Soaked and Baked

It was time to ride home. And that’s when the last ‘heatwave’ of the summer waved good bye and what was probably deemed as flood inducing torrential rain began to fall. From Essex to Austria it bloody pissed down.

I didn’t have a plan, maybe I’d hit it hard and ride the 1600 miles back in an Iron Butt style like I’d done before or maybe not. I’d got a day cabin on the ferry so I could doze the voyage away, and watch the rain out of the porthole. Docking in Holland the soaking continued and as is the way, the ferry arrival time corresponded with the Rotterdam rush hour and I wove through the spray restricted vision of the latticework Netherlands motorway system and into Germany through the most highly populated part of Europe.

Over 100 million people in what’s called the Blue Banana, but without a yellow waterproof skin with rain penetrating.

The deluge did subside, and somehow I found myself riding through central Cologne at dusk. This was undoubtedly the highlight of the day, over a bridge and glancing to my right, downriver I saw mood lit cathedrals and other erections of beauty against the broken cloud in the dusk sky.

I had taken a look on Google Earth to try and find a wild camp spot and sure enough a bit further south, just off the autobahn, I pulled off and found the ideal clearing on the edge of the ‘Banana’. OK, it was right next to a high-speed railway line but, other than that, out of sight and best of all free.

Nothing dried in the night, in fact I had a variety of weathers, wind, pounding rain, deluge, mist, downpour, and for dawn, a persistent drizzle to pack up in. My iron butt was going to get rusty. Regardless, it was destined to be a motorway day. Frankfurt, Munich, mostly dug up, roadworks and single lane laborious, with pedantic speed limits, but no let-up in weather. As hopes to making it to Slovenia faded, so the anticipation of crossing into Austria got soggy then saturated as I headed further south. The rain got heavier, the road floodier, the traffic sprayier, the vision, lessier. I stopped for another reluctant fill up which was €2.70 a litre (Americans, that’s $3.10 a quart, NOT a gallon – a fuckin’ quart, so stop whinging, we have no sympathy for you over here).

Anyway it was at that point I decided it was just dangerous to ride in such conditions, so took the next exit and got a room. You know, these things come on gradually, the bad weather, the slow saturation, the reduced visibility, the submerged road, the blinding spray, the aquaplane potential. I decorated my room with sodden clothing, went out immediately and by pure luck precured the most sumptuous bottle of Merlot. God, it was good, I poured the left overs into a plastic water bottle the next morning. No idea of the make, the country of origin, didn’t notice the label and have no way of knowing. I’m going to have to go back to that little town and try every one in the supermarket.

However, that pouring was a long way off. This Bavarian hamlet I stayed in had a town hall clock which struck every 15 minutes, right through the night. I was thinking in my insomnia state: oh it’s 1 o’clock, it’s 2 o’clock, it’s… you get the picture.

And all the time my mind was retracing that road and I was practically shivered at the intensity of the conditions. I was so pleased I cut it short, stopped and dried out. Flung right into it, I would have ran back but with gradual progression the tolerance grew. Now in the cold light of dawn I could see the risks that only my subconscious was aware of and perhaps that’s what made me pull off. 

There was a phrase in my truck driving days to quash an urge to make an impossible deadline at all costs called, ‘better to be 15 minutes late in this life than 30 years early into the next’.

Then the clock struck 8 but it was still dark. Turns out the system is, it strikes one chime for quarter past, 2 for half past, 3 for quarter to, and 4 on the hour – followed by a slightly different tone of chime to indicate what hour. Man, that was a long night, but not long enough to dry out my clothing and at 6am the bells went ballistic bonkers and chimed 100 times. For what? I have no idea, was it bloody Christmas? Felt like I’d been there for eons. So back into damp clothing and down towards Austria, now knowing Slovenia was out of the question due to rampant storms crossing the country.

