Objects in the Rearview
…Mirror may appear closer than they are
In November 1979, the editor of Superbike magazine commissioned two journalists to go off and recreate the European Grand tour. They were to visit all original nine members of the then European Economic Community (EEC) - plus a few others - in three days. To put this in context, this is four years after the UK populace had decided to ratify the 1972 decision to join the EEC, and when ‘The Continent’ to many people was a strange, distant land, full of folk in horizontally striped shirts, riding bicycles and selling garlic. Or snake hipped-latin types, at ease talking to members of the opposite sex, carrying handbags and smelling of garlic.
Different times... Apart from seeming a wholly sensible adjunct of the democratic process to ask the people whether what they signed up for a few years earlier was what they still wanted, it was a world unrecognisable from today on every level. This is a world of showing passports at lonely checkpoints to uniformed guards; of changing currency every day; of no Sat Navs but paper maps, soddened by rain; before mobile phones, when frantic calls to find a lost companion meant mastering the local phone network rather than using Apple’s ‘Find My Friends’ app; before ATMs that worked across countries leaving travellers at the mercy of bank cashiers with Carry-On accents who had never heard of the “Netional Vestmunster Benk’…
But the article, subtitled ‘Chasing dreams round Europe’ (published in the February 1980 issue “….At the Speed of Life”), manages to capture both the optimism of the new decade and the opportunities that membership of the ‘Common Market’ promised, while remaining pluckily British. The intrepid hacks conspire to get pissed on the ferry, be plagued by technical problems and lose each other. All within the first two hours… What follows was a tale of isolation, frustration, exhaustion, accidents, freak weather, getting drunk again, running out of money before finally limping home.
I came across it again recently having somehow hung onto my copy despite eight address changes over forty years. I spent a very happy hour or two rereading it in the gloaming of a November afternoon, sipping something red and pricey. The old pages and ink were a breath of fresh air and a reminder of how much more than a motorcycle magazine it was. Blending an understanding of the market and machinery with a liberal voice and anti-authoritarian elan, it carved out a niche as the enfant terrible of a crowded market and did so with some crackling prose. Like this high-octane, pot-pourri of non-sequiturs and mixed-metaphors by the late John Cutts from an article in the same issue. Shamelessly channelling Hunter S Thompson, his verdict on Las Vegas was:
“Meanwhile, 200 miles behind me, there’s a mile-long Strip of death-palaces. Abattoirs for the insanely-rich and richly-insane. A riotous fun-loving laughing academy for dinosaurs, pimps and for those who still believe in the nightmare orgy of the American Dream. The Dream - if it exists at all - lies on the road getting there… And maybe the real wilderness is Las Vegas itself. A city for the lost and the mad who have crawled in from the desert to place a bet on reality”
Lyrical and anarchic by turns, the stable of writers assembled by editor Mike Scott conjured up a heady brew of freedom, hedonism, didacticism and all round smart-arsery, irresistible to a 16-year old with a £5 Honda SS50. Try another example, David Hamill’s forward to the article, for size:
“Once, it was the battered preserve of of the elegant and wealthy Victorians, all trains, trunks, hatboxes and baffled dignity…the kind of thing mannered upper-class children took during those empty months before going up to Oxbridge. Later, it became the easy-access Magic Bus route, over the Alps and on to Nirvana…Today, anyone with wheels and an inclination to travel can comfortably cover Western Europe in inside a week. All you need is an appetite for miles of fast riding and a machine worthy of your ambition.”
And so that’s what we did. More or less following the route described forty-years ago, long-suffering touring companion and I, clank off the gangplank in the Hook of Holland on a Saturday morning in late May towards Rotterdam. True to the original, we are bestride Bavaria’s finest. Messrs. Cutts & Hammill favoured a brace of R100RT’s, these representing the apotheosis of touring motorcycle technology in 1979. Now we’re on a 2014 GS1200 Adventurer, that celebrates its heritage by bearing a passing similarity to the original GS80 from that era, and me on a barely-run in K1600GT Sport. The level of equipment and technology on this latest example makes its two wheels about the only reference point to the bygone age.
