Touring in the Jura
Sports tourers were built for brilliant roads… but do you need to ride miles of motorway to get there?
THERE WAS A time when “sports touring” meant jumping on a bike and riding briskly for a week. Usually to the mountains, maybe to the coast, or even to a far-flung racetrack. There was a time, too, when it meant being on a particular kind of bike: low, sleek and derived from a sportsbike because, let’s face it, there was a time when tourers were anything but sporty.
Times have changed. Bikes have changed. Even the biggest of machines can now deliver a sporty kick - and it’s no longer necessary to spend two days on motorways to reach your dream destination. Fly-ride trips make short breaks in Europe easy, while shipping companies are ready to freight your bike to any destination you like. Sports touring ain’t what it used to be.
The simplest shipping solution is the Bikeshuttle. It whisks your bike overnight to Geneva while you fly out. Next morning, your bike’s unloaded and you’re off on the amazing roads of the Jura. I know the area pretty well because my daughter’s godfather grew up here. One winter he introduced me to skiing here. Turns out I’m not much cop, so it was only when I went back in summer on two wheels that I got the best out of the mountains – on probably my first sports touring trip.
I passed through the Jura again last summer on my way to Italy on the KTM 1290 Super Adventure. With its 30L tank,
hard luggage and genuine off-road ability, it’s probably not most people’s idea of a ‘sports’ tourer. But on the tarmac, with its 158bhp V-twin and semi-active suspension set to Sport mode it’s a very sporty bike on which to tour.
There’s a delicious thrill to finding yourself on familiar roads in a foreign country. One of my favourite routes used to climb from Switzerland into the Jura over the Col de la Faucille, through the town of Gex. I’m rolling along the N5, into Morez, when I find myself picking up the old route almost out of habit. I loop round to St Claude on the amazingly twisty D69, then out of the hills on the broader, faster D436 as far as Orgelet.
This has taken me off-course for getting to Italy, but the next leg of the route is southbound on the D3: an awesome, flowing road – though the straights seem shorter and the turns tighter than I remembered, tackled with the power of the KTM. I blunder into the suburbs of Oyonnax – where the old route turns back to St Claude, Gex and another run over the Col de la Faucille. I’d love to follow it… but instead I’m heading down to the A40 motorway, to get back on schedule.
I don’t stick on the autoroute for long. I realise I’m running parallel to another old-favourite route and the temptation to ride it again is irresistible. When I get to Bonneville, I jump off the main road and back down memory lane, heading into the high hills. It’s astonishingly life-affirming, rewarding riding. I climb through Petit Bornand and Grand Bornand, then over the spectacular Col des Aravis. The sky is blue, the hills green, distant white-tipped mountains crown the horizon – it couldn’t get any more perfect.
This is a stretch of the Route des Grandes Alpes (see p12) – one of the most famous and popular touring routes in the Alps. The combination of majestic scenery, unbelievably good roads and strategically placed cafés make it a brilliant place for touring by bike.
My route to Italy continues on to Tignes, but I still remember the old route. I’d drop down to Albertville and briefly hop on the motorway to get to St Pierre d’albigny, climbing over the Bauges mountains to Aix-les-bains to run beside the mirrorbright lake, before heading north again on the fast-flowing D992 and D991. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on a tourer, a trailie, a sports bike or a sports tourer when you’re riding on roads like these. Most modern bikes have the performance to make these open, sweeping turns feel sporty. You can ride there or shrink the distance with the Bikeshuttle – but whatever you ride, however you get there, this is sports touring heaven.
“It’s astonishingly life-affirming, rewarding riding”