The last 10 percent is always the hardest

We finally made it home, and not without incident. After our time in Germany we returned to Amsterdam to see some friends before setting off on the final run through Belgium and the top of France to Calais and the trip up the M20 home.

Somewhere in Belgium (I couldn’t tell you where) in the outside lane at about 85mph the bike lost all power. As I still had the throttle open there thankfully was no engine braking (and those 1200cc boxer engines really do brake!) and as the thing was still turning with the electrics on the brake servos were still working. To the hard shoulder in a bit of a panic we went. Warning lights: none. Fuel: 75 miles of range left, one quarter of a tank showing on the gauge. Cylinder head temperature: a bit lower than normal, but fair enough given the ambient temperature and the speed we were going at. Hmm.

We let the bike stand for a short time, hit the starter and to my great surprise all was well. We made for the next exit for a full tank of juice and something to eat. Seeing as we were in Belgium and everything was even dearer than we had been used to, we put 20E of juice in the tank to bring it to half-way (over 150 miles range without the reserve showing) and moved on our way. This decision would come back to bite us.

Fast-forward to Dover. We made good time off of the ferry and started up the M20 towards home. About a quarter of a mile from Maidstone services the same thing happened. Outside lane, 70mph (honest officer!) and no power. However, this time things were not looking so rosy. The bike refused to start without a fair bit of throttle action – the kind of throttle action that in old money would have opened the accelerator jet on a carb, but on this bike I would imagine tells the ECU to up the ante on the injector pumps.

After some minutes we had to call it quits and use the road-side box to call for help. This in itself had put me in a black mood. We’d ridden over 10,000 km across twelve different countries (closer to twenty if you count re-entries) and never had a serious breakdown or problem, and here we were within touching distance of home, family, HP sauce and a cup of tea from a mug sitting there on the side of the motorway. I was cursing the world for not allowing me to arrive back at the very point where I had started under my own steam, thus nicely completing the loop and the journey. Curse you world, and everything in it!

Whilst we were waiting for the man and his truck I decided to peer into the tank. The display showed 65 miles range remaining, and the gauge a quarter of a tank before the sizable reserve was meant to kick it. I had read before we went away that you shouldn’t trust the range calculation on the current generation of BMW bikes as it was woefully inaccurate. One would imagine that you can trust something as basic as a fuel gauge on a bike that costs £12-14K new. On my 1966 VW Beetle I don’t have a gauge, I have a little tap next to the clutch that you kick with your foot when the engine starts to splutter, putting you onto “reserve” (it actually just draws from a longer tube in the tank). This arrangement is better than the crappy BMW computers!

You know that feeling when something dawns on you faster than you can unravel the causes and consequences of what you’ve realized? Well, I had one of those moments. The tank was as near to bone-dry as possible. We had run out of fuel. A few miles from home.

After some mucking about getting the bike the quarter of a mile up the road to the services (which involved a complete unload and reload – more cursing of the world) and filling her full of 98RON petrol the bike started and we were off home, a couple of hours later than planned, and with one final story to tell.

Excuse Alert: what follows is me trying to blame everything and everyone else but myself.

I knew, if only to have some come-back from those people who I call my ‘mates’, but who love to mercilessly rib me whenever they can, I needed an explanation for this. What follows here is that explanation, and I’m sticking to it, no matter what you say and what I really think

On this generation of bikes BMW in their infinite wisdom decided to eschew the traditional float arrangement for measuring the level of liquids in tanks, despite is working in all sorts of vehicles for decades, working near faultlessly in countless industrial applications and enabling you to walk away from your toilet at home without too much fear that water is going to start raining from the kitchen ceiling any time soon. The way fuel is measured is with a plastic/metal strip on the wall of the tank which acts as a low-voltage conductor and feeds signals to the computer enabling it to update the gauge and range displays. All very space-age, and coincidentally very cheap to make. Great!

However, if you check any number of BMW forums you will find people on their fourth and fifth sender strip on bikes just a few years old. The strips fail, and BMW have deemed it too expensive to retro-fit a float arrangement (they have gone back to this on the new revision of the bike for this year, a backhanded acknowledgement of the problem in my mind). For some people the tank never appears full. For some the level remains on full until it jumps straight to “RESERVE” on the display and a warning light.

