MooN
Tour Pro
My Bike has " Transalp" written on it, so it's only natural to take it transalpine from time to time and the last time was a looong time ago.
Saturday 07h00, met up with 7 others on the N6 at Vincelles. Overcast sky and around 10 deg.c
Myself( transalp) 1 Tiger 1000, 2 FJR 1300's, a fazer 1000, an R1, an R1100S and a K1300S. We then headed to Avallon to hook up with another nutter on a suzuki 1800 intruder and switch on to the autoroute A6 at the same time.
By the time we got to the entrance booth to the A6 it was raining "halberds" as the french say, with about 2 inches of standing water on the road and visibility down to under 50m... we rode at around 40 km/h for about 15 minutes before it eased enough to boot up to anything like acceptable speeds and by which time we were all pretty much half drowned despite waterproof layers. To be honest, with the amount of "ambient"water anything short of snorkel and flippers just wasn't going to be sufficient..
I kept expecting people to take any exit and “exit off out of it” but they kept going and we held it all together eastwards down the A6, north on the A31 and east again on the A36 as far as Seurre, where we stopped for coffee and a dry out, as the rain had stopped. When leaving, the fazer refused to start... it's fitted with an alarm and immobiliser and the key fob button thingy just didn't deactivate the thing. We dismantled the remote control bit, thinking water had got in, dried it out, jiggled the battery, cleaned the contacts but to no avail. the seat came off the bike and various tools started coming out with the intention of tracing the wiring and binning theF*#*ing thing. The owner wouldn't let me near it with my hammer...
We'd got as far as identifying the power feed to the unit when the petrol station bloke cleaning the pumps said "it's the telephone antenna, move the bike 50 meters down the parking and it'll work..." and it did! Apparently they have endles problems with the phone relay antenna on the site interfering with car key remotes. We'd only lost nearly an hour...
We got going again and headed for Poligny, Champagnole and les Rousses where we stopped for lunch ( having first checked the proximity ofphone relay antenna's)
After Lunch the fun bit started, from Les Rousses we headed down the Col de la Faucille, which is always fun and with the roads rapidly drying out the riding got proportionally sillier...erm... faster...
Gex to Bellegarde is decidedly boring but doesn't last long and allowed us to avoid switzerland ( more on this later).
A quick blast up the autoroute from Bellegarde to contamine saw us ready for some more twisties before calling it a day and heading for the Gite at Sixte. there are any number of possibilities here, but the weather closed in rapidly again and the temperature started to drop dramatically so we just rode the D907 from St Jeoire toTanninges, and then on to Sixte via a stop at the supermarket in Samoens to stock up on "apero" ...
Great twelcome at the Gite, and Christophe, the owner, soon settled down to some serious pastis guzzling with us, in spite of his other clients,more numerous than last time.
many bottles were drunk, much Tartiflette was eaten and loads of bullshit was shat... a thouroughly enjoyable evening.:scull:
Day 2 didn't get off to a good start, I had a flat rear.
the bloody thing was brand new last week, tyre and tube!
I borrowed a stirrup pump from the owner of the gite and started pumping. After a couple of minutes, one of the guys provided a pressure gauge which showed 1.5k ( that's 1.5k per sq cm) Someone else supplied 2 small C02 canisters which we chucked in as well, bring the pressure up to 2.2k, more nearly normal for a loaded transalp. I couldn't find a leak so guessed a dodgy valve and decided to leave it half an hour whilst packing and paying before testing again and making a decision about whether to carry on or not.
The original plan was for me to split from the group this morning and carry on into Switzerland alone whilst the others rode home to be at work Monday morning.
the choices were;
Ride home with the groupe
Ride home via autoroute where compressors are supplied at regular intervals, even on sundays.
Say " Duck it" and call the break down insurance, who would run me home in a taxi but only take the bike to the nearest Honda dealer, to be dealt with and collected at a later date...
Ride on as planned and deal with the problem as and when it really becomes a problem
As my plan was to take the autoroute as far as Chamonix any way, I decide to ride the 30 odd km to the autoroute, check the pressure there, as Bruno kindly suggested I keep his pressure gauge so's to keep an eye on the pressure at regular intervals, and then make the call as to carry on or run for home. Either way I was going it alone, so I decided to let the others leave first as I expected them to ride faster than I. As they pulled away the R1 ran flat at the rear!
the joke was starting to wear a little thin at this point...
We found the culprit, a heavily worn tyre and a small sharp stone. We pulled the stone and repaired with a "meche" ( I've no idea what you call this in english) and 2 canisters of tyre repair foam stuff.
we also found a young lady undecorating her car, which was covered in "Just married" stuff, in a next door shed who said we could borrow her compressor if we liked. What a top lady! 9 am on a sunday morning, having got married the day before and been up all night for the party, still found time to propose to help us out and then stand around chatting whilst we got tyre repair foam all over her shed floor...
The gang eventually got off around 9h15 and i left shortly after. I got to the autoroute entrance without further mishap and stopped to test the pressure again... 2.5k
ok, so it's increased a little the pressure due to heat, having been ridden 30odd km. sounds good to me, GAME ON!
