Riding in Slovenia and Croatia

The final day of our ride to Biograd in Croatia took us along some spectacular coastal roads alongside the Adriatic Sea.

It didn’t take long before we were leaving Italy and entering Slovenia....

Our journey took us across a very narrow strip of Slovenia and as I rode along I realised people might ask later what was Slovenia like, so I took a picture just to answer that question. The simple truth is, we were not in Slovenia for long enough to form any decision about that....

As part of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav wars took place between 1991 and 1995. These were complex and involved many different peoples, but especially the Serbs and the Croats. The conflict was extremely bitter and resulted in many deaths, with some leaders being tried for war crimes since the war ended. Borders were moved and today, there is a fully manned border between Slovenia and Croatia....

As visitors, little evidence can be seen of the war, although talking to some Croatians just 16 years after the war ended, a great deal is remembered about what happened here and it was pointed out to us where shelling took place by hostile forces near to where the HOG rally was we were attending. However, it is easy to forget those conflicts as you ride along such a beautiful coastline. The coast road is narrow and twisty, following the shape of the sea it runs along and it reminded Ian and I of the Pacific Coast Highway in California. It really is that good.

Ian on the road....

Some of the views along the coast road....

The water is crystal clear....

As we got nearer to Biograd, the location for the HOG Festival, we saw more and more Harley-Davidsons on the road, from all over Europe. While sometimes the buildings are not well finished externally, the setting can be stunning....

This is a small fishing village we stopped for a drink in....

Smiling on parts of the journey made was just unavoidable....

As we rolled into Biograd after 1611 miles on the road, we reflected on a fantastic ride through some terrific scenery over five days of riding great roads in incredibly good weather. It doesn’t get much better than that. And there was still the HOG Festival to look forward to!  The star on the map shows where we had ridden to....

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On a different subject, is anybody else having trouble logging into Blogger? I can get into my Dashboard page fine when I am logged in, but when I try to view my blog, the top right hand corner of the page says “Sign in”, even though I am already signed in, or was. I can successfully make new posts on my blog, but I cannot make comments on my own blog in my name, as it asks me to sign in (even though just before I was signed in). On other peoples blogs, I can make comments in my name on some blogs, but not on some others. Very strange.

I think Arizona Harley Dude may be having the same trouble. Anyone else?



Riding through the Dolomite Mountains

I am behind with my posts. This is actually from a few days ago....

We stayed on night 3 of our trip to Croatia in the Greif Hotel in Bolzano. This is one of those ultra modern, funky hotels that make you smile. For example, the room that Ian stayed in contained a grand piano, while my room had a fantastic antique desk. After a long days riding, I slept very well. I have stayed in many hotels in the last two weeks and my room had the most comfortable bed of any. Breakfast was eaten outside on a warm and sunny morning.

On day 4 of our ride from the UK to Croatia, we decided to change our planned route via Venice and head instead to the Dolomites, in the eastern Alps. Located to the east of Bolzano, this mountain range is in north east Italy and, well, it surprised both Ian and myself. After instructing it to take us only on secondary roads and to avoid motorways, we let the sat nav / gps do the route planning for us and we simply followed where she-who-must-be-obeyed told us to go. This was route planning at its simplest – you know where we are, this is where we want to arrive, now tell us how to get there. I think her name is Jane and today, she did us proud, as it was one of those occasions where we didn’t know the area at all and were quite happy to go where directed.

That happened to be through the Dolomites and Jane took us down some spectacular roads.

We passed tall peaks, fast flowing rivers and still lakes. We saw magnificent trees and glorious vistas. In the morning, the elevations we rode at lowered the temperature, only to be beaten back up as the sun triumphed in the afternoon and the mercury rose to just under 90F.

We stopped and looked down upon one lake, dam formed, against which Ian was pictured sitting astride his bike....

The main part of the Alps have a splendour all of their own, where individual peaks reach for the sky in dramatic fashion. The Dolomites are different though, where craggy peaks exist, often close together to form dramatic shapes and silhouettes against the sky....

Even in late May, the peaks are still covered in snow and the snow-melt water crashes down the mountain streams and rivers....

Riding in the Dolomites is great fun, with steep and twisty roads everywhere. Mainly set amongst the trees, occasionally the road bursts out into large clearings where the views are impressive and the layout of the road ahead can be seen....