After a week of studiously observing the Working Time Directive and maintaining a healthy work-life balance, the lowlanders of Holland and Belgium like to ease themselves into the weekend slowly. As a result, the various A and E routes are deserted at 09:00 as we glide through the eerie calm towards Antwerp and Liege on billiard table smooth motorways, destination Luxembourg.
We arrive unstressed by mid-afternoon as a result of the high average speeds and competent, civilised road manners absent from UK motorways. When Blair and Brown were relaxing Britain’s licencing laws in the hope of ushering in a civilised cafe culture, Luxembourg City may have been the inspiration. It’s got a tidy historic centre - albeit with the same shops you see everywhere - and down a deep ravine by the river, teems with bars. Tables full of youthful folk sip tasty beers responsibly, watching the football and enjoying their good fortune to be Luxembourgoise.
They don’t get up early here either so we quickly exit the Grand Duchy and head south into France on the A4 the next day. This quietly magnificent stretch takes us swiftly into Germany and a stretch of Autobahn that has survived the incursions of various lobby groups to remain without speed limits. Anywhere else would spell carnage but Germans know the rules and play by them. Often only two lanes, the roadcraft is exacting and this narrow ribbon of asphalt accommodates everything travelling between 60 and 180 KMH without drama.
A west-to-east run through the Black Forest, punctuated by storms, isn’t a patch on the peerless B500 that we bisect before heading to Konstanz at the northern end of the lake of the same name. Also known as Bodensee, it’s shared unevenly between Austria, Germany and Switzerland and the town between the Swiss and Germans. True to form, the Germans got the better end of the deal in terms of the view. As we walk by the lake in search of a bar open on a Sunday evening, the alps are gilded in the early evening sun while thunder rumbles over the town.
Monday morning: the lakeside road takes us through an endless, low-rise, light-industrial wasteland, briefly straying into Austria and then the tiny principality of Lichtenstein. It’s famous for tolerating a certain ‘economy with the actualité’ with regard to financial regulation, an enduring dominance of the world market for false teeth production and being the last country in Europe to grant women the vote in 1984, when 51.3% voted in favour. Can we conclude therefore that 48.7% didn’t much fancy the idea and must have been called Borat? That such a ‘no-brainer’ of a motion won by such a narrow margin and within living memory is staggering. If anyone knows of a more convincing argument illustrating the risks of direct democracy, please do let me know. These are the most interesting things I have to say about the place other than petrol is surprisingly cheap and it was raining. If you want to know more, you’ll have to go yourself.
But the skies clear and the Swiss motorway becomes fast and curvy as we approach Italy. A local at a truck stop tells us it’s snowing on the Petit St. Bernard so we play it safe. Sticking to the main A2 route, we arrive early at the wonderfully eccentric Al Tre Leoni guest house on the edge of Como town before striking out for drinks and dinner. I ask the waiter at ‘Blacket’ which of his many craft ales he thinks I will like best. He looks me up and down and confidently asserts: “Arrogant Bastard”. Beer as strong as wine works its magic on empty stomachs before dinner at L’Antica and one of the best, but simplest meals of the tour: fresh pasta with black truffle followed by steak grilled over an open flame washed down with a half-bottle of Barolo. Heaven.
Strada Statale 36, comprising an impressive series of tunnels and elevations, hugs the eastern shore of Lake Como as we head towards the Alto Aldige the day after. A long valley run follows before an abrupt lurch to the right. It’s a barely discernible change on the map but the next three hours proves much more challenging over steep terrain. We finally descend to Trento and the thundering A22 that becomes the Brenner Pass to the north, linking Italy’s industrial and agricultural heartlands with the markets of Austria, Germany and Northen Europe.
