Got back lastnight/thismorning after a gruelling long-haul slog from Belgium. Open face helmet all the way and riding a hardtailed bike with a crap homemade seat I figure this was pretty hardcore.
The bike clocked up 3,300miles which it seemed to cope with fine, and doesn't sound any more rattily for it (though it may not be possible for it to sound any more rattly than it already does). My one problem with it besides some wet-weather and puncture issues was that it's been spitting out unburnt oil from one of the cylinders at an alarming rate. At one point I filled the bike with 2 and half litres of oil to get it to the top of the dipstick (the sump holds 3.1 litres!!). I gave up measuring the oil level after that and instead used my remaining couple of litres before I hit the alps where I figured the motor would have the hardest time with all the mountain passes. I would say most of the trip was done with less than half a sumpfull of oil in the bike. After I used the last of my 5litres of oil I took some advice from the rex school of thought on bikes and lubrication bought a 1 litre bottle of aldi brand vegetable (cooking) oil which I tipped in the engine whilst riding back home through Germany. I figured any oil was better than no oil, and I wasn't about to spend a tenner on a litre of overpriced petrol station crap. Before anyone slates me for causing terminal engine damage to the bike I should point out that the motor was already fucked.
Ok so here's some pictures and a bit of boring story to go with. I didn't take any scenery shots because I couldn't be bothered.
My first night's camping stop off, a hillock overlooking vast farmlands in central Germany. I was pretty chuffed about that spot as it was far more pleasant than camping in the forest.
So the following day I set off in high spirits with the goal of making it to the north-east Czech republic for the Extreme Obscene music festival. The first blow came when I got pulled over at a police roadside vehicle check. The German police were appalled by the state of the bike and spent 10minutes going over it pointing out things they didn't like - I kept pointing out that these things were totally legal in Britain (I may have been lying a bit). In the end the sticking point was the oil issue. The whole rear left side of the bike was covered in it, and the moment I stopped it started dripping all over the road. I took the line that the problem had started after setting off from England, and there was nothing I could do about it till returning home. I had to wait till the Boss finished bollocking some other motorist for him to come and also be appalled by the bike. Their main problem seemed to be that my rear tyre was also covered in oil, but in the end they let me ride off. It had cost me over half an hour. I figure they realised there wasn't really anything they could do other than take the bike off me which would be more trouble than it was worth. In heindsight I missed a good photo oportunity.
Less than an hour later I more trouble:
Whether or not to take spare inner-tubes had been a last minute dilemma for me but in the end I decided against it since I've only ever had one puncture before and it was a real slow one. I think the broken valve stem was not the cause of the puncture, but the result of riding along at 45mph for a few miles before a) I realised I had a puncture and b) I found an appropriate place to stop. The likely cause of the flat was probably a bogus repair I'd made to the inner-tube whilst previously fitting the tyre and nicking the tube with a tyre lever.
I get free European breakdown cover with Carol Nash so I decided I might as well put it to good use. The lady on the other end of the phone assured me she'd try to make sure whoever came out for me would bring a replacement inner-tube. The guy that came out was was given the wrong directions and took ages to find me, and whilst waiting an old geezer pulled up to see what was up. I don't speak great German but he explained he had an 18" tube at home and he'd go an get it for me. I wasn't ungreatful for the offer but since I was expecting a recovery truck any minute I tried to decline, but he went and fetched the tube anyway. Another missed photo opportunity, as this guy was really cool. Whilst about to fit the tube we noticed some of the metal threads in the tyre were sticking out inwards! I was all for snipping off the protruding wire and trying to stick them back in the rubber so they wouldn't pierce the inner tube, but my German friend seemed to think this was a bad idea. Were I at home I would have tried to reuse the tyre, but since I was in the middle of nowhere I heeded to common sense. It was at this time the recovery bloke arrived and had the situation explained to him by the old geezer. Recovery bloke set about phoning around for a new tyre, whilst old geezer said he had an 'Enduro' tyre which he went off to fetch. Whilst he was gone recovery bloke eventually found somewhere nearby with an appropriate sized tyre, however the catch was it was a different size and make from the deceased one. He explained the garage wouldn't fit the tyre for me because they could get into trouble due to the German TuV rules. So I would have to fit it myself. At this point old geezer turned up with a proper full-on motocross tyre that was already heavily worn with only small stumpy nobbles remaining. This made up my mind I decide to go with recovery bloke. The old guy was a star though and I was certainly not ungrateful for his massive genorossity and time spent helping me.
Recovery bloke unloading the bike at the tyre center.
Without going into details here I hashed up the fitting of the new tyre and pierced the new inner-tube in two seperate places. I hereby renounce all claims of being able to fit tyres, and fully admit to total incompetance at that particular art.
Me looking knackered and filthy after wrestling with tyre levers. Repairs were effected to the tube(that turned out to be bogus) and the tyre went back on so I set off having wasted basically a full day.