Just as I was settling into the ride an unmarked police car pulled in front of me and a red LED sign in the back window said, eventually in English, ‘Follow Me’. What? What have I done? He slows to a sanctimonious 50kph on the autobahn and eventually pulls off into a service area. Now generally, in these situations, I’m quick to pull down bandanna, life lid and show a smile. I never got a chance, as soon as the car stopped, like the Sweeney, out jumped two armed cops, a man and woman ran towards me. Jesus, I’m thinking, what have I done? Turns out nothing, as they ran past me, Mr. Gestapo (apparently I can’t say that – let’s call him Mr. Authority) said ‘Ve tay kim no choo’ (We take him not you) meaning there was, if I’d have looked in my mirrors, a van behind me, and it was ‘kim’ they were after. I laughed out loud, spontaneously, it was relief, it was genuine, and off I buggered, to get ever wetter.

Austria promised to be drier but it bloody lied. There were lighter skies to the East but I couldn’t catch them. All the way to Vienna I chased the end, or beginning for the west bound, the wetness continued to rain down on me. I tried to think of wetter rides and there have been plenty but the current one always seems the worst. Finally as I crossed into Hungary things dried out, so I stopped at a Turkish truck stop for a very late breakfast. While I ate my fill and stuffed leftovers into my pockets, the clouds caught up, so back onto a wet seat, Budapest bound and into 45kmph contra flow road works.

Convoys of trucks throwing up each other’s spray, and then as things dried up the debris turned to dust. Despite obediently following the flow and crossing the centre reservation there was no happy medium middle ground, up went the temperature to high 20’s.

I passed my personal Bermuda triangle, the point where I seized my rebuilt KLR in 2016 as you may have read in Second World Problems which is now available as an audio book.

I carried on chasing my setting sun shadow into Romania, determined to wild camp again. I crossed a river, did a double take, a double think, then a U-turn. Down to the dirt, under the bridge, along the bank and there as the sky pinkened, I stripped and pitched. Dried clothes and whetted craving quenched with the left over Red from a plastic bottle and bread from my pocket. It was the perfect end to a 1000km day. Persevere and the reward is all the greater. A gentle breeze kept the mozzies at bay and through the night the tent flapped itself dry.

First light thoughts, I’m going to take the Transalpina across the Romanian Carpathians (same name as the first ship to come to the distressed Titanic survivors), soon as I was deprived of the Slovenian Alps.

Dawn departure and back road wanderings. I recall there was a lack of fuel once on that prestigious hair pin peak crossing 67C. So I topped up and then all I had to do was fill my belly. I managed to find some Schickimicki pretentious establishment, with topiary hedges, colour coordinated clientele and disco beat classics belted out onto the tiled terrace. What’s worse than U2 with your omelette? Bono with a techno beat. Bloody awful.

But then, extortionately fed, the road was ready for me. A parade of bikes in front of me and I took touring Czechs like a Thomas Cooks exchange kiosk. Peg scraping and frustration venting, three days of pissing rain and now I could lean like Pisa, twitch and flick like a badly connected light switch, brake late and bank low.

11 years living in continental Europe, it seems I will never get used to the fact that the only thing stopping me getting home is me, no ferry, no port, no train, no flight. Just ride and you’ll be there, the homing instinct overtook me, like I had every vista viewing rider on the Transalpina. Having seemingly had enough rain this trip, the universe decided I’d not had enough road works. Long waits for contra flow, temporary lights. I’d filter to front, go first on green, have a bit of clear road until the next tailback that needed taking. This would have been fine but I was busting for a piss and every time I passed the stationary I didn’t dare stop to be overtaken, nor was there anywhere to pull over. This continued beyond comfort and the pressure was rising along with the temperature. As I headed to Bucharest it was up to 38°C.

And now with only the Danube river between me and a home I’d not seen since early July there was no way I was going to stop, or even slow down. So a 2700km trip taken in 30 riding hours, over 4 days. I was home, the bike not missed a beat. Took me a full day to recover though.