AN AIRHEAD ABROAD
Back in the day, Steve Sharp was a regular two-wheeled traveller, but for three decades he’s been taking more conventional family holidays. How would he cope with long days in the saddle again, trekking two thousand miles in a week on a BMW?
Back in the day, Steve Sharp was a regular twowheeled traveller, but for three decades he’s been taking more conventional family holidays. How would he cope with long days in the saddle again, trekking two thousand miles in a week on a BMW?
Amillion years ago in my youth, the highlight of the summer would be the annual bike trip to Europe. Cheap wine, good company, nice food, well-equipped campsites – it seemed to have it all. Plus of course the sun. You know the rest. Work, marriage, children: the combination meant that if I was lucky the foreign bike trip was a weekend at the excellent Trident & Rocket 3 Owners’ Club rallies in Brittany and the Loire. Gradually the only European trips were in a campervan en famille.
Thirty years later, with the free time that follows retirement, I began once again to hanker after the ‘joys’ of a hard day in the saddle and starry nights under canvas. Was it possible to rekindle the freedom of the open road? Or had the years taken their toll and would the aches and pains be too much to bear? I’d always had a bike, but a couple of hours riding here and there in the summer was no test. There was only one way to find out if I could still hack the real thing…
The initial plan was ambitious – my son Duncan and I would go to Istanbul. What started as an idea over an evening pint very quickly firmed up into a plan. We even bought a bike for him, a tidy BMW F650GS, and I set to – preparing bikes, camping gear, spares and toolkits – while he planned itineraries.
With just a few days to go before our departure he was offered a dream
job which meant starting work immediately. We’d already agreed that if it happened the trip would be postponed. So there I was with a bike – my 1993 BMW R80GS – and nowhere to go. Istanbul had been postponed but not cancelled, so there was no point in pressing on regardless. It was at this point that my reading matter came into play. I was enjoying a book about the Comet Line, an escape route used by downed Allied airman during WW2. Extremely brave couriers would take them from Belgium, through France to the Pyrenees where they would hike over the mountains to neutral Spain.
Following this route ticked most of my boxes. It involved a ride through France from top to bottom, ending in the Pyrenees, one of my favourite areas. A week seemed long enough for a reintroduction to the delights of numb-bum, aching shoulders and roll mats, at an age when nice suites and comfy beds were now the holiday norm.
The trip got off to a less than auspicious start. The loaded BMW was wheeled out of the garage. The wife stood by to wave me on my way. I went to swing my leg over the saddle only for my hip to seize up with a terrible attack of cramp as my foot got caught in the tent strapped on the pillion seat. As I cried out in pain and my wife cried with laughter, I realised that the camping gear forced me to cock my leg higher than normal – and my hip joint wasn’t up to it. A few minutes of frenzied reorganisation ensued and I was eventually able to set off.
After this undignified start the trip down to Dover was comfortable, but the problem reappeared – in reverse – when I tried to dismount at the port. The kickdown sidestand is too far forward and too highly sprung to be used while mounted on the bike. I know GS’S are tall, but at 6ft 3in I should be able to cope and always have previously. But maybe you lose a bit of flexibility with advancing years and I’m ashamed to admit I came within an inch of toppling over. More reorganisation of the load and a lot of care improved matters.
That aside, the following seven days went surprisingly well. I cheated by joining the Comet Line in France rather than in Belgium, but by the end of Day One had done 376 miles in twelve hours, including the ferry crossing. The first night in Normandy reaffirmed my love of French campsites – providing you go for small ones. This site was recommended by the nearby tourist office and had a food shack which provided a very decent goat’s cheese salad, meatballs and spaghetti, tartes aux pommes and a carafe of red for 14 euros. The campsite cost 10 euros.
The pattern was repeated throughout the week. I managed around 350 miles a day and usually started to look for a campsite around 4-5pm. Small municipal sites were the best value and there was always someone who would stop for a chat, usually drawn by the sight of a bike.
