Alps Trip - Old Gits do 24 passes in a week

[Bob_Defly]

Super jealous!

Although the downside of a great trip is getting back to reality, you just want to keep on going Littlest Hobo style...

[mybrainhurts]

Saw the thread title....thought laxative.

[Kawasicki]

Bob_Defly said:

Super jealous!

Although the downside of a great trip is getting back to reality, you just want to keep on going Littlest Hobo style...

An upside is becoming a MUCH better rider. I do mini tours, just a couple of days riding maybe 500km on roads with a lot of curves and little traffic with one night in a hotel. I get a massive boost in riding skill, even though I ride a fair bit anyway, but mostly on roads I know.

[Bob_Defly]

Kawasicki said:

Bob_Defly said:

Super jealous!

Although the downside of a great trip is getting back to reality, you just want to keep on going Littlest Hobo style...

An upside is becoming a MUCH better rider. I do mini tours, just a couple of days riding maybe 500km on roads with a lot of curves and little traffic with one night in a hotel. I get a massive boost in riding skill, even though I ride a fair bit anyway, but mostly on roads I know.

Agreed. Although after 5+ days on the bike I start waving in the car.

[black-k1]

Another superb day. It was warm, dry and sunny. We did the whole of the Route Napoleon with a couple of minor cols added in for good measure.

The long, fast, sweeping bends of the N85 are wonderful with the opportunity to set some decent daily high scores.



Most importantly, Mark is having a wonderful time.



We stopped in Gap for lunch. It's a location that has been the destination for a couple of Old Gits trips and somewhere we all like.





Some of the roads and the views have been stunning.





Route for the day: https://www.myrouteapp.com/en/social/route/5105385...

Edited by black-k1 on Friday 17th September 20:34

[Dr Jekyll]

Bob_Defly said:

Super jealous!

Although the downside of a great trip is getting back to reality, you just want to keep on going Littlest Hobo style...

The downside to me is that the stuff I do when I'm back at work feels far less real than taking my bike down a fabulous road in great scenery.

[Kawasicki]

Thrilled you got lucky with the weather!

[black-k1]

No pictures today. It's been a long, but great, day

We left the hotel at around 09:00 and followed a great cross country route until early afternoon. 2 or three minor passes with great surfaces and fun. Only the lycra clad Tour de France wannabes to contend with.

A stop for a pizza lunch then had us doing almost 250 miles of AutoRoute to get to tonight's hotel. I managed to lose my AutoRoute ticket so had to jump the barrier at the end with one of the others so I'll have to wait and see if there are any consequences.

This evening has been the fun of COVID testing and completing UK passenger locator forms before an all you can eat Chinese meal.

Route for the day: https://www.myrouteapp.com/en/social/route/4184208...

Tomorrow we leave early and dash for the ferry. The trip over.

Edited by black-k1 on Monday 20th September 10:27

[black-k1]

Up early ready to do the dash for the ferry. We'll have brunch on the ferry then head our separate ways from Dover.

As requested earlier, here is the link to the full route: https://www.myrouteapp.com/en/social/route/5105018...

[TR4man]

As someone who has never even sat on a motorbike, let alone ridden one, I have really enjoyed following your updates. What a great inspirational trip and thank you for posting your experiences.

[black-k1]

Well, COVID bureaucracy finally caught us up. Despite arriving at Calais almost an hour before the latest check in time for the ferry, the single French passport check point followed by the single UK passport check point followed by the really slow check in to validate all COVID forms pushed us back onto the later ferry.

TR4man said:

As someone who has never even sat on a motorbike, let alone ridden one, I have really enjoyed following your updates. What a great inspirational trip and thank you for posting your experiences.

Thanks for saying that. It's nice to know that the posts are of interest.

[black-k1]

On the ferry



All home safe now. Door to door stats:



And one dirty bike!

Edited by black-k1 on Monday 20th September 07:59

[Pirks]

Excellent and i enjoyed following your thread, you did a lot of miles in a short space of time.

[Jules Sunley]

Excellet thread, another thanks from me

[_Neal_]

And from me - great stuff! I've done the Route Napoleon and bits of Italy and Switzerland in a car, now I want to do a Euro Tour on a bike - thanks for the inspiration.

