Travel
Happy bikers Right, at last a bike I look small on
The road ahead from the vision
Europe was represented there. Watched some bands; Purple
Project, a Deep Purple band were good, as was Mallet whose bass player was awesome but had a slight speech impediment which made it very funny when he sang. An Italian HOG Group appeared at breakfast next morning. One of them thought that having his shades on indoors and his helmet on his belt made him look very cool; he was wrong.
There are so many amazing
bikes at this bash that a group of full-on chops riding past hardly raises an eyebrow. I saw one white Victory Vision Street and a black Hammer which with us made only four Victorys out of 100,000 bikes, so it looked like 99,996 people had made the wrong choice. Sitting outside a bar and counting the continuous stream of bikes we calculated that there were about 11 Harleys to one of every other make that ranged from monkey bikes/mopeds to trikes and Jap sports bikes. The bands we heard were slightly disappointing; no better than what you’d expect to hear in a
pub but as it is all free it’s very good value for the money. At breakfast next morning Mr Sunglasses was joined by Mrs Two Pairs and two other sunglass people and Mr Full Leathers - all Italian. They did however have a lot of respect for Jayne who had a bigger bike then any of them. The Ride to Bled was amazing. These were real mountain roads; all tight and twisted, with wonderful views and beautiful mountains.
The Hotel at Radlvljica is lovely, with mountains and blue skies visible from our bedroom balcony.
Bled is postcard pretty with a big lake in the middle and a little church on it. The hotel food and beer were very good, Off to the plateau next, down a
sensational road to a World War 2 memorial for the Yugoslavian resistance which was very moving.
When the mountain roads turned to gravel, things got interesting. Believe me, 12 km on a 400kg bike is challenging but it did it very well, though we got some strange looks from the locals.
Jayne did very well, as in the past she has been nervous of gravel on tarmac. And so on into Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia which is a lovely city with a river running through the centre. It was on the way here that we got overtaken by a local doing about 120mph on his Fireblade, two up with a very pretty pillion. We ran into them later when the sat nav sent us up a cycle way to where a policeman was booking the Blade rider. Meanwhile I had the nerve to out-drag a twist and go scooter at traffic lights though he rode past us at the next red and straight in front of the three lanes of cars coming the other way but he did beat me. A motorway fast blast bought us back to base for a traditional Slovenian meal of errr – Pizza. We rode to Kranska Gora over a 1690m pass with very tight cobbled corners. I made the turns in first gear while slipping the clutch and speculating that mine was probably the first Vision over this pass. It was on the way down the other side that we were overtaken by push bikes going very quickly.
Way to be seen in in Austria
Nearly every pub or cafe had ‘welcome biker’ signs outside. Back at the hotel we enjoyed wine tasting with a coach load of Americans feasting on local food and music – a lovely day. Off to Venice next, setting out in a brilliant dawn with fog in the valley spiked by the odd building or tree sticking through. The ride was good until we
reached Italy which is very busy. Foul toilets and drivers, dreadful roads and mental clowns on mopeds. We eventually reached Mestre very hot and pissed off. The first hotel was crap and then the sat nav threw a wobbly and sent us into a car park. It was here that we
The ROAD 37
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