Following the Comet Line was at times a bit sketchy. The escapees had used the train network, so it was impossible to stick rigidly to their route,
but the main points were followed: down the centre of France via Poitiers, Angouleme, Dax, then over to the west coast at Bayonne and on to the Pyrenees. I took a detour between Poitiers and Angouleme to head east to a town called Oradour sur Glane. It is the site of a Waffen-ss massacre in the summer of 1944 in which 642 people were rounded up and killed in a reprisal for Resistance activity in the area.
The village has been left untouched as a memorial to those who died. Walking the streets and seeing the paraphernalia of daily life still there, just as the clock stopped on 10 June 1944 is uncanny. The roofs have collapsed on almost all the houses, but look through the window and you’ll still see a rusty sewing machine or kitchen implements, and there in the road is the doctor’s car, rotting a bit more year by year.
Before entering you go through a museum, then a tunnel lined with the pictures of the dead and the exhortation to remember that the village is a memorial and to act accordingly. A big sign says ‘SILENCE.’ Sadly a significant number of people wandered around as if it was a theme park, shouting to each other and laughing, even outside the church where mothers and their children were burned to death. It seemed they couldn’t take in the significance of what had happened.
Back on the road, I rejoined the Comet Line at Angouleme and onto Bayonne, then followed the Atlantic coast to St Jean de Luz and finally the village of Urrugne, where the escapers started the walk over the Pyrenees to Spain. The track out of the quiet village today leads across a field and it’s easy to imagine that it probably looked the same during the war. For me it was the end of the line, but for the Allied escapers lead by their Basque guides it meant a gruelling climb over the mountains and on to eventual freedom.
From the perspective of a road trip, having a theme and an end point helped to give it some structure. Bimbling along French country roads is fun, but it still helps if there’s a purpose to the bimbling!
The trip back was a quicker affair. I treated myself to a night in a fine, family-run hotel in the Pyrenees, then hit the excellent
motorway that runs up the west coast of France and headed for my daughter Natalie’s home half an hour south of Nantes. I arrived early evening, having taken eight hours to do the 410 miles.
The final leg home was punctuated by a night camping northeast of Rouen, which left me with a comfortable run back to Suffolk the next day via Calais. I’d managed 2015 miles in seven days. Had I discovered my lost youth? What lessons had been learned?
First of all, it was fun. Even on my own – perhaps especially on my own. It was the first time I had travelled alone for a sustained period and, without getting too ‘meaningful’ about it, it was liberating. I was glad to talk to strangers and they were much more likely to chat to me than they would if I had been with a companion. One French guy on a big modern BMW at a service station wanted to compare notes and I was totally baffled by the electronic complexity of his in-bike dashboard. He couldn’t believe the simplicity of mine.
I was struck by how much some things have changed in 40 years. Tents for a start. I took a £40 throwup tent and they do what it says on the tin. Take it out of the bag and two seconds later it’s up. Working out how to pack them up is a bit of a challenge until you get the hang of it, but they’re brilliant if it’s raining when you arrive and you want to set up camp quickly.
It’s also vital these days to have a USB outlet on the bike so you can charge the mobile and stay in touch with the world. I opted for one with a Hella plug on the other end which meant it went into the existing 12V power point, thus avoiding the hassle of wiring it in. It also means I can take it with me whichever bike I use. The trip showed how important the smart phone has become as a source of communication, entertainment and photos.
I also learned the value of Tupperware-type boxes. Whether they’re carrying small spares or essential foods, they keep everything in the pannier neat and easy to find – especially useful if you’re trying to grab the essentials to throw into the tent in the middle of a thunderstorm! It’s a level of planning that would have been alien to the younger me, so maturity has its benefits.
As for the bike, well not a lot has changed. My best touring years were on air-cooled BMS (sorry, T160) and I think they’re still hard to
beat. My bike started its life with a touring bike company in New Zealand, before passing into private hands. I understand a previous owner loved it so much he brought it with him when he came to the UK, so you could say it’s well-travelled.