We stopped at this particular view and scrambled up the slope to get a better view. Ian doing his best to look like the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro....

Using my point and shoot camera, this is a short video of the view. At the end of the clip I zoom into the mountain peaks in the cloud to show just how tall they are....




More dramatic peaks....

The same peaks set high above a mountain town....

While I am sure the people who live there wouldn’t agree, this is a stunning road constructed high through a mountain valley....

One of the joys of not having a screen on your bike is you get to feel the wind properly. Sadly, you get to feel everything else in that air as well. Ian looking grubby from exhaust fumes / dirt....

The same place a few minutes later after he had washed his face. Note the funky art-deco table cloth in the cafe we had stopped at....

We stayed that night in Trieste, on the eastern border of Italy. This is the main city square and our hotel was on one side of the square....

The hotel had a swimming pool in its basement, made to look like an old Roman ruin....

The square at night, taken hand-held with my phone....

That was our final days riding in Italy. Tomorrow, we cross the border into Slovenia and then Croatia.

Oh, glorious Stelvio Pass - how we missed you

Day 3 of the ride to Croatia was always going to be a long day.

Ian and I decided we needed to leave early, so the plan was to start riding at 07:00 and there we both were, packing gear on the bikes at 06:45. The ride into Turin on the previous late afternoon / evening was very busy as we had hit the evening rush hour and it seemed just about everyone in this part of Italy was on the road at the same time us the two of us. The traffic was very bad and the bikes had been overheating.  We checked oil levels and all appeared fine, so we set off in the warmth of a Turin morning sun.

As we rode through the city, we spotted something that looked familiar. Knowing that the (original) Italian Job film had been shot in Turin, we saw this river next to a bridge. If you have seen the film, you will remember the three get-away mini’s being successfully driven across a shallow river in front of a bridge, and the Italian police cars getting caught in the flow of the river. Is this that shallow river and bridge? No doubt somebody who reads this blog will know....

The first part of the ride was a quick blast of about 60 miles from Turin to Milan, all on motorway. As we neared Milan, the traffic trying to get into the city was very heavy and we were caught in bad traffic delays, but by riding between the cars, we soon worked our way through the mad Italians, all trying their hardest to get to work seconds before the person in the car next to them. Is it something in the Italian genes that distinguish Italians as fast drivers? Maybe they all have heavy right feet?

Soon we left the harsh motorway environment and headed north, along the eastern shore of the stunningly beautiful Lake Como. There are two roads here that run (almost) parallel – a fast road in tunnels and a much slower and older road that hugs the line of the lake edge. Ian and I took the slower road. It would have been very tempting to stop every mile or so to take pictures, but we resisted and rationed ourselves to just a few places....

At one of these photo stops, I saw this archway....

We then suffered a 100 miles or so of perhaps the most boring road I have ever been on. It was narrow, just one lane in either direction, slow and with almost no overtaking opportunities (although some of the Italian drivers can, and do, overtake with cars coming straight at them). We were cheered along this road however by the anticipation that was building inside us, as we were nearing what is said to be one of the best, if not THE best driving / riding road in the world. Stelvio Pass is a winding, twisting road with long sweeping bends and a number of tight hairpin bends as well, all set in glorious scenery. Viewers of the car programme “Top Gear” may remember the team drove this road a couple of years ago (Chris L will certainly remember). Set high in the Alps, the road is a must-do for any petrol-head and in planning the route through Italy, this was the one road that we just had to do.

We got to the start of the road, ready to test our riding skills on this road of roads, to find the pass..... SHUT.

Shit, we had travelled well out of our way just to ride this road and in truth, had probably added a whole day to our route just to ride this road.

I couldn’t believe it. So, resigned to the fact that we would not be able to ride it, we studied the map and realise we would need to detour about 70 miles to get onto the road we needed to get onto. The new road was still a major mountain pass, but it certainly wasn’t up to Stelvio standards. I was so gutted, I could hardly bring myself to get my camera out on the alternative pass, but I did and here are a few pictures....

After a while, we realised that our detour was so long, we had made it back into Switzerland, we had gone that far north. We did ride along a lake that was amazing to look at. Lake Livigno is formed by a huge dam and consequently the lake is very deep and stretches back a long way into the mountains. By September the lake is full, but over the winter, it is used to create hydro electricity by releasing the water through the turbines. When we rode along the lake, it was completely empty at one end – with just bleached white rocks showing across its entire width. From the dam, the lake looked like this....