I hit the Autoroute for the 40 km from Cluses to Chamonix and then took the D1506 up the vally towards the Col du Forclaz and Martigny in switzerland.
I had to stop this far up to swap riding gloves in favour of winter gloves. I dunno how high this was but it was quite cold out of the sun.
I was surprised by the amount of cars and bikes out on a sunday morning, but thinking about it, this is a mountain pass on a sunny Sunday morning, judging by the snow line, probably one of the last snow free sundays of the season at this altitude...
A little over 5000ft
On down the other side and into Martigny in the bottom of the valley. the ride from Martigny to brig seemed to last forever. Not wanting to pay an annual fee for the swiss autoroutes I stayed on the minor road along the valley floor which passes through endless industrial zones and commercial retail parks, and when it isn't limited to 50km/h for the towns the national speed limit is only 80 which the transalp doesn't like at all as being too fast for 4th and too slow for 5th and the swiss actually stick to the limit and there's little opportunity to overtake.
Once Brig was reached, things got better as the bulk of traffic didn't keep on towards the high passes. I stopped for Lunch in Visp and checked rear tyre pressure again: 2.3k ...acceptable. Reassuringly, all the service stations I had gone by had been open and they all seemed to have compressors for the use of their clients.
I carried on up route No 19 qs far as obergoms, where i came across this sign
I have wanted to ride these roads for so long now that i was strggling to realise that I was actually here for real. My original plan had been to ride the Grimsel pass up and back down and then go on over the furka and back around to Interlaken via the Susten Pass. However, with the malarky of this morning and the Martigny > Brig stage taking much longer than I had planned I now had a decision to make. You can see in the background the Furka Pass winding up the mountainside
Either I could stick to the plan and try to make up time ( not going to happen)
I could ride the grimsel pass and keep going to Interlaken, missig out the furke and susten passes
I could leave the grimsel and ride the Furka and Susten passes, leaving myself time to ride relaxed, stop for pics etc... That's the way to go, a shame about the Grimsel but I don't want to rush this and I don,t want to have to finish in the dark either.
heading up the Furka pass, looking back at the Grimsel
As I rode up the Furka, i couldn't help recalling the ride up through the vercors with the Tornanti III crew and saying to Pete " you stop for a photo of a breathtaking view, the best you've ever seen & then round the next corner there's an even better one!"
This was much the same, only more so...
at the top,
and down the other side
You really don't want to get this wrong, cos there's no parapet or barrier most of the way and the drop off is, well...
So it was down the Route 19 through Realp and into Andermatt. Left onto Route 2 and follow the valley to Wassen, then left again onto Route 11 and the start of the Susten Pass.
Saturday 07h00, met up with 7 others on the N6 at Vincelles. Overcast sky and around 10 deg.c
Myself( transalp) 1 Tiger 1000, 2 FJR 1300's, a fazer 1000, an R1, an R1100S and a K1300S. We then headed to Avallon to hook up with another nutter on a suzuki 1800 intruder and switch on to the autoroute A6 at the same time.
By the time we got to the entrance booth to the A6 it was raining "halberds" as the french say, with about 2 inches of standing water on the road and visibility down to under 50m... we rode at around 40 km/h for about 15 minutes before it eased enough to boot up to anything like acceptable speeds and by which time we were all pretty much half drowned despite waterproof layers. To be honest, with the amount of "ambient"water anything short of snorkel and flippers just wasn't going to be sufficient..
I kept expecting people to take any exit and “exit off out of it” but they kept going and we held it all together eastwards down the A6, north on the A31 and east again on the A36 as far as Seurre, where we stopped for coffee and a dry out, as the rain had stopped. When leaving, the fazer refused to start... it's fitted with an alarm and immobiliser and the key fob button thingy just didn't deactivate the thing. We dismantled the remote control bit, thinking water had got in, dried it out, jiggled the battery, cleaned the contacts but to no avail. the seat came off the bike and various tools started coming out with the intention of tracing the wiring and binning theF*#*ing thing. The owner wouldn't let me near it with my hammer...
We'd got as far as identifying the power feed to the unit when the petrol station bloke cleaning the pumps said "it's the telephone antenna, move the bike 50 meters down the parking and it'll work..." and it did! Apparently they have endles problems with the phone relay antenna on the site interfering with car key remotes. We'd only lost nearly an hour...We got going again and headed for Poligny, Champagnole and les Rousses where we stopped for lunch ( having first checked the proximity ofphone relay antenna's)
After Lunch the fun bit started, from Les Rousses we headed down the Col de la Faucille, which is always fun and with the roads rapidly drying out the riding got proportionally sillier...erm... faster...
Gex to Bellegarde is decidedly boring but doesn't last long and allowed us to avoid switzerland ( more on this later).
A quick blast up the autoroute from Bellegarde to contamine saw us ready for some more twisties before calling it a day and heading for the Gite at Sixte. there are any number of possibilities here, but the weather closed in rapidly again and the temperature started to drop dramatically so we just rode the D907 from St Jeoire toTanninges, and then on to Sixte via a stop at the supermarket in Samoens to stock up on "apero" ...