For other people, me for example, who never let the thing get below 1/4 of a tank full it drops to that level and then never moves and inch, happily letting you burn through everything until you end up coasting in the fast lane of a motorway and have to dance with the lorries to find a safe opening to pull onto the hard shoulder.

But why do they fail? Although not officially acknowledged the best explanation I could come up with by asking on the forums is that the ethanol in the E10-type fuels that you find in Europe and cheaper garages in the UK corrodes the strip, causing it to become faulty. This is supported in my case: the gauge stopped registering a drop below the point that had been constantly submerged, since I had never let the bike get down that low.

So there you have it. All of that was basically me blaming “dodgy foreign fuel” for us almost-but-not-quite completing three big loops around Europe under our own steam.

Relight my fire

The weather has been appalling. We had moved on to Amsterdam early in order to try and find some good weather. We didn’t. It rained heavily, day and night, for two of the three days we were there. We spent most of the time sitting in a tent wearing all of our clothes and saw a return on the hot water evian bottle.

This was to be the last time we needed to stay in a tent, and based on that experience it can’t come soon enough. I think the tent sensed that its time was near. I had to cable-tie the snapped poll together, as the duct tape I applied somewhere in France finally failed. When we put the tent down, another poll (two of three, then) split and snapped, piercing the tent fabric in two places. Definitely no more tent. I thought Vango were meant to make good tents?

It was a relief to go to Düsseldorf, even if it did mean sitting through the Pet Shop Boys, Robbie William, and Take That. The concert was so-so: Williams comes across as a needy boy who never got beyond the cheeky-face trick. The hall full of women seemed to like it, but the other member of Take That are really too old to be mincing up and down a stage. Pet Shop Boys were OK; you forget how many songs that define an era they have.

We have decided to stay in Düsseldorf for two days as I am ill again, Sarah has done her shoulder in, and we’re both knackered.

Austria, Germany

We’re working our way “up and left” now. Tomorrow’s highlight is the Volkswagen AutoMuseum, Wolfsburg.

Prior to this we had been on Lake Bled, Slovenia for (another!) wedding; for the last two days we took stock in Austria whilst we worked out what we were going to do.

Last night we slept in a hotel, near an airport in the old East Germany. Juvenile, as I am, the fact that this hotel is on the corner of Frankfurter Street and Munchener Ring somewhat makes up for this.

We’re a bit knackered, and the weather has gotten increasingly worse as we’ve moved north and we’re both a bit knackered, having only really just recovered from food poisoning.

Still – lots to look forward too, and our 6 hour riding stint yesterday set us up for an easier day today. I think, however, we might be back to boiling hot water bottles for the next few nights.

Goodbye to Croatia (and don’t tell anyone about it, it’s a hidden gem)

When I was a wee boy in the 80s and 90s I was lucky enough that my parents were able and willing to put two kids on a Monarch Airlines plane and take them variously to Spain, Greece, Spain again and back to Greece. We took not only foreign travel as a given for two weeks a year, but that when we got their everything would be at least half of the price you paid at home. I remember fondly pestering my dad for Pesetas for the coin-ops (Bombjack, Narc, Outrun, Ms Pacman – completed them all <smug nerdy grin>). To make me earn them he would chuck them into the pool and make me dive for them. Boy, meet the world of work.

I also remember, my sister being very young, that my dad insisted taking a ball of string away with us (along with baked beans, teabags, cereal – not the same as at home; Peter Kay, eat yer heart out) for the express purpose of making two things: a washing line and a winch. Yes, a winch. My mum would sit on the balcony with my sister asleep in the room and me and dad would sit downstairs in the bar. At intervals my mother would lower a basket/bag/shoe on the end of this string and we would send up gift packages of, I don’t know, a Babysham and some crisps. Happy days.

Since we’ve been away on this trip, like everybody else in the UK we’ve been stung by the poor Euro/GBP exchange rate. We knew it whilst we were planning it, but sometimes in life you have to do things for other reasons and if we’d waited for a “return to the norm” I would have been 50 and wanting to do it in a camper van for the sake of my knees and my back (that said …).

