4-5 July 2011 Top Gear's "Best Road In The World"

Mon 4th July: Leaving a load of excess luggage at Martin’s, I set off for Davos in Switzerland, about 400kms of twisty mountain roads away. If I find a better day’s motorbiking than this on the whole trip it will be astonishing! It took about 9 hours of riding to pass through four ‘zones’ of roads. All the riding meant I forgot to wish Ashley a happy America Day, so I'll have to do that here...

-         - Slovenian roads and a mountain pass which flew past with the exception of the chain coming off my bike. This was the first mechanical problem but fortunately was simple to get back on. Mum had thoughtfully passed me a couple of pairs of those thin throwaway gloves you get a petrol stations when filling your car, and they came invaluable here, saving my riding gloves from getting caked in oil. 

Bad

Good

-         -  Into Austria with wide fast sweeping roads great from crunching big kilometres on with a couple of mountain sections to keep things interesting. 

-         - Italian Alps, crossing back and forth over the border from Austria, the little towns and villages live in a state of dual German / Italian language, but immediately become more congested in the Italian parts for some strange reason. First traffic jams of the day as roads get narrower and there are no motorways anywhere near, holiday traffic all has to funnel through little villages that can’t really cope. That said, up in the hills the Jaufenpass Passo Giovo was a particular highlight.

Riding to Top Gear's Best Road in the World
my camera automatically went into heavy effect mode

Italian Alps

 -         - Switzerland. Hold the front page! The Swiss Alps are beautiful with roads out of this world. Smooth, quick sweeping corners wide enough to ride properly and mountain valley roads that twist on and on forever. Certainly for my money, Switzerland is the best motorbiking to be had in Europe, unfortunately, it really did take my money. Nothing’s cheap here but you have to take the pain for the pleasure of riding you can’t put a price on. 

Swiss roads, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

My hotel outside DAvos, you could see the Matterhorn
from it, but I took the picture with my back to it, so it's less
impressive than it might have been...

Arrived in Davos, a ski village, and the start point for Top Gear’s once proclaimed ‘Best Driving Road in the World’ from Davos to the Stelvio Pass’. Tomorrow, I’d test it out. 

Tues 5^th July:

Left my hotel many Euros lighter, but set with good weather and the prospect of an amazing days riding. Neither let me down! It’s hard to find the language to describe the Davos to Stelvio ride, you just need to do it, in a car, bike or just hitchhike one  of the Porsches or Ferraris you see everywhere. If you own a supercar, you need super-roads, and these are the ones.

Writing this a few days after, it’s hard to remember every detail, or infact many at all, as it all just flows together. There is a strange tunnel that runs under a mountain on the border between Switzerland and Italy though... It has Swiss customs at one side, Italian on the other, and the tunnel itself is a few kilometres long and single track controlled by traffic lights at either side, certainly an interesting experience, there are tunnels everywhere in the Alps but none like this.

The video shows better the ride to Stelvio, though the top is actually a bit disappointing to be honest. The Grossglockner Pass in Austria has a small cafe on top and feels much more special, an earned cuppa with amazing views, and a few, but not too many, other bikers. Stelvio however being a ski resort has row after row of tourist tat shops, burger stalls, huge hotels and thousands of cyclists, drivers and bikers all looking for rare parking spots. It’s a bit over-done somehow. The roads are fine, but far far better on the Swiss side than the Italian where the hairpins are so tight there’s no proper riding to be had, you just ride in a straight line to a tight hairpin, slow down to a crawl, check nothing’s coming the other way, get in 1^st gear and carefully ride round on the clutch and repeat 100 more times. Yeah it looks good, but its not great biking. 

The good 'north' side of Stelvio

Me at the Stelvio Pass sign that's covered in stickers

Stelvio south side - looks cool but not great riding

Hairpins

For my money, Grossglockner is far, far more enjoyable, glad I went though as it’s one you need to tick off at some point .It just remains to be seen whether the Transfargasaran Highway in Romania trumps them all?

After having a pizza (when in Italy) that was watery and bland (Jurman Pizzeria in Ljubljana folks, I’m telling you!) a ride back on increasingly  congested roads and toll motorways to a small hostel in Bassano Del Grappa was it for a fantastic day, but perhaps one that I’d had slightly too high expectations for, Switzerland met and passed them, Italy, well I’ve been once and that’s enough.