From Barcelonnette to south we chose D 908 instead of Col de la Cayolle (this would be actual part of the Route des Grandes Alpes). I think it is more interesting to ride Col d’Allos & Col des Champs (like we did)!
But before it starts to climb to the mountain Pass you need ride a long time endlessly twisting road following the valley. The river below you goes further and further while you’re climbing higher and higher.
Finally I had to stop and check if I can see the river anymore??!!
Then starts the actual climb to the Col d’Allos:
In the top of this beautiful mountain pass we saw absolutely stunning views and I took the best picture of the whole trip here!
Wanna see this picture in bigger size? Click here!
When riding down from Col d’Allos I had a very scary moment (03:55 in the video)!! A car came from the opposite direction just behind the blind corner… and the road is very narrow and there are no rails! I think my heart stopped for a second!!! But luckily I didn’t have too much speed.
Then we rode Col des Champs! This was extremely narrow road in the middle of the forest. It felt like a jogging-path or a mountainbike-path! It had bumps and dikes… But luckily no traffic! Also in the top of Col des Champs was very quiet (and beautiful!)
The road down from Col des Champs (to east) is wider and easier to ride.
Then we rode to Valberg tourist- ans skiresort and from there we rode to Col de la Couillole.
(video here)
From there we were all waiting the final climb for this day -Col de Turini! But before we found the right mountain pass we took the wrong turn!! (Or actually we didn’t make the turn!) After missing the turn the GPS told us to climb to Ilonse… and we did!
It was 13 kilometers ride to the wrong direction!! But luckily it was very nice road and we didn’t feel bad to ride it back…
…So we could finally start the way to Col de Turini. It is simply amazing! There are so many tight corners and hairpins that I think I was feeling a little bit dizzy! And also it felt like it’s climbing a lot! Like at least 2500 meters! But actually the summit of the Turini is “only” 1607 meters high!! But gosh! What an amazing ride!!
That red spot is Timo with his Honda VFR!
From the south-end of Turini we still had few nice corners to ride (from Sospel to Menton) -or actually our place to stay was Le Relais de Monti few kilometers noth from the city of Menton. We would spend the next 3 nights here! (Nice place, I recommend it!)
The route for the day 11 was like this!
Ducati
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Ride from the magnificent Chalet Sul Lago back to France was much nicer than the day before when we arrived.
Mt Cenis
In France we started riding the endless amount of hairpin corners and mountain passes! First we had Col du Télégraphe then Col du Galibier, Col d’Izoard and finally Col de Vars.
Here’s video climbing up the Col du Télégraphe from the north:
This climb ends in Valloire village and from the southside of Valloire starts the climb to Col du Galibier which is one of my favorites! It has a short tunnel on the top, but to reach even higher you have to take the alternative route and finally reach the 2645 meters.
Here’s video from the Col du Galibier
Col d’Izoard is more south and it starts from Cervières village (If you ride from north to south). The view on the summit is a little bit different than in many other mountain pass, the mountain walls are mostly gravel and stones! It is a barren sight!
Col d’Izoard is 2360 meters high!
Finally we had Col de Vars (2109m) where we had some ice cream!
We had the accommodation in the middle of Barcelonnette city. Here’s the route for the day 10.
This was the day when we finally entered the Alps and the route that I planned this whole trip (Route des Grandes Alpes). But before we actually got to ride the endless hairpin corners… we visited the Les Gorges du Pont du Diable.
This is a place where the river has been “digging” the limestone for millions of years. It’s not a cave but almost… The hole is 40 meters deep. It costs 6,10€ to take a 40 minutes tour with a guide and it really is worth every penny!!
It is amazing place! And it’s only 20 minutes from Thonon Les Bains.
Then the first climb we took was Col de la Colombiere which is 1614 meters high mountain pass near Cluses. Then we climbed Col des Aravis, it’s still not very high but it offers one of the best views to Mt. Blanc!
You can see the highest mountain in Europe from many places if you’re driving south of Col des Aravis.