[StreetDragster]

Great thread, thanks for updating and the routes. If you could share the good/bad hotels that would be good also.

I'm now even more interested in our trip!

[Mr Dendrite]

Enjoyed the thread, great trip. Envious

[black-k1]

MrsMiggins said:

I put off doing a Europe trip this year just because of the potential hassle involved in getting in/out of each country and the return to the UK but it seems like that hasn't put you off at all!

If you're able to can you share some of the preparation you've done to manage the Covid situation and what forms/tests etc are/were necessary? Appreciate that's more of an "after trip" type of post.

The COVID planning was much worse than the "COVID reality". This is the planning spreadsheet we had before the trip:



First things first, only consider such a trip if you're double vaccinated. The effort required if you're not would be too much, if even possible.

Most of the details started from the government FCO web site which gave links to the other country government sites. We discovered that you had to think around the process for a number of the various requirements. France insists you fill out a form promising not to bring COVID into the country (I hope you were a boy scout so you can make such a promise!) No one looked at the form but they also had a COVID app that we all loaded up with the details and that was checked at a number of restaurants, including in Italy!

The German site tells you you have to quarantine the whole way through the process until the very end, where you load up your vaccination proof at which point you're OK. That had a couple of Old Gits in panic mode before they got to the end of the process and already discussing routes that avoided Germany.

Italy was a no - except there was a form you could complete if simply transiting through the country and were going to be in Italy for less than 36 hours. We had to complete 2 of those as we went into Italy twice with more than 36 hours between the first entry into Italy and the last exit from Italy but the total time actually in Italy still less than 36 hours. No one looked at the forms.

With all of the European border crossings we were not stopped. In fact, there were a couple of occasions where we we were unsure what country we were in and were judging that by the road numbering. Only Switzerland actually had officials at the border and they just waved us straight through.

The only place where "officialdom" came in was at the ferry port on the way back. We had to show a valid 2 day antigen test (which is EXACTLY the same as the free NHS Lateral Flow tests but cost £29! - Rip Off!). We also had to show that we'd completed our passenger locator form which, in turn, required that we had pre-booked our day 2 return PCR test (another £45)

With the changes announced a couple of days ago I expect many of these requirements will disappear. But, even if they don't, do not let COVID officialdom put you off doing such a trip.

[black-k1]

StreetDragster said:

Great thread, thanks for updating and the routes. If you could share the good/bad hotels that would be good also.

I'm now even more interested in our trip!

These are the hotels we stayed in and are on the route plans.

Town	Country	Hotel	Comments	Would we book again?
Bethune	France	Hotel Eden	Nice hotel, friendly staff. Recommended.	Yes
Bad Saulgau	Germany	Hotel Ochsen	Decent hotel, friendly staff. Recommended.	Yes
Madonna di Campiglio	Italy	Style Grifone	Nice hotel, friendly staff. Parking difficult.	Probably
Laax	Switzerland	Hotel-Gasthof Seehof Laax	OK hotel. Quite run down. Expensive.	No
Aosta	Italy	HB Aosta Hotel & Balcony SPA	Very nice hotel but expensive.	Yes
Baratier	France	Hotel-Restaurant Spa Les Peupliers	Nice hotel, friendly staff. Recommended.	Yes
Cagnes-sur-Mer	France	La Villa des Oliviers HOTEL DE CHARME	Nice hotel but expensive.	Possibly
La Léchère	France	Hotel Radiana	OK hotel but a little run down and expensive.	Possibly
Châlons-en-Champagne	France	B&B Hôtel Châlons-en-Champagne	Clean, comfortable and very good value.	Yes

As you would expect, there were good and bad. Our main criteria were:

Clean, comfortable bed, good shower.

Everything beyond that was a bonus. Only the Swiss hotel failed as 4 out of 5 of us found the beds uncomfortable, and a couple of the pillows gave a faint whiff of stale cigarette smoke as you moved your head around.

Petrol everywhere was more expensive than the UK with Italy and Switzerland "winning" the award for the most expensive at around €1.84 for basic E10. The French AutoRoute ran a close second but we all expected to be ripped off for fuel on the motorways.

[StreetDragster]

Perfect, thanks for all that!