Croatia has four things, by my count, going for it:

• It is not in the Euro, and is therefore uncommonly cheap to stay and eat in
• The people are, without question, the friendliest nicest people we have met during the 13 border crossings we have made so-far
• The country, as in the geology and the topography, are outstanding. From prehistoric national parks, to shelled buildings, to beaches that rival any I have seen in Barbados and Antigua
• The food and wine is without question unparalleled of all of the Mediterranean countries; they give us tourists the best rather than the crap.

So, it is with a genuinely heavy heart that after tomorrow we say goodbye to Croatia an move onto Slovenia. Admittedly this is to a wedding of a good friend, and therefore a grand and happy occasion, but I would still rather not leave.

The Croatian people are trying to enter the EU, and good on them I say. I only hope that the EU, with the current state of some of the member countries, benefits rather than hurts them. If they succeed then Croatia will inevitably become more expensive as the price-parity of the EU project comes into play. If you’re thinking of taking a late holiday then I cannot praise Croatia highly enough. If you’re reading this at some future date and are thinking of doing a bike tour of your own, then I still recommend it. The roads are great (and empty!), and all of the above, perhaps save the price, still stands.

We will be coming back, that is for sure.

Being brutally honest, growing up in those decades I mention above, all I ever heard of Croatia was on John Craven’s Newsround and it was usually accompanied by pictures of tanks and Bosnian peasant women in rubble. If you’re my age and as uninformed about the world as I, Croatia has probably passed you by. Don’t let it. Get here before everybody else does.

Today we met a true adventurer: Ian Coates

So-far on this trip of ours we have been the “big guns” in terms of time-spent on the road. We left in April and we’ll be in the 10s of thousands of Kilometers by the time we get back home, and will probably just pip three digits of hours in the saddle, as it were.

This morning, boarding the ferry from the Croatian island of Brac to Split I spied an old boy on a K-plate (’91) Africa Twin, covered in stickers and held together by tape. “Hello”, I said, “where you going and have you been away long?”

“Well”, came the reply in a Yorkshire brogue, “I left home in 1999 at the age of 56 and I’ve been on the road ever since. I’m 68 now. 12 years, all in. I only went for 4 months when I left, some bloke left me in a Land Rover in Africa and said ‘drive north’. Then I got to Sudan and they had a war, so I had my boy ship my bike over and just kept on going.”

I couldn’t even muster a swear-word. What?

In the 40mins or so that followed I chatted to this bloke, Ian Coates, and I couldn’t pick my jaw up off of the floor. He had ridden the circumference of Australia. He had ridden to the most southerly point of South America and put his front wheel in the water, and then turned right around and ridden to Alaska and put his wheel in the most northerly point on the continent there. He had crossed Africa (“you need a stick in case crocs and hippos are about. And I nearly died. [Laughs]“), across Russia, ridden in minus 35 degree temperatures. No sat-nav, no crew, just him and his bike and a tent. He is either barking mad or one of life’s silent heroes. The more I think about it, it is the latter.

The bike had 300,000 miles on it and was still chugging away (he re-bored it and did the rings and pistons, he tells me, and that’s it. Eat your heart out BMW).

He is an absolutely fascinating character and has promised to stop over with Sarah and I on his way back home later this year; and what’s more he is a lovely lovely bloke to boot. He’s turned the book rights down twice (“because I’m not finished yet – write about it when I am done”).

I am sure there is much much more out there – stick his name in Google and Youtube and you’ll see. We got a pic, of course, which I’ll upload when I get to a hotel where I can leave the laptop churning overnight.

Garry, Damien, Craig, Lloyd, Graham C and Bill: it would be an absolute blast I am sure if you came with me to meet him when he stops with us at the end of the summer. He could talk forever (“I always walk a river before I cross it, and then it takes 3 more trip to get the luggage over”) and it really is too good to miss.

To anyone else who has spied Ian on his travels, if you come across this post, please leave me a message.

Ian, if you read this: you crazy crazy bloke, you changed my and Sarah’s view of life today. You absolute nutter.

Pompe 2 and on to Croatia

When I first started secondary school I saw a poster on the wall that had POMPEII written in big Roman type. “Pompe 2″, I thought, that must be some sequel to some play that I had never heard of.