On a hilltop forty kilometres north-west of Venice sits the immaculately curated village of Asolo, the ‘Pearl of Treviso’ and clearly an upmarket destination. May is a good time to visit before the hordes descend and destroy the tranquility that has attracted various writers and artists. Among them were Hemmingway and romantic poet Robert Browning, who died here on the day of publication of his final book ‘Asolando’, inspired by the area. The hotel ‘Villa Cipriani’ maintains its sense of peace and tranquility by scaring the punters away with the economic brute force of £21 gin & tonics and a slightly intimidating lobby. Once seated on the terrace with a stupendous view though, jolly staff make haste with the drinks and a tasty selection of pre-dinner snacks, even though we weren’t eating there.
Dinner at ‘La Terrazza’ is rounded off with the recommendation of a local dessert wine from Breganze. More seasoned readers might recall this as once being the home of Laverda motorcycles, manufacturers of the legendary ‘Jota’ and ‘Montjuic’ steeds. It’s only ten miles to the west so we drop by. The factory is long since gone although the brand lives on - just - as part of the Agco farm machine conglomerate. But on an adjoining street, Oro Riccardo are doing their bit to keep the orange flame burning where Riccardo himself lovingly restores these fabulous beasts with the phlegmatic demeanour of one practised in the Dark Arts. There must be about forty of them in various stages of repair from complete wrecks to concours. In fifteen years of Montjuic ownership and the frantic worldwide scrabble for parts that this entails, I’ve never come across this Aladdin’s Cave before and it really is a treasure trove: “Si, si” mutters Riccardo as I enquire about one obscure bit after another, only shredding my credibility when I attempt to buy for myself a ladies version of a 1981 vintage Laverda jumper.
[I’ve no idea who took the photos above so apologies for not crediting them. If you don’t want them used, let me know and I’ll remove them, but images of the Breganze factory are few and far between.]
Back on the dystopian, testosterone-fuelled nightmare that is the Italian motorway network, we head for Novarra for no better reason than it’s the right place distance wise. Unprepossessingly light-industrial and low-rise on the outskirts, the traffic-free historic centre is a model of restrained elegance, despite the domination of a 400 ft basilica. Sitting in an imposing piazza flanked by a large park, sipping a beer before an excellent dinner at ‘Cannavacciuolo’ (reasonably priced too, given it’s got a Michelin star), Novarra is all that makes motorcycle touring so satisfying, representing the essence of the country in a way that the famous sights rarely do.
Ermenegildo Zegna, the stratospherically expensive fashion house have used some of their considerable fortune to maintain the Zegna Panoramic Route that runs along a ridge of hills from Trivero, where the company was founded and is still headquartered, to Rosazza some 16 miles to the West. The vistas are magnificent - the Alps to the north and Padan Plain to the south - but the trouble is, it really doesn’t go anywhere. I foolishly try and second guess the sat-nav to avoid doubling-back and end up on the steepest road I’ve ever been on.
Hauling 400 kilograms plus of K1600, rider and luggage up SP513 to the one-horse town of Oropa takes an age only to find that it’s closed for repairs. But this is Italy and so I ride round the Strada Chiusa signs to find two blokes and a digger half a mile up the road. Without a hi-viz jacket or any elf’unsaftee pondlife in sight, they kindly stop working to wave me through and I carry on towards Ivrea past a massive, incongruous church and surrounding building that Wikipedia informs me is the Sanctuary of Oropa, home to a black wooden statue of the Virgin Mary carved, according to legend, by Saint Luke, subsequently found in Jerusalem by Saint Eusebius of Vercelli and carried to Oropa in the 4th century AD. That’s one to file away for a pub quiz…
Long before Apple started making computers into covetable works of art, Adriano Olivetti had decreed that humble typewriters and other office machines should be Things of Beauty. It was a hunch that proved correct and the company became a global force, employing 48,000 at its peak. But his true obsession was transforming Ivrea, into a model industrial metropolis and it became the focus of ambitious experiments in how to build a more “human” industrial city. Now a UNESCO world heritage site, Ivrea has still not recovered from the decline of the firm in the 80’s and 90’s when an over-reliance on Italian government contracts and foreign price competition all but finished it off. Much of Adriano’s vision remains intact, albeit in various states of repair, and at a cafe in one of the residential districts, with a plate of bresaola, parmesan & rucola doused in the inevitable glug of olive oil, I’m reading about the Mont Blanc tunnel that is en route this afternoon to Switzerland.
