Motorcycle road trip

Posted by CJ -

With summer coming to an end it dawned on me that if I was going to ride a motorcycle across parts of Europe I need to get after it or I would lose my opportunity to weather, and then have to wait till next spring. Geneva had a bank holiday recently on a Thursday, which made for a perfect opportunity to take a Friday off and go on 3 day ride and still have a weekend day to be at home.

 

The story starts on Wednesday night where Anton (my co-worker that is joining me on this trip) and I attended a going away party for our Graduate Interns who are wrapping up their program and moving on. We knew the party was going to be late so we planned for a 10am start. Well, after a 3am bar closing, we were underway just before 11am heading out of Switzerland into France. We rode through some ski villages and all back roads until we got to Chamonix (home of Mt. Blanc tallest mountain in Europe) where we decided to stop to have a beer and a rest. I can tell you the beer helped us both and tasted great!

We then rolled through the rest of the French Alps and back into Switzerland, into the town of Matingey, this was the first flat land we saw and it was a welcome change for about an hour or so as we headed through the valley onwards towards a high mountain pass that would take us up and over and into Italy. On this part of the ride we got above 10,000 feet and above all the trees, and it got cold! However, as we dropped back down on the other side, it warmed up a little. As I mentioned we left later then we planned, therefore we were running out of sunlight and had to “find” a campsite which we did off a country dirt road.

Oh yeah, the plan was to save money and spend nights camping. We had tents, sleeping bags, etc. We setup camp, made a fire, cooked dinner, and had just cracked open a bottle of Jameson when the owner of the land came by and gave us hell in Italian! I didn’t understand much, however I did understand the Italian word for Police, so we decided to pack up and move. The good news is we had seen another place just 10 minutes away on the ride up that looked good, and indeed, in the morning when we woke up, we realized how beautiful our campsite was. The next morning we packed up and got on the road for day two.

We rode through some small Italian towns and took a ferry across a large lake. Then we had breakfast and then cruised along the lake road, which was about 1.5 lanes wide and made it fun when oncoming traffic approached... The ride was nice and relaxing as we headed towards Lugano, the largest Italian speaking Swiss city. Upon entering Swtizerland we made a few laps through downtown Lugano before heading towards 3 Passes. We rode up the highway for about an hour or so when we stopped for lunch and prepared to go up and over the highest passes in Europe. The cool part is these passes are very old, like Roman old, and are rarely used today due to the modern tunnels under the mountains. This means the only people on the pass are there for fun. We saw tons of motorcycles and hardcore cyclists. The ride was a lot of fun as we were above the trees right next to glaciers, alpine lakes and crazy switchback roads.

I can say for certain that the foot pegs on my rental bike are worn down and all scraped up along with the soles of my boots. After the third pass we headed down to Interlaken where we had a dinner in the center of town and picked up some cold beer before heading out to “find” a campsite. We ended up in the mountains above the lake. This time no one bothered us and we had plenty of time to setup camp and make a fire before darkness came, which then gave us time to enjoy our beer and finish the Jameson.

Morning came early on day three, as we needed to get our ride in and I needed to turn in my rental bike before the shop closed for the weekend. We rode from the Swiss German side of the country through some nice country roads and into the Swiss French side. On one of the curvy passes we came around the corner and came to a quick and unexpected stop, and we just missed hitting a herd of cows heading down from the high meadows to the farm after their summer grazing. We had to come to a complete stop and let the cows all come past us before we could continue. Thankful we didn’t hit any of them as I would never hear the end of it from UJ!

After a nice ride along the lake we arrived in Geneva and my odometer told me our three day trip came in just over 1,000 kilometers and about 90 percent of that was done on country roads or high mountain passes.

A very cool ride through France, Italy, and Switzerland and something that I will always remember. It’s not often on a motorcycle you can go from sitting outside in the hot sun drinking a beer, riding along a crystal clear lake and then hours later being right next to a glacier and then enjoying a fire in the forest.