Great twelcome at the Gite, and Christophe, the owner, soon settled down to some serious pastis guzzling with us, in spite of his other clients,more numerous than last time.
many bottles were drunk, much Tartiflette was eaten and loads of bullshit was shat... a thouroughly enjoyable evening.:scull:
Day 2 didn't get off to a good start, I had a flat rear.
the bloody thing was brand new last week, tyre and tube!
I borrowed a stirrup pump from the owner of the gite and started pumping. After a couple of minutes, one of the guys provided a pressure gauge which showed 1.5k ( that's 1.5k per sq cm) Someone else supplied 2 small C02 canisters which we chucked in as well, bring the pressure up to 2.2k, more nearly normal for a loaded transalp. I couldn't find a leak so guessed a dodgy valve and decided to leave it half an hour whilst packing and paying before testing again and making a decision about whether to carry on or not.
The original plan was for me to split from the group this morning and carry on into Switzerland alone whilst the others rode home to be at work Monday morning.
the choices were;
Ride home with the groupe
Ride home via autoroute where compressors are supplied at regular intervals, even on sundays.
Say " Duck it" and call the break down insurance, who would run me home in a taxi but only take the bike to the nearest Honda dealer, to be dealt with and collected at a later date...
Ride on as planned and deal with the problem as and when it really becomes a problem
As my plan was to take the autoroute as far as Chamonix any way, I decide to ride the 30 odd km to the autoroute, check the pressure there, as Bruno kindly suggested I keep his pressure gauge so's to keep an eye on the pressure at regular intervals, and then make the call as to carry on or run for home. Either way I was going it alone, so I decided to let the others leave first as I expected them to ride faster than I. As they pulled away the R1 ran flat at the rear!
the joke was starting to wear a little thin at this point...
We found the culprit, a heavily worn tyre and a small sharp stone. We pulled the stone and repaired with a "meche" ( I've no idea what you call this in english) and 2 canisters of tyre repair foam stuff.
we also found a young lady undecorating her car, which was covered in "Just married" stuff, in a next door shed who said we could borrow her compressor if we liked. What a top lady! 9 am on a sunday morning, having got married the day before and been up all night for the party, still found time to propose to help us out and then stand around chatting whilst we got tyre repair foam all over her shed floor...
The gang eventually got off around 9h15 and i left shortly after. I got to the autoroute entrance without further mishap and stopped to test the pressure again... 2.5k
ok, so it's increased a little the pressure due to heat, having been ridden 30odd km. sounds good to me, GAME ON!
I hit the Autoroute for the 40 km from Cluses to Chamonix and then took the D1506 up the vally towards the Col du Forclaz and Martigny in switzerland.
I had to stop this far up to swap riding gloves in favour of winter gloves. I dunno how high this was but it was quite cold out of the sun.
I was surprised by the amount of cars and bikes out on a sunday morning, but thinking about it, this is a mountain pass on a sunny Sunday morning, judging by the snow line, probably one of the last snow free sundays of the season at this altitude...
A little over 5000ft
On down the other side and into Martigny in the bottom of the valley. the ride from Martigny to brig seemed to last forever. Not wanting to pay an annual fee for the swiss autoroutes I stayed on the minor road along the valley floor which passes through endless industrial zones and commercial retail parks, and when it isn't limited to 50km/h for the towns the national speed limit is only 80 which the transalp doesn't like at all as being too fast for 4th and too slow for 5th and the swiss actually stick to the limit and there's little opportunity to overtake.
Once Brig was reached, things got better as the bulk of traffic didn't keep on towards the high passes. I stopped for Lunch in Visp and checked rear tyre pressure again: 2.3k ...acceptable. Reassuringly, all the service stations I had gone by had been open and they all seemed to have compressors for the use of their clients.
I carried on up route No 19 qs far as obergoms, where i came across this sign
I have wanted to ride these roads for so long now that i was strggling to realise that I was actually here for real. My original plan had been to ride the Grimsel pass up and back down and then go on over the furka and back around to Interlaken via the Susten Pass. However, with the malarky of this morning and the Martigny > Brig stage taking much longer than I had planned I now had a decision to make. You can see in the background the Furka Pass winding up the mountainside
Either I could stick to the plan and try to make up time ( not going to happen)
I could ride the grimsel pass and keep going to Interlaken, missig out the furke and susten passes
I could leave the grimsel and ride the Furka and Susten passes, leaving myself time to ride relaxed, stop for pics etc... That's the way to go, a shame about the Grimsel but I don't want to rush this and I don,t want to have to finish in the dark either.
heading up the Furka pass, looking back at the Grimsel
As I rode up the Furka, i couldn't help recalling the ride up through the vercors with the Tornanti III crew and saying to Pete " you stop for a photo of a breathtaking view, the best you've ever seen & then round the next corner there's an even better one!"
This was much the same, only more so...
at the top,
and down the other side
You really don't want to get this wrong, cos there's no parapet or barrier most of the way and the drop off is, well...
So it was down the Route 19 through Realp and into Andermatt. Left onto Route 2 and follow the valley to Wassen, then left again onto Route 11 and the start of the Susten Pass.
)
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