Day 13! Monday 16th September
So, today is Stelvio and with full luggage on, unlike Grossglockner yesterday.
The original Greece OR Bust plan was to do the Stelvio from South to North meaning that the majority of the hairpins would be downhill, but I decided that I wanted to do it the 'hard' way, i.e. from North to South.
Now, when I say 'hard', it all depends on what you prefer. There are 60 hairpins on the Stelvio, each with a numbered 'milestone' to show your progress as you stagger up or rush down and because I love hairpins the chance to do 48 of them upwards, leaving a mere 12 for the downhill rush was too good to miss.
The seventy odd kilometers to the top end of Stelvio were a real pain with three (go on, count them!) sets of roadworks stopping the traffic for about half an hour in total and the places they were 'line-painting' and resurfacing were all in places that made overtaking and filtering all but impossible and by the time I made it to the northern end I was gasping for a coffee.
I stopped at the Hotel Posta Cervo on the junction but as I walked back to the entrance it started to rain. Coffee or waterproofs?
And so, with the waterproof jacket and gloves on and having foregone the coffee, I headed South up the northern approach slopes which are deceptively arrow straight and flat, but this is just to lull you into a false sense of security with the usual fields of cows and pretty little houses and I did that really stupid thing of interrogating my Garmin brick just to make sure it hadn't re-routed me along some boring bit of road when I was dozing in the roadworks queues.
Nope, there were the hairpins, and OH MY GOD! THERE IS THE FIRST HAIRPIN!
A mad stamping down the gearbox got me round the right-hander and woke me up in time for the left-hander that followed fast on it's heels and now I was pumped up and in 'fight' mode.
And then, nothing!
Nothing for about a kilometer until the next pair of not-quite-so-tight right-left turns.
OK! I'm ready, bring it on; but no, nothing for another few hundred metres and then another right-left with nothing following it for another few hundred metres and then, suddenly (daft thing so say seeing as I had been 'ready' for the things for ages) they were on me, half a dozen tight little hairpins in a 'staircase' followed by the, by now expected, 'rest run' for a few hundred metres.
And so it went on, on and on, a bloody Renault Scenic chasing me up the stairs, getting hopelessly lost on the meagre straights but snapping annoyingly at my number plate on the turns. He wasn't in any hurry to overtake, he just wanted to show his girlfriend how good he was by keeping up with 'a sports bike' up the climbs. If only I were in the quattro...still, it was more important to concentrate on not dropping the beast on the tight right handers than worry about him behind me.
The very thought of finding out the true meaning of a 'low-side' fall on one of the right handers where the inside line falls away alarmingly into the gutter some two feet below the bit of tarmac you are riding on, which is itself at an alarming 'positive camber' angle to the horizontal just serves to focus the mind ever more.
I admit it, I had one dab on a right hander on the way up, which jarred the old arthritic knee and served to remind me how heavy this bike is especially when fully loaded in touring mode; who'da thought two pairs of socks and knickers could weigh so much?
On the plus side I had no opposing traffic to speak of and met none on any of the turns other than a huge bus to which I deferred, waiting on the uphill section with the Renault snapping at my heels cos he couldn't see the bus coming down the hill as he tried to pass me, only to find the front of a massive alp-like structure filling his windscreen. Bus 1:Renault 0:Biker smiling superciliously inside helmet!
Of course, none of the hairpins were helped by the asthmatic spluttering of the K12 motor on the climb, the fuelling, which I think is pretty much spot on at sea-level, spitting and farting at altitude with the idle intermittently up around the 1,800 to 2,000 rpm mark. I realise that high altitude can alter the fuelling of any motor but mine seemed to suffer more than most; a combination of the PCIII and the lack of O2 sensor probably.
And then, there was the summit at The Hotel Stilferjoch. Oh, and a thousand assorted tat and hot dog stalls making the summit of the highest paved pass in the Eastern alps seem more like Blackpool sea front than the remote and barren wilderness I was expecting and hoping for.
I didn't take a picture of it, but you can see what I mean in Google Streetview which captured it perfectly.
The beast taking a breather at the top of the Stelvio.
The last bit of the climb up Stelvio from the bike park at the top...
...and the same view after the coffee and burger!
So, of the three 'Great Biking Roads' scheduled for this trip, I have now ticked off two, except of course, I still have to get down the southern slopes of Stelvio in one piece and the mist is coming down and the rain, which had mysteriously disappeared on the run in to the pass, was now threatening to return.
My thoughts return, extremely briefly I must admit, to the others who set off on this adventure and haven't had the opportunity to do the amazing Grossglockner and Stelvio passes this time around; maybe another year?
And so to the descent. Having boned up on these roads on Google prior to the trip, I knew there were 60 hairpins on Stelvio and I had done the 48 on the way up, so all I had to do was to count the dozen or so remaining and I was home and dry.
Hmm? It is always difficult to know what constitutes a hairpin.
We all know one when we come across it, down into 2nd, maybe even 1st, careful balance of bike and clutch and throttle and then a clean get-away on the exit having turned something like 150 to 180 degrees.
Seems easy to spot one to me.
So, I start to count the hairpins on the descent, dismissing a few well-rounded almost 150 degree bends as 'not man enough' to be described as hairpins.
1!
2,3,4,5!
6,7,8,9,10,11,12 (hang on a minute)13,14,15!
16,17,18,19!
20,21,22,23!
24,25!
26,27!
I assumed that the high altitude was affecting more than the bike's brain, perhaps it was getting to mine as well!
Count fingers and toes. Nope, I make that ten of each.
