo always on)

It was a very uneventful run, just kept the wheels rolling. Saw two incidents, one truck driver out for the count but a Policeman and member of the public had it under control and the second was a massive truck overturned on a three lane highway, this looked a mega incident. We travelled 1041 miles in 18 hours seventeen minutes, we were about an hour on the Chunnel Train (after 360 miles this was a good rest and breakfast) and lost 1 hour from Western European Time (BST) to Central European Time. We left home at about 3am and finally got a hotel at about 10pm so with the 1 hour time difference were 18 hours on the move. Excellent weather marked the trip, a few showers but nothing to mention really, dry roads and increasing temperature as the day wore on and we trundled South.

Breakfast on the Train

Lunch at a gas stop in France

Tea in Germany (note the Schubert blow wave!)

With only 200 miles to Doc's Hotel, Klagenfurt we had a flower sniffing ride to look forward to after the miles of Wednesday. Leaving the hotel we soon found breakfast on the road where with the help of a local off duty Police Officer we could plan our ride. Grossglockner Pass with the perfect weather looked the best bet. With a 48kM high alpine road, 36 switch back bends and an ascent of 2,504m this is a Pass to savour. There is an 18 Euro toll and the ride is worth every cent of that. After our ascent of the Grossglockner which way then? What I decided was to go via Lienz and East along the 100 all the way to Greifenberg and then South East to Hermagor and due East to Villach. This is a most scenic ride with fast long sweeping bends and they were perfection for Jono, me and our Glide; Nirvana.

	Breakfast stop		Grossglockner toll booths	Some of those 48 bends
	Last of the snow at the summit		Looks good doesn't it	Jono with fruit sponge and me with Apple Struddle, afternoon tea; not an IBA Day!

Zumo 550 did a brilliant job but got us to the wrong hotel? Not really as our Hotel, Doc's had changed owners on 1st September! But our reservation was still good and with free WiFi I was continuing this brilliant day. As a bonus Carlos, the Italian owner, is the chef and Jono and I had fresh Pasta to die for and for Jono rounded off by their trademark Tiramasu. What a great day.

Rallyed out we had a final Italian meal in our talian owned hotel, Le Perla, and had a relatively early start for home on Sunday, pretty uneventful ride and managed to contact Grinnie and arranged an overnight together in Karlsruhe. Grinnie had stayed here on the way down to Faak and his German friend had told him about a micro-brewery that offered good local dishes.

We rode the next day together and were soon in Calais, spotting this nice two wheel drive Ural. Grinnie speed onto the ferry and Jono and I had our last night on the road in the Car Ferry Ibis Calais. I even had time to clean the worst ravages off the bike. A Daft O'Clock start, as Jono called it, and the 2km ride to the Channel Tunnel was punctuated with a lingering smell of burning. It was like the Tourag morning fires in Morroco. Pulling up at the check in I noticed flames! That smell of burning was the cloth I'd left on the exhaust. The fire was under Jono's floor board and he was not firing on all cylinders at Daft O'Clock and said over the radio; "Shall I get off", We are on fire of course bloody get off! I had my thick winter gloves on, against the morning chill, so pulled the flaming rag off and did a war dance on it at 03:00 at the terminal check in. I bet we see footage on You Tube of the mad English Biker jumping about in the morning if the CCTV captured our adventure.

Our early start was scuppered by the late departure of the train and we only got away at 06:00 but half an hour later were on the M20. Too late to miss the rush but three lanes of constant traffic brought us crashing back to the reality of motoring in the UK and the shear volume of traffic and diabolical lane discipline.