Then we had Cormet de Roselend, which is almost 2000 meters (1968 meters), this offered already very spectacular views from the top!! Especially the Lake Roselend with the clear turquoise water is really worth to make a break and admire the view!
And finally we had the highest mountain pass in Europe in the afternoon: Col d’Iseran (2764 meters). The summit is still a lonely place! There’s no restaurant or no souvenir-shop just an old chapel made of stone… and I think they don’t even use that anymore!
There’s still old meters in the sign… It has been checked few years ago that the real hight is few meters lower!
When we rode down to Val d’Isere it started to get cloudy. We had one more climb to make since we had our accommodation in Italy (Moncenisio). We did see a little bit of of the Lake Mt Cenis, but after we crossed the border we had no visibility anymore! We’re riding in the clouds! And the road to the amazing Chalet Sul Lago was extremely narrow with the branches of the trees coming very low… it felt like a scene from a horror movie!! And finally when we found the place… it had a very pleasant surprise for us!
No, it is not a Michelin restaurant with any stars… But it is mentioned in the Michelin quite many times (as you can see!) -And yes the food was good!
Here is the route for the day 9.
After breakfast it was time to start riding again. My Tomtom Rider 410 showed us the way to the nearest gas station in Weil am Rhein… but what I didn’t remember in that point that in highway in Switzerland you’ll need the Vignette! And the nearest Shell was AFTER the border checkpoint in autobahn/ highway with only possible direction to Switzerland… Oops! (We decided that we are not going to buy the expensive Vignette -we would rather ride the small roads in Switzerland area).
After a short discussion with customs officer we were able to make nice move to the other side of the customs area and ride back to Germany… and soon after that ride through the city of Basel. That took about 1 hour! In the southside of Basel we actually got our first real mountain hairpin corners when we climbed to Passwang Pass (elevation 1204 meters). And we had the first break in the “summit cafeteria” (http://www.alpenblick-passwang.ch/).
The view to valley was amazing.
Then we had Grenchenberg! What an amazing ride it was! The road is so narrow (climb from the north) that it is simply impossible to overtake a car. And I was so kind that I stopped and wait for the other 2 riders… and we had to drive behind a car for a long time.
Just before the summit there was a place with lots of cars, tents and people… I don’t know if there was a some kind of special meeting or a camp(?) but it looked very strange! (In video 09:00). We had a nice break in the summit restaurant.
The southside road of Grenchenberg is not that narrow, there are even some busses driving… Then we entered Bern.
I was actually quite scared about riding through Bern! But it was Sunday early afternoon and there was not that much traffic. We did see the city center terminal of Bern and it was quite easy to ride through. From Bern we choose the road beside (and under) the highway to west as we headed to Lake Geneva. In the way we got some pretty nice views to the Lake of Gruyère (a reservoir).
Also the view to the Lake Geneva was amazing! I had planned the route to the beach Boulevard of Vevey, Clarens and Montreux… And that was a big mistake! There was annual Jazz Festival of Montreux going on… it took about 2 hours to ride that boulevard! (But we learned to do some nice splitting!) We did see the tents! And we heard some music! So I guess we can say that we were at the festival!
Finally after a long day we arrived in Thonon-Les-baines. It’s a city in French side of the Lake Geneva.
The route for this day was like this.
It had been raining during the night in Obersteinbach and the weather forecast promised us some more rain during the day. Right after the breakfast we visited Fleckenstein castle. It was actually good that it was raining since there were not too many people!
This castle is built on a steep and high rock and it was actually ruled by the same family Fleckenstein over 600 years!
There’s also halls and tunnels inside the rock!
The view from the top of the castle is great… But we had that rain and clouds everywhere!
After the visit in the castle we had a nice road from Lembach to Wissembourg, but the road was wet so it was no fun. Then we went over the border back to Germany and after a nice break in Baden-Baden we started to ride the Schwarzwaldstrasse. But it was all in the clouds, the road was wet and from time to time it was raining!