From Camping Tiber we went back to the Vatican where Sarah initially didn’t get in, on account of her too-short shorts. We fixed that by tying a hoodie around her legs, which worked for the security guards but meant she had to waddle around a bit.

A few nights later we met an assorted group of Canadians, Americans, English and Irish in the bar at the site. Two of them had guitars and a couple of harmonicas. Much noise, some of it good, some of bad, was made by all and we all had a very good time. I missed the guitar and the blues harp.

After a further day in Rome looking at the Sistine Chapel and other assorted sites we move on to Pompeii for a quick 2-day stop-over to view the ruins. To honest, I wouldn’t bother: the camping is crap, you are constantly hassled by people hawking crap to tourists and everything worth seeing has been taken from the site anyway. I suspect it is OK if you’re in a camper van, but if you were to fly there especially for it and stay in a hotel you would feel cheated, and if you are in a tent you will roast.

We caught the train into Naples from Pompeii. What. A Shit. Hole. Honestly, the place is like a cross between Compton and a pikey site. Shit and rubbish everywhere (I hear on the news they have been burning it in the street, some of which we saw). The only sight worth seeing, the castle in the center of town, was covered in scaffold. The only decent thing we did was visit a Pizza place called ‘Brandi’, which is famous for being the originator of the Margherita pizza for the then-queen. It was really nice – both food and the place itself – it was just a shame we had to walk up the street and try to get home. So we didn’t, and got in a kamikaze cab to the train station as it seemed safer then attempting to cross the road.

After that we broke out across Italy to Bari, a port over on the east coast for a ferry to Croatia. On the road during that day-long ride the temperature on the bike display got up to 41 degrees celsius, which is reallyfookinghot in fahrenheit. The less said about that ride the better, we went the wrong way for a bit, roasted and generally were not happy bunnies then we arrived in the Italian counterpart to Tilbury.

The ferry ride itself was much better, a cabin overnight and waking pulling up to the very pleasant dock in Dubrovnik, Croatia. We disembarked and left straight away as the city was filling up with Italians from the ferry (even at 7am) – we’d had enough of ‘em, and hit the road with two old Swiss dudes we had met at the port.

The road up the coast, over the Bosnian border, through Bosnia for about 30mins, back over the border went without a hitch (or a stamp in the passport, which is a shame) and both the roads and scenery were probably up there with the best we have seen so-far.

Two nights Brela turned into four as it was lovely: one of the top 10 beaches in the world and people who were the friendliest we have met since we have been away. We dragged ourselves away to where I write this: the island of Brac (another ferry where an Austrian guy and I manhandled our overloaded bikes on and off of the boat). We about 5mins from the beach at Santi Rat, if you fancy sticking that in flickr or Google images.

I’ll upload some photos when I can: since we’ve been avoiding Ibis hotels we’ve been grifting shit bandwidth from cafes and the like, and I can’t leave the images uploading overnight.

A knackered battery forces me to leave it there. Over and out for now!

Neglecting this blog

I’ve been neglecting this blog, I admit. If you are still here and reading then thanks and well done, I would have lost interest weeks and weeks ago.

We’ve done a lot since my last post. I am writing this one from Camping Tiber, just outside of Rome.

Since we were in Venice we’ve:

• Been over the Furka Pass into Switzerland
• Had the good fortune of staying in excellent circumstances around Sion in Switzerland
• Flown home for a wedding, and gone swimming to boot
• Ridden over the Grand St. Bernard pass back into Italy
• Visited the Cinque Terre series of towns in Italy
• Visited the Colosseum and Forums in Rome

Tomorrow we’re off to Vatican City for another look around.

Men With Maps

I realized that I had forgotten a whole chunk of stuff from our time in Garda; namely our trip from Peschera to Venice. That’s the danger of this travelling around lark: forget a day and you miss out an entire town or sight. The complete opposite to being at home, then.

Venice is orienteering for adults. The place is basically one big maze. Forget the canals and the gondolas and all that, the most common sight is men with maps standing on corners arguing with their wives.