The water from the spring snow melt in the mountains is enough to completely fill the lake. The dam is impressive as well. Note Ian and the two bikes on the top right of the picture, which gives a sense of scale....

When leaving the dam, we rode through the very narrow Munt la Schera tunnel, which is about two miles long with just a single lane, used in each direction alternately. The noise of two Harleys being ridden through the small tunnel sounded fantastic, but there was a problem. Coming out of the end of the tunnel, we were stopped by the Swiss police (the border is right there) who questioned me about the exhaust pipes on the Leading Ladies. It seemed we may have fallen foul of the tough Swiss environmental laws, but when we said we were not staying in Switzerland but returning to Italy straight away, they let us go. It seems it may have been a different outcome if we had said we were continuing on through Switzerland!

Still in the mountains, we made our way to our hotel for the night, in Bolzano. On the way, I took a couple of on-the-move pictures of Ian, riding in front of me. At one stage, we caught up with another small group of H-D’s from Holland, who were almost certainly on their way to Croatia as well....

Just as we pulled up at the hotel in Bolzano, it started to rain. It was cool and refreshing and it felt great after such a long days riding, of 333 miles – quite a feat on these roads!

Getting to Croatia – France and into Italy

The ride on day 2 of the trip to Croatia was good, but we had to miss out on one road that we had intended to do. We rode 365 miles on this day and it took a long time, on mainly mountain roads. Early on during the ride, I hit a big milestone, or rather the Leading Ladies did. The bike went over the 40,000 mile mark....

This is Ian, taken at a morning drinks break....

It didn’t take long for us to see the first snow on the Alps. We thought it looked pretty high up and we didn’t even think that it might affect our journey. We were wrong....

Taken high in the mountains somewhere, this is Ian bike, called Richard II. He names all of his bikes after Shakespeare plays....

And the Leading Ladies, in the same place....

A lot of the roads we were on during the morning were very twisty indeed, with many, many, many hairpin bends.....



We were making good time and doing well, until we saw this sign....

We were due to ride the L’Iseran Pass across the Alps as we wanted to see a ski resort called Val-D’Isere on the way. Unfortunately, it was closed and we had to do about a hundred mile detour via the St Bernard Pass. This was no big problem, but it did add a lot of miles, a lot of which were by motorway.

On the top of the St Bernard Pass, we went from France into Italy. This is just on the Italian side....

There was no snow on the roads we were on, but we assume the pass we wanted to use was closed due to snow. The views were spectacular....

The trouble with mountain passes, is there are never any toilets when you want one....

We arrived at our hotel, the old Fiat factory that was used as one of the locations in the film, the Italian Job. I refer to the original and best version of the film, starring Michael Caine. We were so bushed, we ate in the hotel (excellent steaks and a good red wine).

Road Trip to Croatia

This morning, my friend Ian Solley of 7Ages Custom Motorcycles and I set off for an eight day trip to Croatia in Eastern Europe. We are going to the 20th Harley-Davidson European HOG Rally in Biograd and we have something like 1,600 miles to do across France, Italy and Croatia to get there.

I left home at 0730 for the nearly 500 miles we covered today. I met Ian in Folkestone, at the Channel Tunnel rail terminal, where our bikes and us were loaded onto one of the high-speed trains that travel under the sea to get to France.

This is the view of the rail terminal looking down on the tracks and one train, just before departure....

This is Ian, about to ride his 1970 H-D called Richard II onto the train. You ride along the platform before turning into the train. The opening where the car and guy in the hi-vis vest is actually the train....

Ian’s Richard II and my bike, the Leading Ladies, on the train....

Today’s ride was a very simple one, with the aim being to get through at least half of France (the boring, flat, northern half) as quickly as possible and get to the much more interesting, twisty and mountainous southern half. We therefore blasted down the French motorway network and arrived 495 miles later in Beaune this evening. It was a very long day, but getting that many miles done on day one will make days 2,3 4 and 5 much more interesting as we can take our time on much more stunning roads.

This is Ian, just behind me on the motorway....

Arriving in Beaune, we did nothing more than find a restaurant, drink some excellent local wine and have an early night. It was a shattering day, hence just a short post post! This is the town hall in Beaune that we walked past on our way to/from dinner....

Tomorrow, we ride across the Alps to Turin, in Italy!