Fair Weather Bikers

I had a very good nights sleep, but woke up at 6am and went for a shower. The shower was coin operated - you got 3 minutes of hot water for 1/2sfr. Fair enough, I thought, plenty of time. I was half way through washing my hair when I leant back in the shower and accidently nudged the temperature control onto boiling hot. I leapt out of the shower, realised what had happend, corrected it and got back in. I was just calming down, when the money ran out and I was covered in freezing cold water. I was certainly awake now!

We set-off early again - about 8:30am and worked our way through Switzerland. It really was a very pleasant way to spend the morning - the weather was very good, the scenery was like a postcard, and the roads were excellent. Daz had a small problem with the tunnels - he found the noise from his exhaust resonated off the walls and he found it very unpleasant at speeds over 60mph. As long as we slowed down through the tunnels it wasn't a major issue.

We stopped for breakfast at around 10am at a service station. It was nothing like an English service station. There was fresh bread, fruit, pastries, cereal, cold and cooked meats - it was superb. I had what looked like a large hash brown (called a rosti I think) covered in egg and bacon with fresh bread and fruit juice. It was fantastic.

To get to Italy we had orginally planned on going over the mountains using one of the passes, but we were told that they weren't open until next week so we had to go through a 15km tunnel. This tunnel was OK at first - a little dull, but OK. The deeper into the tunnel we got, the warmer it got. It got to a point where I thought if it got much warmer I wouldn't be able to breath. I don't suffer from claustrafobia, but after going through that tunnel I think I have a better idea as to what it feels like. Luckily there were regular distance markers to tell you how far you had left to go and once we passed the 2km to go mark, it started cooling down. Once out the other side it actually felt cold for a little while!

As we dropped down into Italy the scenary started to become a little less awe inspiring and it started to get a lot warmer. We crossed the Swiss/Italian boarder and rode onto Milan.

Milan - now thats a place to avoid travelling though! We were on the motorway that circles Milan - kind of like the M25 only smaller. It was very busy with lots of trucks, coaches, and cars - all driven by lunatics. We were in the middle and outside lanes, having to average around 85-90mph to keep up with traffic. Coaches were changing lanes when we were along side them, people would tailgate us, then overtake and try and take our front wheels off. All of this in really hot weather and us in the full gear. I'd hate to think what going into the centre of Milan is like.

On top of all this there were toll booths at regular intervals where we had to get our gear off to get to out money, pay the toll, then ride through the barrier and park up somewhere to put the gear back on. A real pain in the neck. I took to paying with my credit card as this seemed the quickest and easiest way of getting through them.

We got to the outskirts of Milan and to another toll booth - but at this one I couldn't find anywhere to put my card. There was a cardboard card sticking out of the machine which I presumed was a prepay card or something a local had left in. I took this out, discarded it and continued trying to figure out how to pay when the car behind started beeping his horn. I looked up and the barrier had lifted - mavoulous I though - that ticket much have worked for me as well. I rode upto Daz and told him I'd got through free and he told me he did as well!

We stopped for petrol and for something to eat. We were both exhausted from the stress of riding round Milan and the heat. The food at the service station was not very good and the people were very rude - something we had not found anywhere on the way down - with the exception of the very wierd campsite in Mainz. Infact upto Italy I had been very suprised as to how friendly and helpful everybody had been in Holland, Germany and Switzerland.

We rode onto Bologna, intending to stop there for the night, when we saw signs for Ancona - the port we had decided to sail to Greece from. It was only 260km away (162 miles), which we though we'd be able to do in a couple of hours if we upped the pace a little. This was at around 4:30pm - we knew there was a ferry at around 8pm which, if we caught, would mean a relaxing night in a cabin.

As it was we had to stop soon after Bologna as my oil light came on again so we had to stop to fill it up.

We rode solidly for the next hour and a half when I started to hear a strange deep growl coming from my bike. At first I thought I was hearing things, but the growl got more pronouced until it was more of a roar than a growl. We pulled off the motorway and as we were slowing down I knew something had happened with the exhaust as I was getting very little, if any, silencing.

Once stopped we discovered that the left outside stud that holds the collets and exhaust against the head had snapped clean in the head. There was nothing at all sticking out of the head so there was no chance of grabbing the stud to try to extract it. Also because of the additional vibrations caused by this missing stud - the bolt from the opposite stud had worked it's way loose and fallen off. Luckily the collet is a single piece one - not split - so that was still on the downpipe of the bike. The downpipe was just held onto the bike by the collector box.

At this point we were around 40 miles from Ancona. There was nothing we could think to do at the side of the road, so we decided to ride it into Ancona. My bike was making a right racket. People were giving me very strange looks, especially as we still maintained around 70mph and were overtaking quite a lot of people. At least the tunnel resonation problem went away - my bike drowned out any other noise!

We reached the outskirts of Ancona and came upon yet another toll booth. This one was manned, and once I'd stopped and turned my engine off, he said something in Italian to me. I said, 'Sorry I don't speak Italian.' to which his produced a card, not unlike the one I'd discarded outside Milan and pointed to it. I then realised what the cards were for - you were meant to take them with you so they knew where you had joined this particular toll road.

I turned to Daz and he strugged so I turned to the guy, shrugged and said 'Sorry, don't have one.'. He did not look happy and said something in Italian to me. I again told him I didn't speak Italian, to which he got even more angry and shouted something in Italian to me. 'Shouting isn't going to help' I said. He then turned around, stormed out of his booth and came marching towards us. I thought we were up for a fight! I had just riden for around 11 hours, I was hot, pissed off because my bike was broken, and was quite willing at that point to have a bit of a ruck - especially as I still had all my bike gear on! As it turned out he was just after our number plates! We paid the toll, which came to 27euros each, and made our way noisily into the centre of Ancona and to the docks.

When we got to the docks we found that the ticket office for the ship to Patras in Greece was closed until the following morning. There was nothing left to do but find a hotel. We found one just up the road from the docks for 40euros each for the night which also had secure overnight parking so it was ideal.

One thing I really wanted to do on this trip was go for a proper Italian meal. We did this, but we were both so tired, and I was so worried about my bike that I couldn't tell you what it tasted like. I only had a pizza anyway as it was the only thing I could stomach.