“In 2003, with what felt like an angel on my shoulder, I wrote a story that became a myth. It was a once-in-a-lifetime piece. An emblem for human courage in the face of adversity, and an inspiration for motorcyclists like me, that swept the world in its small way.”
These are the opening words of a piece by Mark Gardiner, published in March this year about an article he wrote in 2003 titled “Searching for Spadino”. It described the heroics of Pierlucio Tinazzi and his rescue, before perishing, of between ten and twelve people from the Mont Blanc Tunnel fire in 1999 on his BMW R75. Like many of us, I knew of the story but not the coda.
Over the years, Gardiner had begun to have nagging doubts over the veracity of his article. With the aid of French court records and local journalists from France and Italy he now concludes those saved were by a motorcyclist but from the other end of the the tunnel from where Tinazzi worked and the man in question conducted his rescue mission not on a bike, but in a minibus. Although the bravery of Tinazzi - who died along with a lorry driver he was trying to save - is beyond question, the story was indeed a myth. As Gardiner concludes: “He was just a quiet man who had tried to do the right thing in the face of an inferno. And maybe that is enough.”
Out of the tunnel at the French side, the winding road goes past the striking memorial to all 39 people who lost their lives in the tragedy. Then the swift, swooping, safe D106 takes us through Chamonix and a view that looks like the whole of Switzerland laid out ahead of you near Martigny, before picking up the A9 towards Geneva.
Generally, I’m a contented ‘visitor’ to most destinations, grateful to experience them but rarely gripped by the “I want to live here” sensation. But along with Santa Barbara on the Californian coast and the tonier bits of Manhattan, Vevey on the north-east shore of Lake Geneva (or Léman, if you prefer) nestles between Lausanne & Montreux and makes it onto this rarified list.
The view south towards the Alps, featuring the Matterhorn amidst a series of perfectly triangular peaks is simply stupendous. As our waiter said later, he’s lived here his entire life and never gets tired of gazing at it. In the centre, the finishing touches are being put to what looks like scaffolding but - I think - is a permanent, open-air concert venue.
A full orchestra and choir is rehearsing inside and a crystalline, ethereal sound seems to fill the sky. As we stroll to the lakeside, the fortunate locals jog, canoe & cycle their way around as the sun sets on another perfect Swiss day. Slap bang in the middle of the continent, two hours from skiing, surrounded by vineyards, great biking & cycling roads, crime free, zero-litter, welcoming locals and well connected by road, rail & air, it’s nigh on perfect if you like this sort of thing. And I do.
Forty years on from when Messrs. Cutts & Hamill were limping back home across France, Jérôme Feck was born in the town of Landres, in the Haute-Marne. He is now the chef-patron of his eponymous restaurant at the Hotel L’Angleterre and deserved holder of a Michelin star. We’ve spent the day picking our way through the Jura and Comte to Chalons-en-Champagne, the capital of the Marne region, 30 miles southeast of Reims. And now, with some perfect celestial geometry of chance, Jérôme is cooking our last night dinner for us…
Confident, contemporary updates on classic combinations like crab with caviar, roasted Saint-Pierre with the odd eclectic turn like Iberian pork fillet, makes for a fitting end to this week-long celebration of the European ideal. Whatever has happened across the continent these last decades and whatever happens once the current chaos subsides, the important things in life will remain just as they were.