At first we threw caution to the wind, stepped off of the train, and confidently thrust ourselves into the maze of little streets. Then, when the canals dried up and we realized we were well and truly lost did we buy a map – only to realize that we had walked about ten miles and were in danger of making it back to the campsite under our own steam if we didn’t back-track.

Now, when I say “streets” what I really mean are “things marked as streets on the map but are actually alleyways you wouldn’t walk down on your own at night at home.” Forget your usual method of “count two roads and then turn left.” That little gap you passed that you would have to squeeze through sideways? Major road on the map. Also forget navigating via landmarks. The buildings are so high and the layout so byzantine you have no hope. Turn left at the bridge? Forget it, there are two many of them and only every third one is marked on the map. I pity your average American tourist who is used to a grid layout. Think London is tricky? Try this pal.

We skipped the Gondola ride as they wanted 80E (“fixed price”). Instead we settled on a meal beside one of the major canals. I knew it was a tourist spot, and I knew we were going to get ripped off, but we did it so we could say we had.

What I hadn’t prepared myself for was the 10E each glass of vinegar that was poured (and spilt) in front of us followed by the plate of, well, shit that that slapped down in front of us, complete with drippings and smears of a completely different meal around the side of the plate. Johnny would have definitely said “no”

I think the first inkling that the waitress had that I has less than pleased was when she caught me writing “complete shit” across the bill and crossing out various items. Bit of a giveaway, in retrospect. Therein followed a shouting match with her banging her hand on the table and me shouting “shit” every other word before I gave in and paid the bill in full (65E for two plates of the aforementioned shit and two glasses of off wine) under protest from Sarah, who justifiably wanted an easy life.

Ah Venice, City of Romance.

Bunga Bunga In Italy

I’ve been neglecting the updates recently, in part due to the poor state of camping Wifi and in part due to just Doing Stuff.

From Monaco we headed to Milan as a stop-over on the way to lake Garda. The ride in was excellent, the landscape becoming distinctly Italian as we navigated a series of tunnels (more Space Mountain!) up from the coast inland.

Milan is an absolute nightmare to navigate. Very hot (had to pull over and let the air-cooled bike cool down), full of road works, nutcase drivers and random cobbled bits. I would hate to have to ride some of it the wet. Eventually we found sanctuary at a hotel (Ibis! I should have got a loyalty card) and the BBC World Service.

After a night of welcome comatose sleep we set off heading east from Milan along the A4 toll road to Garda. First dose of misery and bother. This road is a complete and utter nightmare to ride. The Italians, to be frank, drive like complete and utter bastards. Speed limits are taken as mere suggestion, no mercy is shown, and the standard way of indicating that you want to pass in the outside lane is to sit 2 inches behind the driver in front, when you are both doing about 100mph, until they either move or you both die in a twisted mass of metal and guts. No other outcome is acceptable. It is quite common to come to a complete stop from 60mph on a joining slip road just because you’ve been out-chickened by a lorry; never-mind the poor sod on a motorbike behind you.

The lorry drivers deserve special mention. The A4 is a three lane motorway. Lorries, traditionally trundling up the slowest lane, think nothing of pulling out with no notice into the middle lane should the driver in front not have his accelerator mashed entirely into the floor. As the outside lane is full of people whizzing along to the next Bunga Bunga party at over 100mph as someone on a bike this leaves you with two options: sit behind a lorry blind and prone to being pulled out on by another lorry whilst being thrown around by the dirty air, or to gun it and pull out into the fast lane and attempt to pass in the 10-15 seconds you have before you have someone behind you rubbing their bumper against your rear wheel.

Suffice to say, this was stressful and not especially safe. The secret (we found on the way back down the A4 a week later, but accident) is to travel on a Sunday, when there are no lorries on the road.

Things took a turn for the worst when we passed through the tolls just out of Milan. We rode over something big and sharp that tore a chunk of rubber off of the rear tyre. Luckily it was both to the side rather than in the inch or so you run on when going straight and upright, and in the bulk of the tyre and not in the tread groove. There is a picture somewhere within the photos of the little patch-job I did (in 35 degree heat sitting in a petrol station carpark in full gear, no less) with the glue from my puncture repair kit to stick the rubber flap back down to try to ensure that other else could worm its way into the weakened spot and cause a puncture proper. A happy outcome I suppose, but for brief time there I was trying to dodge the kamikaze lorries, count the distance between the last and next “SOS” bay on the hard shoulder, and do that odd thing you do on a bike where you think that pinching your bum cheeks together will help to both detect and prevent a flat tire. I did not have my happy face on.