15minutes later whilst riding down the Autobahn I got that wobbly sensation and my heart sank. The pushbike pump I'd grabbed out the garage at home turned out to have the wrong end on it so I had noway of reinflating the tyre to get off the motorway. I was thoroughly fed up by this point, and having neglected to drink anything all day due to a)not having any water and b)being caught up in all the action, I was also thoroughly dehydrated. It was getting late and in despair I scrambled up the bank at the side of the motorway and set-off walking through a farm to a nearby small-town/village in the hope of at least finding water(I did, from a kebab shop which was the only place open). I'd hoped to find a petrol station and see about getting one of those emergancy repair kit things, but no such luck. Walking back I spied a house with a bunch of lightly modified cars outside, and chanced knocking on the door and seeing if I could obtain a pump of some description off them. The guy who answered obviously didn't know what to make of me but said he had an electric pump which he could drive over to the bike. Since I was stopped on the motorway I realised this wasn't possible. He consulted with some other guys in the house presumably to see if any of them had a pump I could have/buy/borrow but the answer was obviously no. So I thanked him anyway and set off walking back to the motorway. A couple of minutes later the guy pulled up in his car waving his pump and said he would take me to the bike and inflate my tyre for me. Result! It turned out I was stopped inbetween two junctions very close together so it wasn't too much of a trek for him to get to the bike and get home again. He was pretty interested and amused by the bike in equal measures, and he seemed to think getting some photographs of a crazy English guy with a crazy bike was worth his time and trouble. I was obviously very grateful!
The reinflated tyre lasted long enough for me to get off the motorway and find an open petrol station. My luck was good for a change and there was a bike garage nextdoor! I slept ruff next to the bike on the petrol station forcourt. In the morning I got them to fit a new tube for me and off I went.
The extreme-fest, a really chilled out but also alcohol fueled weekend. My third time there and definately worth the effort involved in biking it there. I learned of a gig in Prague the following night after the festival so I made my way down there with the intention of sleeping rough though in the end I slept a few hours passed out in really cool little punk bar located in a basement apartment of some hidden away part of Prague. When they kicked out at 5am it was daylight so I found my way back to the bike and slumbered a bit till a cheap cafeteria place nearby opened where I got some early lunch before heading off down to Austria.
This was one of my camping stop offs in Austria, a small roadside picnic thing. Usually it would have been a last resort for a camping spot, but the road in question was closed for roadworks so I figured I'd be undisturbed. However after the roadworks packed up for the night quite a few people were using the road including two different police cars! One of them stopped just as I was finishing my dinner, and although they initially told me camping here was not allowed they didn't seem too bothered and went on their way allowing me to stay, though not before checking on the radio presumably to make sure I wasn't some international criminal!
Dinner! For about four days in a row I ate in the evening a pasta/potato/onion/sauce combination that was filling and also gave me something to do after having set up camp. The pictured tomato soup concoction was filling but a little bland.
My most adventerous camping spot, in a forest in Italy. The track leading up into the forest was rough and pretty steep, though I made it up surprisingly easily (would have been different in the wet though). I did however drop the bike trying to turn it around so I could ride out back down the track.
However having a big f-off sissy bar welded to the back of the bike makes it a piece of piss to pick back up, so no harm done.
The same place.
The Italian alps are home to some incredible small mountain roads full of blind corners, manically twisty and with almost no cars about. Though plenty are not wide enough for two cars to pass so you do have have large balls to ride fast on them.
The only scenery shot I took whilst sat enjoying the view halfway up the smallest and most remote mountain road I found. At the top of the mountain the road got REALLY small and there were unpaved sections plus loads of rockfalls, one or two of which left boulders in the road which made the road unpassable to cars. The reason why the rockfalls hadn't been cleared up was because the road turned out to be closed only a little further on. I'd missed the minimal signs at the start of the road saying it was closed, so by time I got to the roadclosed ahead signs I decided to try and carry on anyway. I negotiated a mud/earth roadblock but only a few hundred meteres later the road was totally barricaded off with big steel gates concreted into the mountain side. I figure from the semi-permanent nature of the gates that the road was going to be closed for a few years and made safer/more like a proper road. I think it's a shame that possibly one of the last really remote tiny and dangerous roads in Western Europe is being tamed!
Whilst on the pass the weather had closed in and I could only see 40yards infront due to thick fog, and it was cold and raining. What with the rockfalls, poor surface or lack of surface, narrowness of the road, and the fact that only metal posts concreted into the mountain were to stop you accidently falling to your death down the sheer fall directly at the edge of the road.
One particularly comical moment of the short trip was when leaving Italy by a popular but bleak mountain pass, the border guard was obviously the stereotype mini-hitler and gave me a proper bollocking over the state of the bike. Whilst he was laying into it some Italian bikers stopped at the summit for a rest were obviously amused by the bike and by the border guard. When they took their cameras out to get some photographs he turned on them and gave them a bollocking, presumably telling them photography was forbidden around the border. He went back to giving me a telling off when a couple of the Italian bikers came to get a closer look at the bike and once again received a stern talking to and were ushered back over the magical white line marking the border. I was almost pissing myself by this point. When he'd finished deploring the bike he conceded that since I was leaving his country there was nothing he could do, but he was very clear that if I'd come to enter Italy via this route he would have sent me packing back into Switzerland. What made this particularly amusing for me is that I've ridden in the south of Italy and in particular Naples which in which at least 80% of the vehicles sport damage enough for them to be warranted a write-off in this country. The scene was capped off as after rolling over the magical white line the Italian bikers made me stop so they could get their photos, whilst the border guard looked on sulking.
So all in all it was pretty good two week trip, just a little bit different to your average guys summer holiday. It want cheap though as I was averaging around 90miles to 12litres of petrol, and often less. The petrol prices in Europe don't seem to have gone up like ours have, but the shit exchange rate still makes it really expensive. I'm pretty chuffed to have wild camped every night as well, since that was one of my goals to prove that it could be done in Western Europe. I reckon was lucky to only have two run-ins with the law, especially since besides being covered in oil, my number plate is also now missing two of its letters. On arriving home I've also found that my sissy bar has bent backwards slightly!
I'm definitely buzzing about the Scotland trip now, it's gonna be sweeeet!