Count all twenty! Yup! I can definitely count to 20.
Now I am well confused. (I have just been back to Wikipedia and Google to study the Stelvio and they both claim there are only 60 hairpins on the pass.
All the petrol-head sites repeat this claim of 60 in total and 48 on the North face.
I have just counted the hairpins on Google Maps and there are definitely 48 up on the North face and there are most definitely 27 going down on the South face into Bormio.
What the hell is going on here? Have none of these folks been to Stelvio?
Have none of them counted the hairpins?
Am I the only anorak in town?
Does anyone care?)
Anyways, I didn't ride straight into space on the 13th, leftt-hand hairpin, even I can spot one coming after all this practice and the 'Swiss chalet' was a bit of a giveaway!
The mysterious 13th hairpin on the southern side of Stelvio (courtesy of Streetview and with 14 more to come!).
Regardless of numbers, the drop off the Stelvio was survived and is remarkably quick and enjoyable, the road rushing along the valley in great leaps and bounds toward Tirano where some sort of normality returns. For a while at least.
There were a number of deviations on this route caused by road closures and re-building works and so when I crossed into Switzerland and started to climb up over the Bernina Pass toward St Moritz I was glad to have some freedom once again, but that damn drizzle was getting to be more persistent and the road surface was as greasy as hell; this was probably the first rain since the long hot spell and water and rubber dust are not the biker's best friend!
This was a lovely scenic stretch of the route with the roads not too challenging so you could admire the scenery without riding off the end of the world.
At Samedan, the route turned North and then left onto the Albula Pass to Tiefencastel and then on toward Thusis.
This turned out to be one of the highlights of the day, with more hairpins and great challenging swoops and sweeps of roads over the mountains and with the fuel light on for the last 25 miles, things were getting interesting.
Eventually, Thusis loomed out of the murk and a quick diversion into town found the local Co-Op selling high octane fuel for both the bike and rider. Having finally come out of the tunnels on the last run into town to find the rain heavier than ever I filled the bike and my face and prepared for the long motorway run into Ohlsback for the night's stop.
As long as the bike is moving, the aerodynamics keep my legs dry in all but the heaviest of rains, but now it looked to be getting much worse and so the other folks in the filling station were treated to the sight of their lives as I did the dance of the drunken spider on the forecourt whilst trying to get my waterproof trousers on over my boots without ending up on my arse.
As we all know, the first foot is the easiest, the difficult bit is when you have one leg in and the other foot half in and with nowhere to sit (there is never anywhere to sit) you end up hopping one-legged from one side to the other and back and forth whilst trying to retain some sense of decorum.
Suddenly, a firm hand on my right shoulder prevented me from toppling to my doom and with both feet in my trousers I could straighten up and turn round to find my saviour beaming behind me.
A wizened old German who greeted me in perfect English (don't you just hate that) and with a twinkle in his eye, he told me he remembered this struggle only too well.
It turned out he was an ex-biker and had ridden the Stelvio Pass many times.
These days, he said, as he was now 84 years old, he only used his car and a push bike for getting around on, but still managed to do the Stelvio three or four times a year; on the push bike!
'One more time this year before the snows finally close it!' he told me, 'but not for a week or two as we have snows coming again before the winter ones arrive later in the year. If you are going to do it, you should get a move on!'
He was a lot happier when I told him I had already done the pass and was on my way to Ohlsbach.
We parted as the rain started to fall in stair rods and I eyed his warm, air-conditioned car with a certain envy.
It was now onto the A13 North heading for Lake Constance for tea and cake but as the stair rods turned to broom handles I chickened out and turned onto the A3 heading West for Zurich and Basel before heading North on the A5 toward Strasbourg and the night's stop.
This interminable stretch of motorway was the ultimate torment as I realised to my horror, that in my conversations with the wizened German ex-biker I had managed to put my gloves on OVER my sleeves, rather than under, and the rain finally dribbled down to soak the insides.
I stopped for another refuel and stole some diesel gloves to put on under my sodden Knox winter gloves but with the heated grips on to try to dry the gloves and warm my pinkies, this merely served to 'pickle' my fingers inside the plastic.
Suddenly, the rain stopped and the sun came out and so I stopped at yet another truck stop to dry my hands and went happily on my way with my dry summer gloves on; until, of course, the rain returned and eventually I arrived at my hotel with hands like a dead fish and two pairs of sodden gloves.
Oh, how I wish I had managed to book into the Hotel Waldblick at Schenkenzel because, as one of the excellent family-run hotels in the Motor Bike Hotels International chain ( Welcome to the group of active biker hotel operators/Motor Bike Hotels international ) I know from experience that they too are bikers who have made this mistake and all provide full kit drying facilities for idiots like me and my gloves would have been toastie dry long before morning.
However, they had been fully booked until well into October so the Hotel Rebstock in Ohlsback it was.
It was almost 8pm when I finally got in and the restaurant was closed, but madam unlocked the garage for me to store the bike safely and pointed me in the direction of the Krone Gasthof just along the street, for supper. With one pair of my summer gloves steaming over the bedside lights (thank goodness for 40w bulbs) and with the room's hairdryer pressed into service on the winter ones and left running while I nipped to the pub, I just hoped that tomorrow would dawn fine and dry.
Having downed two litres of the excellent Krone pub's finest German beer and two of their Schnitzels with French Fries (their description, not mine) and salad, followed by an enormous chunk of chocolate cake and cream, actually I didn't care too much about tomorrow as I stumbled back to the hotel.
And so to bed.