However, mandatory dose of grief out of the way we arrived on the south-west corner of lake Garda and a nice campsite. Despite the wonky-eyed proprietor bidding us to “enjoy you holiday” in the manner of a serial killer urging you to “enjoy your meal” knowing full well it is stuffed with Rohypnol we set up camp and grabbed a beer.

The couple running both the bar and the on-site Pizzeria spoke excellent English. When I told him my home-town was also that of Mick and Keef of the Rolling Stones he went absolutely crazy, and we spent the rest of the nights drinking far too much wine, singing Rolling Stones songs (him on air guitar, “tune” and chorus, me filling in the words for the verses) and rolled into the tent far too late.

After another day to recover/relax/prepare we set off up the east coast of lake Garda with lake Ledro as our destination. Garda is fantastic to ride along: the lake and towns on its shores are wonderful, and only get better the more north you get (we learned from Rolling Stones man that north/south – rich/poor is to Italy what west/east rich/poor is to England). There are a bunch of tunnels that take you around the lake at intervals, most of which are huge arched gothic things with ghost-train lighting and a wonderful reverb effect if you’re in or on a noisy piece of kit.

Ledro is a lake that sits between a bunch of hills/mountains (what is the distinction there anyway – is it like a boat and a ship, you need one present to define the other?), is sky-blue and absolutely beautiful. We splashed out on a mobile portacabin thing as we knew there was some bad weather on the way and we were at a decent altitude. This turned out to be a good choice when it both lashed it down and we woke up in the morning breathing condensation from the cold.

We hired some bikes – apparently Sarah hadn’t had enough of two wheels and decided that we should further ruin ourselves in the name of impractical transport – and did a couple of laps around the lake. This kind of back-fired as by the time we had finished it was more painful to use the chief benefit of the cabin (chairs) than it was to stand up. That said, we did overdose on tea and biscuits on account of there being real mugs to drink it out of. Englishmen and all that!

Our entertainment, on account of there being digital TV, was the Eurovision song contest. Moldovia’s entry was the outright winner in both our minds, and the first example of what I am now calling “Gnome Ska” I have ever come across. When we get home I will be getting more Gnome Ska in my life, that you can be sure of.

We reluctantly gave up the cabin and made our way down the east side of Garda to the excellent Camping Butterfly next to the wonderful fort-cum-town of Peschiera. Here we had a complete blow-out, eating out every night, beers from the tap rather than the supermarket and the full works a couple of times in the town, on account of it being Sarah’s birthday whilst we were staying here. I know, she’s a lucky girl, eh? We spent a week here, basically being on your typical holiday (eat, swim, eat, drink, sleep, walk, eat, etc.) and enjoyed every single minute of it.

So, it was with great reluctance that we packed up ready to head to lake Maggiore, east of Garda and south of the Alps. That, however, is a story for another day.

Monaco

I write this sitting in a small mobile home on the shore of Lake Ledro in Italy. A lot has happened since the last post.

I spoke to Garry recently via Skype (45mins for about 4p! Damn you Microsoft for buying it …) and he said in some comment somewhere that he enjoyed these things much more when we got ourselves into some bother rather that waxing on the beauty of the world. As I trust his opinion his constructive criticism is duly taken, only grief and misery to follow

We spent about a week in St. Tropez. Whilst the last post perhaps sounded like we didn’t enjoy it nothing could be further from the truth: around the bay in Grimaud where we were staying was excellent as I hope the pictures attest (they are sunrises not sunsets, btw). After much lazing about we decided that, after about 7 days, we needed to get our act together to move on to Monacco. As the horrendously expensive camp Wifi (20E!!!) was plain crap we decided to get on the bike to McDonalds, which offers free Wifi. No kidding, we spent two full days in McDonalds buying the smallest single coffees we could and rinsing the Internet to get all of our banking, booking and whatnot (Ricky Gervais podcasts!) done.