The south-end of the Black Forest road was closed so we choosed alternative route: The road to Allerheiligen. That was very fun ride! The rain had stopped and the road was actually almost dry!
Here’s a short video I took after the roads were complitely dry:
At the end of this wet day we arrived in Weil am Rhein (in Germany), it’s actually a triple-city with Saint-Louis in France and Basel in Swtzerland. Our hotel was just beside the border and we could see people making a line to get to Switzerland!
The reason for this is simple! After UK’s Brexit the € is so low that people from Basel come to Germany to make daily shopping!!
The route for the day 7 was like this!
We got 1 more rider to make this tour with us! He’s Timo and he rides Honda VFR 800, and it’s red too!
This days route was called “Lets get the real good look at River Mosel!” -And yes we did!
The route was like this! And we’re following the River Mosel all the way from Koblenz to Trier and then to Luxemburg… It was more than 230 km’s of River Mosel and those grapevine or wine bushes on the both sides of the river! I think that’s enough… Luckily we did ride something else too! In the last part of the route we had nice ride in Eppenbrunn!
And then finally the GPS found a route that it is even hard to find from the map!!!
This must be the MAIN ROAD from Germany to France!
We had accommodation in Obersteinbach, France. It was nice and “bohemian” just in the right way!
This was from Edersee to Bendorf (near Koblenz) like this. There was a risk of rain so we didn’t ride the whole tour Lake – Edersee. That area is very much recommended with nice roads all around!
In the half-way of this day we noticed that the Ducati’s chains are very loose! Luckily we found a car and motorcycle garage where they tightened the chains right away!
As we got closer to Koblenz there was a very nice road with multiple tight corners!
I let the Ducati ride first.
At first we rode through small roads to Beelitz-Heilstätten abandoned hospital. This is where A.Hitler had his testicles fixed (contoversal?) We checked few smaller buildings in the area. Little bit later we arrived in Zerbst/Anhalt -city and first we’re impressed by the middle-aged gate, but then we saw 2 high towers nearby. It was the ruins of old St. Nicolai church. It was such a beautiful place!
Soon after this city we crossed the river Elbe with Reaction ferry
So there’s no engine in this Ferry but still it takes you to the other side!
When our route took us to Harz-mountains it had been raining a little. So we had to ride the nice corners with wet road. Luckily at the end of the day we had some nice corners near Edersee area and it was dry there!
Here’s the route we took.
Made few mistakes! Planned a long route with 2 times crossing the Russian border… Ooops! But I’ll tell you later about it.
First there was a ride from Plinkses to Klaipeda harbour, and from there we took a ferry to Curonian Spit. Ferry costs 3,35€. And after we arrived the spit there was a roadtoll (5€/ bike). And we also had to pay the toll again in Russian side (that was a little bit more than 4€). The road in Curonian Spit is beautiful, it even has some corners and uphills-downhills.
We stopped in one beach to take some pictures of the Baltic ocean. We also stopped in Nida to buy something from the shop.
After Nida it was time for the first border check-Ins! These first check-Ins took about 1h 30mins! Then we’re in Russia!!
This is Amber museum in the center of Kaliningrad.
And this is the worlds biggest castle in Malbork Poland.
But before we could ride in Poland we had to cross the border again! The Russian side of the border was ok, (quite fast) but then the Poland side of the border-check was with a very long line!!! We had to wait more than 2 hours!!! What a catastrophe! We were so late in our accommodation! It was 9,30 pm and we started 8.30 am and there in the middle we moved from timezone to another…. so it was more than 14 hours of ride!!!
Note to myself:
– If you’re about to ride Curonian Spit, you better have 1 whole day to do it!
– If you’re about to cross the Russian border twice a day, don’t ever think it’d take 2-3 hours! It will take more!
But today without me. I had to go to work (what a pitty!)
But I had the time to visit the starting point and go to the corner few km’s after the start.
24 bikes passed me like this:
Go - Za 