For those who aren’t familiar with them, air-cooled BMS are simple. Essentially refined and updated versions of a design from the 1920s, the flat twin layout gives inherent smoothness – always useful if you’re spending hours in the saddle. By the 1990s the air-cooled twins had reached their most sophisticated level, which meant that most things worked better, but without the complexity of today’s steeds.
For instance there’s a Brembo front brake and a rear drum which I find more effective than those on earlier models. The tyres are tubeless on spoked rims (thanks to a patented system) and the rear wheel is very QD, involving the removal of just four bolts. Punctures can be repaired at the roadside, thanks to the plug and glue kit supplied with the bike, together with little compressed air cylinders. It’s enough to get you to a tyre shop for a long-term repair, as I once discovered when I picked up a nail on the M25. The temporary fix on the hard shoulder not only allowed me to escape the motorway, but meant I didn’t miss the ferry. The permanent fix was sorted in France the next day.
Access to the important bits of the bike is easy – they’re sticking out either side! Valve clearances, carb adjustment, oil changes and simple servicing are jobs for the amateur. Take the petrol tank off (held on by a rubber band on the GS) and you can not only access all the important electrical bits, but make sense of the wiring too. Improved gearboxes mean smooth gearchanges can be taken for granted, rather than a knack that took years to perfect, and handling has been improved by stiffer frames. The Paralever rear end of the 1990s not only improved road holding but allowed the use of bigger tyres.
Thanks to these changes the GS handles better that my 1978 RS, but in all other respects there’s not a lot of difference, despite the 15 year age gap. The GS is really comfortable for a day in the saddle, whether pootling at 50mph or holding 75-80mph for hours on the autoroute. Going faster than that requires a significant amount more concentration and increased fuel consumption, which during the trip was rarely out of the 50s, even on the motorway. I found to my surprise that when forced to use premium grade petrol, consumption improved by at least 5mpg. Maybe there is some truth in the petrol company’s claims of better engine efficiency.
I also like the feeling that any breakdowns on an airhead from this era can probably be sorted, mainly by recourse to the brilliant toolkit supplied as standard. I certainly found this to be the case on the couple of occasions when disaster struck in the past. And of course, for us oldies, these GS models are not too heavy compared with some of today’s offerings or, come to that, some of its contemporaries. My 1976 Triumph T160 for instance weighs 502lb, compared with the GS’S 456lb. And before you write in, I’m basing that on figures found on the internet.
Certainly when comparing the two, the Trident feels heavier and is more difficult to get onto the centrestand in comparison to the BM. I’ve used both bikes in the past for touring, and much though I love the Trident, I have to say the BM came out top for comfort and reliability. The fairing and hand guards help when the weather is bad, and the fairing keeps a fair bit of wind off the body, although at the price of diverting it onto the helmet. Playing around with the three
way adjustment helps a bit, and I’ve also tried a taller screen, but to little discernible effect. Ear plugs are therefore even more of a necessity than normal.
The big surprise of the trip was how easy six to eight hours of riding day after day became. The bike’s sit up and beg ergonomics certainly helped, but I can honestly say I’ve been in more pain after six hours behind a wheel than I was on the GS. The only time my body felt its age was in the morning after a night on a roll mat. Blow up airbeds are better – and I also decided a warmer sleeping bag would be a good idea. Even in June the nights could be bitter.
The only recurrent problem was that damned side stand. If I could have put it down from astride the bike it would have been a simple matter of then leaning the bike over and stepping off, without worrying it was about to topple. You won’t been surprised to hear it’s been replaced by a Migstand. It’s not cheap, but worth every penny in that it can be easily lowered, isn’t spring-loaded and allows an easy and dignified dismount.
It was a worthwhile trip for many reasons. Some old lessons were rediscovered and some new ones tucked away for the future. Perhaps the main one is that you’re never too old. Once we’re clear of the plague you should unlock your hidden Ted Simon, even if only for a week. You won’t regret it.