We then set off for Monacco, which was The. Best. Place. Ever. The Grand Prix is on the 26-29th of May and they had already started putting up the barriers and constructing the circuit. This is discovered when I was trying to find the garage with which the hotel had a special parking deal. Without this it is 7-8E upwards per hour to park, and we got it at that a day. I did a couple of side streets and missed the turning and found myself riding up the start-finish straight of the Grand Prix circuit, replete with barriers, gantry, pits and commentary box. My first thought was, “am I meant to be doing this?” My next was: “I wanted to take that left but I’ve gone and followed the circuit, idiot.” The only thing to do was to complete the circuit and find the garage. I had to ask a copper (who wear full cerimony dresss to direct traffic) and he pointed out that he had seen me do a lap already and that it was just down there.

Bike parked and Nigel Mansell fantasy complete we headed for the docks. If St. Tropez had some mega yaghts then the main harbour in Monacco is home to battleships of epic proportions, ready for a fights to the death with shiffon dropped as flak and silver cutlery fired from he bow by way of cluster bombs. The things are like floating hotels/office blocks/mansions: a level of wealth that I can guarantee that everybody reading this could never hope to obtain, and if they do I would like first dibs on the aft main cabin for me summer holidays.

After that we had some drinks in the Cafe de Paris in the square with the Monte Carlo Casino and Hotel de Paris and watched the flash motors, vintage cars and freaks pass by. The best were the 19 year old dweebs (and I fully admit to doing this myself in other circumstances) walking past with footballer knots in their ties, stern face, bird trudging along in tow in Topshop’s finest, constantly checking their Blackberrys as if to say “I’m meant to be here and I’m one of them and I’m that important I just *have to make that call*”. Alright mate, and the soles of your shoes are moulded – my dad at least taught me to check the details – you don’t fool anyone pal (Sarah also says my bitch quota has gone up since we have been away. I’m just green, is all).

We followed that with a tour of the palace, a quick pit-stop at the hotel and a meal in a lovely restaraunt on the east side of the bay before deciding we’d go for broke and try both casinos in the evening.

We walked up the main steps on the Monte Carlo Casino, admired the resplendent marble floors, frescoes and marbles, peered through the door into the gambling room populated by tables and besuited men and women in their evening finest laughing over the gentle tinkle of chip on beize and chink of champagne glass. We then decided that, truth has it, we were more at the big tie knot level and decided not to try and enter the floor of tables and to decamp to the palace of slot machines and chavvy bingo just around the way.

The casino of the Cafe de Paris is full of one-armed bandits and computerised card games of many kinds. Despite making my living pressing buttons we had no idea what most of them wanted us to do in order to coax some cash out of them. We literally resorted to pressing buttons randomly in the hope that something would happen. I think our best effort was turning 5E into 7E before we promptly lost the lot. I managed to loose 5E in one “spin” of a machine, God knows how. After 50 quid we called the whole thing off as pointless and went back to watch CNBC in the room for the slightly more respectable side of gambling.

Our second day in Monacco was spent walking around the harbour again and visting the Prince’s car collection. For someone who has been into engines of various kinds since I was a child it was a nice way to spend an afternoon; highlights being seeing a modern F1 car up close, a Lambourghini Countache in all of its 80s plastic crappy glory, Senna’s helmet and gloves, and an Oldsmobile Town and Country – very rare and very nice. Sarah liked the little Fiat 600 with whicker seats and pelmet roof lining.

We finished the night off with the biggest Pizza we had both ever eaten and got ready to move on the next day, fitting in the most complete circuit of the track we had done. Here I fufilled a life-long dream by navigating the hairpin and blatting through the tunnel in 2nd gear with the revs high for maximum boy-noise. Sarah has no idea why any of this is important!

On the way around we managed to come the nearest to disaster that we have been since Mount Doom, when a stupid woman strode right out across a zebra crossing without any indication, from behind a van, looking the opposite way to the traffic and talking to her friends some way behind her over her shoulder. Sarah is convinced that she actually walked into the back of the bike as she felt it move. I was more concerned with her screaming (hopefully in fear and not from a broken foot). We called it quits from this point, got the gear from the hotel and literally made for the border.